Comment of the week

This one comes from Diana, a college friend with a lovely blog of her own, in reference to my tell-all post about the nutritional intricacies of my diet:

Any way I can get my hands on that program? I'm one of those people that convinces myself that everything is just fine... until confronted with hard evidence. We eat more than half our meals vegetarian now, but we still need less cheese/pasta and more actual vegetables. Email me if you have a copy or something.

There's nothing like gardening to make you eat more veggies; I say GO for it. There's no WAY you're going to let that home-grown stuff go to waste: it becomes precious. We ate tomato-pepper-basil salads almost 3x per week this last summer, and just knowing how much work went into it made it seem delicious every time. I'm very sad that we won't have a garden next year (because of the shade issue) or perhaps even the next (since we can't afford to get the land cleared and I'm afraid of chainsaws).

My nutrition paper

It's part three of a class project for which we were asked to 1) keep track of everything we ate, including portion sizes, for 72 hours; 2) plug all the data into a diet analysis program; and 3) write an essay about our diet, including what we're getting too much of and what we're deficient in. I enjoyed the whole experience, and I think doing something like this regularly -- say, three or four times a year -- would be good for me. The Michael Pollan book I refer to in the essay is In Defense of Food, which I highly recommend.

I’m meeting most of my nutritional requirements simply by consuming too many calories each day. That said, I could use more linoleic acid; I’m only getting 78% of my daily requirement (13.28 g). I also need more water than I’m getting; I’m taking in just 68% of my daily requirement. Not surprisingly, considering where we all live, I need more vitamin D, too – I’m consuming only 79% of my requirement. I also need more of vitamins E and K. Among the food groups, I’m coming up short in the milk and fruit areas. I’m vegetarian but do consume dairy products, so I wonder how much more dairy I’d need to take in. Regarding fruits, I’ve been buying oranges and melons and trying to eat more fruit rather than juice.

I’m consuming too many calories compared to how many I’m burning. My average daily caloric intake is 3158, whereas my average expenditure is 2658. It’s no wonder I’m up to around 220 pounds and my BMI is 33. I’m consuming macronutrients in the right percentages, but the amounts are too large. I received recommendations from the diet analysis program based on a desire to lose weight, not just maintain it.

Still, my 447.55 daily grams of carbs far exceeds the 227-327 range the program recommends, and my fat intake (103.38 grams rather than 45 to 78) and protein consumption (122.93 grams instead of 80.56) are similarly high. I’m also consuming too much dietary cholesterol (143% of my daily recommendation), linolenic acid (149%), and fiber (116%). I attribute all of these excesses to a basic excess of calories.

I eat a combination of whole and processed foods, and while I could use more whole foods, I’m off to a pretty good start. Though I ate cold cereal with soy milk at the time of the recall, I now mix oatmeal with cinnamon sugar (and sometimes still soy milk). Pasta is my biggest downfall when it comes to overeating, so I’m trying to cut down.

On the first day of the recall, I shredded cheddar over whole-wheat rotini, which at least isn’t standard white pasta. I made a stir-fry on the first night that included bell peppers, onions, broccoli, mushrooms, tofu, celery, and basil. I don’t make as many stir-fries these days, but I’d like to get back to it, since it’s an easy way to consume a variety of vegetables.

On the second day, I had homemade cholent for lunch, which represents the kind of home-cooked meal I often eat in my community. The stew was packed with legumes (black, kidney, white, and garbanzo beans) and also included wild and brown rice, acorn squash, garlic, and cabbage. Making a lot of stew and eating it over the course of a week might be a good move for me as a vegetarian. I did eat a couple of mini Clif Bars that day, and I still have a weakness for processed, sugary “health bars.”

The third day, I blended bananas, strawberries, and soy milk for breakfast; at lunch, I had baby carrots and hummus. Both are typical of the whole-plus-processed food combos I often choose. I also ate veggie dogs that day – highly processed, lots of sodium – and made egg salad. I had class that night, and when I need a snack and haven’t planned ahead, I’ll often get a juice and a granola bar from the campus café. The amount of time I give myself to prepare my food varies, but I do enjoy taking an hour to cook something from fresh ingredients and enjoy it in a leisurely way.

I need to eat less. Snacking is often the problem. But sometimes I’m at a festive meal – and my community has many – and I simply eat too much. My willpower isn’t the strongest, so I need to work out some kind of structure for myself. It would be good to consume less cholesterol – fewer eggs would do it – and more linoleic acid. Also, drinking more water would be a great idea. It might help my digestion, make me feel fuller, and reduce my fatigue. More vitamin D would be good; I don’t drink milk (it grosses me out), but I do eat cheese and ice cream and sometimes yogurt. I could also eat more almonds for vitamin E and more dark leafy greens for vitamin K. I like kale, but I rarely make it myself. I should start.

