Food

I have always have a love/hate relationship with food. I absolutely love food, I just hate how I feel after eating it.

I was chubby child. I grew out of this and actually developed a waist line around the age of 15. I then went through a phase where I was able to eat everything and danced it off later. Upon entering the fashion industry I was back to feeling like the “fat kid”, and learned to live of off a bagel a day. I quickly dropped from a healthy 140 pounds to a bobble head look of 115 pounds. I have a huge head but that’s a whole different story.

The reason why I am writing this is because someone asked me recently to help her out with her eating habits which got me to think. I have zero will power: when there is food, I will eat it. When I crave my favorite thing in the whole world, French fries, I will go get them. I do not have the mentality for Paleo or any other form of “diet”. As cliche as it may sound; it is all about moderation and the amount of calories you consume in a 24 hour span. I used to use the Lose It app but became slightly obsessed with it. It did make me realize that I was taking in way too few calories in combination with the amount of daily exercise. A common misconception; you do need to eat in order to lose weight, especially when you exercise daily.

The one perk of a divorce is weight loss caused by stress, and bowels that can’t hide your true feelings the way a smile does. Therefore I don’t really need to diet. I do eat a lot less than I used to. Dining solo results in a lot of salads and meatless stir fried veggies dishes. Besides that I consume tons of dairy in the form of milk and greek yogurt. I will need to find a farm where I can buy milk without the additional 15 grams of sugar a cup! My daily cheat is flavored coffee creamer in my morning java. I am not a fan of exercising but once weather permits I will go back to walking around 3 miles about 4 times a week. I also attempt to yoga and barre. At my age it is crucial to keep moving.

Food is fun though! It is a huge part of our social life. It enhances our experiences when we travel oversees, it makes a bad dinner date a lot more bearable and the pizza parties with your kids a lot more enjoyable.

That being said, back to your aging skin, or should I say my aging skin? The bad news is that I recently learned that sugar can prematurely age your skin. It can weaken your collagen and elastine levels starting as early as your mid-thirties (!). Reason enough for me to lower my sugar intake. Foods that are great for your skin are obviously the boring kind; fatty fish, broccoli, almonds….all great paired with some French fries. Vitamin C is a winner too for your skin. Vitamin C is very prominent in beauty products these days although it seems to be most productive taken orally. Adult women need 75 milligrams a day, a single orange has about 100 milligrams. Bell peppers, broccoli and kale also pack a ton of vitamin C, we will put them on the boring list. More vitamin C sources are kiwi’s and pineapples.

It all boils down to this: a wise man reminded me that you will never have a different body shape then the one you had when you were 18. Read; if you didn’t have a flat stomach then you will not get one now without help from a plastic surgeon. For me that means my dancer legs are trainable and my round bootie may reappear with the right amount of donkey kicks. I will also try to maintain a healthy relationship with my food.