I’ll admit that since joining Mint shortly after I graduated college, I’ve become addicted to watching my networth go up. While the stock market has made that not always the case, in general my uncontrollable spending habits have taken a backseat to my savings addiction. While my increase in salary over the years has helped, I’ve gone from being the type of person who would throw money away to someone who carefully ensures she maxes out her IRA and 401k each year, with extra cash to “play” on certain stocks in taxable accounts. Overall, that’s great.
Where it hurts the most, though, is in my health. I’ve become so frugal that my brain tells me it makes more sense to put together a dinner of random snacks at the office versus coming home and cooking dinner (I’ll be too tired by the time I get home to do that anyway.) In one’s 20s, eating unhealthy and living unhealthy catches up to you. I’ve never been thin, but I definitely am noticing how as the years go on I put on weight much easier. Seeing the scale hit 180lbs was an eye opener. For years 155lbs was the number I’d hit if I were eating anything and not exercising. If i’m at 180 when I’m just 28, what will I be in my 30s?
Besides the number, the reality is that I’m already on my way to Type 2 Diabeties, I’m going to have tons of health problems later in life, I’m already so tired and lacking energy (I’ve been sleeping 9 hours per night and still feel exhausted each day), and what’s worse, it’s going to be incredibly difficult if not impossible to have children. There are so many reasons why getting healthy now is imperitive, yet each year goes by and I manage to come up with more excuses and find myself in a binge eating nightmare. It’s awful to admit, but I’m definitely a food and carb addict.
In 2 years or so, I’ll be getting married. There’s no ring on my finger yet, but we’ve already joked about the date, and we’ve been together six years(!) There’s a NY Times article about how brides will do anything to lose weight for their wedding day. I don’t want to lose weight just for my wedding day, but I do want to do it for my life. I’m even avoiding going home to see my family because I know they will make comments about how fat I am, one after another, with my dad, mom, grandparents, aunts and uncles all making some cruel comment about how I need to diet. Which is true. But nevertheless, it ruins an otherwise plesant conversation of how I’m doing well in my career and life otherwise (minus the depression and all that, but that’s easier to hide.) In the NY Times article, it calls out a bunch of popular fad diets that the brides were doing to lose weight. Most of them sounded absolutely ridiculous (a feeding tube through one’s noise and 800 calories per day? No thanks.) But one — the Dunkan Diet — sounded quite reasonable.
I’ve always been attracted to the idea of a low-carb diet because with PCOS and insulin resistance this actually is the healthy way for me to eat. My body is funny in that I don’t actually mensturate due to the PCOS, but the only times in life I’ve been able to actually have a natural period was by cutting out carbs and amping up on protein (mostly dairy.) I also briefly went gluten-free, which made my stomach flatten out quite a bit. I bet it had more to do with cutting out carbs versus the gluten, but it made a huge difference. So why is it so hard to just eat healthy and cut out carbs? It seems like if it’s clear this makes me feel better and healthier, I should just do it, right?
Part of it is the difficulties anyone has going on a diet. There’s fatty food EVERYWHERE. We have lunch at work and it always comes with a lot of high-carb sides. I tend to dislike the protein (how it’s cooked) and end up eating only bread, butter, and potatoes (plus junk food from our snack cabinet later in the day when I’m hungry again.) No wonder I’m fat.
Alcohol plays a huge role in my obesity. I don’t normally drink often, but lately my work culture is to go out to happy hour a few times per month, or to have beers at the office at the end of the day. While I can “not” drink (and I should not drink!) this is exceptionally difficult in my professional environment. For a few months after my DUI, I did stop drinking entirely, and it was awkward to order water when the team went out for beers. Yes, I could easily say I need to drive home, but so does everyone else and everyone else had at least one beer.
Finally, and this is a biggie, my lack of healthy eating goes back to not wanting to spend money. I’d love to have fresh produce and lean meats in my diet daily (especially fish!) but shopping for this brings my monthly grocery bill up by a few hundred dollars. I do end up spending a lot on dining out, but those costs are usually split between my boyfriend and myself. Worse, because we live separately, I often end up buying food and it going to waste because I’m always at his house and I’m never home. The worst is when you spend a lot on food and then it all spoils because you haven’t had time to eat it or prepare it.
Alright, enough with the excuses, right? I really want to commit to a diet for the next year and see how I can transform myself. I’d also like to start swimming in the mornings (there’s apparently a pool with practice in the ams before work near my office — it will be another relatively large monthly expense to join and hard to get myself there in the mornings for the workouts, but if I can do it than the cost will be worth it!).
I’m very interested in this Dunkan diet. It isn’t that new, but it’s gotten a lot of attention lately. It’s very similar to Atkins or South Beach, except it focuses on a healthier way of doing low carb (ie one cannot eat a lot of fat.) There are 100 foods that are allowed at all times and you can eat as much of them as needed until you’re full. Oat Bran is apparently an extremely important element of the diet as it fills you up. The diet starts with an “attack phase” where for 10? days all you eat is protein and oat bran. I’d be amazed at myself if I could get through that phase. It’s supposed to kick start your metabolism. Ultimately, though, what I like abut the diet is that it’s designed to set you up for a life of eating healthy and maintaining your ideal weight. They have a quiz on their site about what your ideal weight is, and although I’d really like to be 120lbs, my big-boned self will have to settle for 130lbs as a healthy person. Seriously, though, that’s 50lbs to lose and that’s still a lot. That said, if I were able to follow this diet and swim for an hour three days a week I know I’d be able to lose the weight. It WILL cost a lot, and I won’t be able to save as much, but ultimately who cares how much money you have if you’re a big, fat lethargic blob who is diabetic, depressed and cannot have children? I guess when I put it that way, it makes a lot of sense to invest in my health. If I don’t max out my 401k, the world isn’t going to end.