Yup. So don't read this if you don't want to hear details about puking (because I think it's hilarious).
Also, if you are one of my friends who is vegan you might come kill me in my sleep after reading this (although that wouldn't be very vegan of you), so carry on with whatever you were doing before this.
And also any people who are offended by the idea of evolution, adiós for now. Unless you want an anecdote to have handy when arguing that believing evolution makes you barf. 'Cause it did.
But this post also has praying in it, so good times can be enjoyed by all.
Except the vegans.
I'm going to tell the whole story with disclaimers before I even tell the whole story. My bad.
So before anybody stages some sort of body-image intervention, we WEREN'T trying to lose weight. Actually, if I lost any more weight (post-
Sweden jet lag was hard on me) I'd have to start buying bras from the little kids' section again, so No Thank You Very Much.
Our gym (Crossfit, which we looove, love, lovelovelove) suggests everyone try the "Paleo Diet." It's definitely not mandatory, but they recommend it for more energy and better athletic results. The basic idea behind it is to limit your diet to things that were available for the majority of human evolution (before we invented cooking and agriculture), because theoretically we should digest those things most easily.
Like most diets, you can eat whatever you want to eat. Except grains. And legumes. And potatoes. And dairy. And processed food/food additives. This kind of made sense to me, since people have trouble digesting many of these things anyway (gluten, lactose, those magical little fruits known as legumes). The sciencey-side of us was intrigued. Time for a little experiment... on ourselves.
If you want to know more, here's
a little propaganda video for ya.
For more sciencey explanations of why the forbidden foods are bad for you, this is a
cheesy yet interesting video.
Or if you'd rather read about it,
a great article from Runner's World.
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| The bag of banishment |
We cleared our cupboards of all the banished foods and put them in this giant bag. We went to the store and filled our cart with free-range meat & eggs, nuts, and colorful produce. It looked delicious. I looked forward to the challenge of cooking new things, and smugly doubted that I'd experience any willpower issues.
In those first few days, I learned something about myself. I LOVE LEGUMES. I was hardcore missing-- no,
mourning-- peas, hummus, tofu, fake "chicken" nuggets (I'm not a vegetarian, but I love strange, processed soy foods), and
for the love of all that is edible, refried beans. Black, pinto, I didn't care. I just needed a big pile of smooshed-up beans.
Also, I realized that unless we ate a LOT of veggies, we were going to have trouble getting enough calories from carbs to not lose weight. And protein was out of the running for a main caloric source-- not only is protein expensive, but my conscience has a bit of a problem with eating
that many animals. So, I resolved to get my calories from fat. Cashews, raw coconuts, olive oil, eggs, bananas fried in coconut oil... I ate a lot of fat.
By the fourth day, we'd started craving starches (bread, potatoes) like Edward Cullen wanted to shred Bella in that first Chemistry class. No friendly amber-colored vampire eyes here, amigos. F***ing RED. Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about. We were strangely hungry... our stomachs burned, but all food sounded gross other than, basically, waffles. We forced down taco salads instead, literally scowling like four-year-olds. I had gained a huge, huge respect for those who have to diet and still manage to have friends. ...Also for "vegetarian" vampires.
Other than that, though, we definitely felt more energetic & were having great workouts. Maybe there was something to this Paleo Diet business.
That night, we had salmon patties and asparagus (dipped in lemon juice & olive oil for the extra calories). Sounds pretty awesome, right? Not after 92 hours of this stupid, STUPID diet. Bitter much? You bet. I was literally having olfactory hallucinations of cake.
Why do you need to know what we had for dinner that night?
Foreshadowing, my dears.
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| the best late-night barfing companion |
I woke up around 1AM that night with a horrible burning in my stomach. And thanks to high school anatomy class, I knew that it literally was my stomach: a J-shaped pit of mortal agony on the left of my torso. I turned the lamp on and started reading to distract myself, but it got worse. WAY worse. I hadn't experienced this much pain since I broke my tailbone a decade before.
I started getting a weird feeling all over my body. I thought it might be nausea, but I'd only thrown up three times in my life so I wasn't really sure. I moved myself and my book to the bathroom just in case. An hour passed, then two hours. I started crying from the horrible, tight, searing sensation in my stomach.
Now, I'm not the most religious person, but I do pray pretty often. I never ask for specific things to happen, because I trust that God knows what he's doing; I usually just say, "This situation sucks so I'd appreciate if you'd reveal whatever lesson I'm supposed to get out of it," or, "Thanks, the world is awesome and I'm really enjoying being here." (And then rainbows and little heart-shaped bubbles start floating around my head.) (Kidding.)
But that night, I just felt stuck. I felt stuck in this horrible pain; I was tired of sitting there feeling it get worse, and I wanted it to be over with. (The agony, that is, not my rainbow-and-heart-shaped-bubble Carebear life.) I tearfully begged God,
Please give me peace, fix my writhing stomach, let me know what to do to make it go away.
Silence.
...Amen?
And then as if given a shove from behind, I lunged over the toilet seat and started hurling my guts out. HARD. It sucked.
Dear God,
You're a funny, funny fella.
And since you really must know, this was some weird barf. There was no stomach acid, no liquid, just chewed up, undigested, pink and green dinner. My sister told me not to write this, but I think it will really benefit you to know that it was so thick, I seriously felt like I was pooping out of my throat.
And because this was only the fourth time I've ever thrown up, ever, I slumped against the toilet for a while feeling confused and violated by whatever the hell kind of trick my stomach had just pulled there. Then I climbed back into bed, shivering, wrapped Jason's arms around me and finally fell asleep.
In retrospect, I'm somewhat embarrassed to tell you that the following morning I continued on with this dieting business. I did some online sleuthing to figure out what had caused the weird stomach pain and the whole little regurgitation trick. Apparently, I learned, fat requires a lot of bile to be digested. If you eat too much of it, you can
temporarily run out of bile. Basically, my stomach had said,
"We're sorry. Please try again later."
Then I looked up the Crossfit workout for that day, and I swear to rainbows and heart bubbles
I am not making this sh*t up:
Run 1 mile.
Complete, in any order and any increments:
100 pull-ups
200 pushups
300 air-squats
Then RUN ANOTHER MILE.
Or, you know, DIE. Whichever happens first.
So we went. And I did it. And it sucked, but I didn't die. Plus I got to tell people my awesome barf story.
And then, in our sweaty workout clothes, we drove straight to our favorite Mexican restaurant and I ate THE BEST PLATE OF BEANS AND RICE I've ever had. And it stayed down.
