Friday, September 20, 2013

Why I can't, no, why I won't do restricted diets.

I truly feel for people who have a food allergy or a condition like Coeliac's disease where they can't eat certain food.  I love food too much and mostly certain types of food to give them up. 
The no soda thing is about as restricted as I can get because it was causing a physical reaction that only happened when I drank them.  So scientifically they must be the cause.  I have thought about going vegetarian, but I love pho too much (seriously, it is my life blood).  Since Scott Pilgrim, I felt that maybe I could do vegan and get super powers, but see the previous sentence and I raise you brie.  I thought about doing the whole Atkin's / south beach diet, but that would mean no rice, so life just wouldn't be worth living.  Then I heard about the gluten-free diet which would allow me to eat rice, but no bread or pasta.

Of all the self imposed, meaning not for medical purposes, the gluten-free one seemed to be the most likely candidate.  I could still eat pho and rice and all the foods I love, just no pasta.  I went into this endeavor thinking it would be easy, but I was so surprised by how many foods had gluten or possible traces of gluten.  Luckily, my small intestine wouldn't explode if I accidentally had some cross-contamination, but still it was surprisingly hard to stick to it.  I did find some really good gluten-free brown rice pasta.  (I will link it once I have time to go grocery shopping.  It tasted like normal pasta and had great texture.  The only down side is that I had to cook it for 20 mins.  I guess I've been spoiled by quick cooking gluten-filled pasta.  I even managed to trick my husband into eating it!  I told him it was whole wheat hence the slightly different texture and he had seconds.  Of course the moment I told him it was gluten-free, he made the stink face, but continued eating :).

So the gluten-free diet is really the only one that would work for me, but I was shocked to see that gluten-free pasta have MORE calories per serving than regular pasta!  I know that calories are not the end all and be all for "healthy", but why would I make a choice to eat something that it is not quite right and it'll take up more of my calorie count.

So in short,I will stick to portion control for now and do some research into the benefits of "healthy" alternatives like quinoa and gluten-free choices.

2 comments:

  1. So much this. I don't think I could ever maintain a restrictive diet and I would never even attempt a diet that tells you exactly what to eat. Just making healthier choices and tracking what I eat has been great for me. If I can get to a point where I can control myself without having to track everything I eat that would be stellar, but I don't find that it's horribly inconvenient after 9 months of tracking (I've skipped about 6 days of tracking all that time - for camping and vacation).

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    1. I totally agree with wanting to get to than point of being able to control myself. Using the calorie counter with the barcode scanner has been really easy and it has helped me make better decisions about what I eat. There are some days though that I will not track what i eat like birthdays and holidays, cause I know that it's gonna be bad.

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