Mourning High-Glycemic Carbs

livestrong.com

You’ve read the low-carb books and seen the dramatic before-and-after pictures.  You dive in and embrace bacon and coffee with cream.  And then it hits you.  “I’m not going to be eating buttered toast with cinnamon and sugar anymore.”  And you are depressed.

Let’s recognize that we will be mourning the disappearance of big, fat carbs from our lives.  Some of you may be able to reincorporate them in your life, but many of us will not.  And the sooner you come to terms with it the better.

I made a list:

·         Toast with high-quality butter; also, crumpets with butter and jam with tea

·         Pina coladas

·         Salted caramel mocha frappucino

·         Fettucini alfredo

·         Bucatini with anything

·         Yorkshire pudding

·         Rice pudding

·         Chocolate pudding

·         Basically, all pudding

Now, make another list of food you thought you couldn’t eat but now eat with relish:

·         Bacon

·         Cream in coffee

·         Hollandaise sauce over grilled fish

·         Beurre blanc sauce over grilled chicken

·         Guacamole, guacamole, guacamole

·         Boeuf bourguignon

·         Chili with a dollop of sour cream

·         Berries and cream – whipped or otherwise

·         Buttered green beans

·         Butter on everything…

The above list is thoroughly enjoyed with smaller thighs and waist.

I don’t sit and pine for the days of buttered toast because I now know that the low-level of perpetual bloat I lived with was keeping me from enjoying a life free of intestinal discomfort and arthritis in my knee.  Hmmm…buttered toast, or springing from a step into the car without a twinge of pain. 

I don’t crave things I can no longer eat because I’m mentally superior or more mature; I just do not miss my body on toast.

If you are crying at the thought of the foods you are no longer eating this holiday season, especially if you are forced to sit next to a thin relative stuffing crescent rolls in their mouth, I suggest taking a walk by yourself or grabbing an hour alone where you can make a list of the food you are mourning. 

Look at it, acknowledge it, and come to terms with reality. 

And then make that second list of new foods you will be embracing and enjoying.  Don’t forget a third list: how much better your body feels without those toxic foods polluting your ability to live a real life.

Rebekah