I have a love/hate relationship with pineapple. The tangy, tropical, juicy fruit is far too delicious to be so agonizingly filled with skin eating enzymes. Perhaps this was nature's way of letting me know when I've eaten too much, but I'll be damned if everytime I get a ripe pineapple that I don't core it, section it, and then eat it all on the spot, regardless of whether I'll have skin on the corners of my mouth and the back of my tongue by the end or not.
And today, while hungry and at the local H.E.B., I saw the prettiest, yellow and ripe pineapple standing by its lonesome amidst a sea of green pineapples. I heard the siren's call. Of course, ain't nobody got time for prepping a pineapple in between workshifts, so I grabbed a clear plastic container of fresh pineapple chunks ((11 oz) instead on the way out along with a medium sized grapefruit and I ate it all before geting back out of the car.
Immediately after carb guilt started to set in.
Let me explain.
I'm an Atkins girl. That's just how I've rolled for the past twelve years, both the naughty, popularly conceived version of Atkins and the textbook considerably healthier version actually directed as the late doc' prescribed. Before Atkins I can't remember an easy method of losing weight, and it's how I've lost, time and time again, 40 lbs. and more in relatively short periods of time. Like, I would laugh at diet plans that boasted a 10 pound loss in one month effortlessly as if it were a big secret, because I could do that and more.
After twelve years of learning that excessive carbs are bad for my body, I find myself having a near irrational fear of them. To the point where if I allow myself to eat anymore than 60 carbs a day, I may as well throw my hands up in the air and have a full on binge, because by golly, that was a cheat.
Since slow transitioning to vegan, I've found it difficult to embrace fruits as a regular part of my diet. Fruits still seem so much like an indulgence. I'll eat all the greens in the world and not feel guilty about their carb count, but even the idea of halfing an apple and tossing it into one of my green juices for a little sweetness is an ungodly and dangerous notion.
Indeed, I'm still trying to pull off a high fat Atkins sans the meat, eating rich in protein and fiber edamame and eating well over 6 tbsp. a day in coconut oil to keep my caloric intake up, since the most carby things I generally intake with my vegetables are very sparingly consumed beets, carrots, and tomatoes.
It's working. My hunger is non existant and when present is easily quenched with coconut oil. I'm taking vitamins by the handful. I'm eating richly from nuts, and both juicing and consuming my greens whole.
And for whatever reason, when I ate that pineapple and grapefruit today, I felt like I had failed myself. And when faced with a box of cookies (not mine, I swear!) and offered one by one of my clients in the afternoon, I caught myself rationalizing that... well... since I'd broken rank earlier today, might as well have a treat of it.
Yeah.
I didn't accept that cookie, but it made me think hard about what sort of phobia I've built up over the 60 or so carbs I consumed earlier in the day. The pineapple and the grapefruit. The 240 calories that my BMR alone would have taken care of, even if I hadn't walked an hour or did 15 minutes of squats and deadlifts later on that evening.
I still have such an unhealthy relationship with the foods I eat, even when my cravings are under control.
I have a long ways to go, yet.