Piggybacking on yesterday’s post, I’d like to talk to you some more about food. This time, more so in the food I used to, and still do, think was the best. That food, of course, is pizza.
I used to consider pizza the perfect food. It is so customizable. You want salty meat, plenty of that. Veggies, sure. Suppose you want crunch, cheese, or chewy in your crust, yum. It’s great fresh out of the oven, even better the following morning. What’s that? Do you want more flavor? Add seasonings to your liking.
Used to.
Now, I’m of an age where I have to be concerned about cholesterol in my blood. This means I have to watch my intake of the nefarious saturated fat. Do you know what has a lot of saturated fat? Cheese is the staple of all pizza. And given my dietary direction, it’s not a little. Two slices of cheese pizza is pretty much my daily allowance of saturated fat.
Now, I hear some of you saying, “It’s a marathon, not a sprint.” “One meal won’t make a difference.” I get these sentiments, but that’s not how my brain works. I have a budget of 14g, and I pretty much have to stick to it. I feel guilty when I go over, and in the past month, I have gone over three times. Once as high as 17g!
And it’s not like I crave to eat other foods high in saturated fat. Sure, ice cream is off the table for the most part, and I do love me some cookie dough ice cream, but I’d been phasing it out over the past while. (The first step was when Ben & Jerry’s came out against GMO foods; I dropped them in a second!) But I would like to up my unsaturated fats, which it turns out is impossible without taking on some of the saturated kind as well. So, I have to spend some of my budget on the bad to get the good.
I’ve adjusted a bit. I can make virtually fat-free oatmeal cookies that are a delight and fun to crumble up in my fat-free yogurt. Gummy candies have entered the lineup, orange slices especially. Extra-lean chicken is my primary source of protein now. Another tricky part is balancing sodium when trying to add flavor to things. Mrs Dash is a sweetheart.
I’m paying for my dietary sins of the past, which is what it comes down to. Pizza, ice cream, deli sandwiches, and the like all conspired to be tasty and unhealthy. Combine that with blissful ignorance of what those things were clogging me up with, and you get here—having a line on a spreadsheet logging saturated fat consumption.
Joy.