I think my great-grandmother would recognize a decent portion of what I eat: the cheese, pasta, fresh fruits and vegetables, homemade stews, egg salad, and so forth. Not so much the Clif Bars. Since I’m a label reader (have been since I became vegetarian at 15), I do try to avoid unpronounceable ingredients and high-fructose corn syrup. I shop at a fruit and vegetable stand near my house and get food from the U District food bank, where things are donated from groceries like Trader Joe’s.
I don’t eat mostly plants, but I’m working on it; the produce stand helps. I eat a decent bit of cheese, yet I don’t often know what the cows were eating. Not grass, I imagine.

The farmers market is something I love but feel unable to afford. I want to become the kind of person who takes supplements, in the sense that I want to get more exercise and to balance my diet more carefully. That’s a major project for 2010. Wine with dinner? I’m not a big drinker, but occasionally I do have wine. “Pay more, eat less” – I practiced this philosophy when I had more money. As Pollan notes, snacking isn’t the best habit, but I do it anyway. I’m trying to keep more fruits and vegetables on hand for when I snack.

I eat too many meals standing up or in a rush, but I do believe that eating at a table is best, so I hope to make it a more consistent habit. Eating alone, as Pollan says, often leads to overeating, but I don’t do it too often; there’s nearly always someone around. That said, I overeat significantly at certain group meals, when no single person seems to notice how much I’m eating. Consulting my gut – that’s the trick, isn’t it? Goes along with eating slowly. I’m a notoriously fast eater, but when I take a more meditative approach – focusing on the taste and texture of each bite – I eat more slowly and have more success checking in with my gut.

I do cook frequently now, and I appreciated Pollan’s words about gardening as exercise with a purpose. Maybe once it gets warmer and stops raining as much, I’ll join in my community’s gardening efforts.

First day of school

It wasn't the best, but it certainly wasn't the worst. It rained, and fall made itself known through the chill and the blustery wind. I got a $44 parking ticket for hanging out too long in a two-hour zone, and I dropped the first class I attended. But the one I replaced it with, an online chemistry class, looks promising so far: The professor seemed extremely competent, and I'm intrigued by the course's Web-only format. (As my mother continues learning how to teach introductory German using Internet tools, I've challenged myself to figure out online coursework as a student. We'll have lots to talk about between now and Christmas.)

My other class, nutrition, meets for the first time tomorrow night. I got my student I.D. today (hello, $1 off at local movie theaters!) and swapped my abnormal psych book for the considerably more expensive chem text. I'm sad to be holding off on psych, since it really interests me, but it's smart to get started on the chem series (139, the class I'm in, will prepare me for 161, which is the series' first actual course) and to keep my 9-5 free on weekdays (I now have one evening and one online class; psych was noon to 2:20 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays).

It felt weird to be at North Seattle Community College, amongst the many 18- to 22-year-olds, but I'll get used to it. I'm a bit jittery about having assignments already, and quizzes in my near future, but I'm also excited to be taking a chem course that assumes virtually no knowledge of the subject. My 10th grade chem teacher wasn't very good, and that was the last time I took chem. Whether or not I end up pursuing a graduate degree at Bastyr -- which, as it happens, a number of my chem classmates are doing -- it'll be nice to study science again.

There's no reason that someone who focused on the humanities during his undergrad years can't take chemistry and anatomy as a 30-year-old. A liberal arts education is a great chance to become a more well-rounded person, intellectually and otherwise, but that effort has to continue after graduation, and I'm glad to be getting back to it now.

How (not) to raise a(n) (un)healthy eater

Michelle pointed out this excellent Times piece about the dilemmas modern parents face when it comes to teaching (and modeling) smart eating patterns. The following bit, about everyday disordered eating that lies outside the realm of diagnosable conditions, is especially sharp:

Neither of these children, with whom I interact occasionally, comes close to being a statistic or case study. He isn’t obese; she isn’t anorexic.

But they represent a larger group of young people between those widely publicized (and much more complicated) extremes. And they speak to a subtler parental challenge: how to coach children away from unhealthy eating without sowing panic; how to make them conscious of their intake without making them too self-conscious about its consequences.

See also: "I Was a Baby Bulimic."

On going back to school

I told someone recently that I'm trying to decide between the Master of Science in Nutrition and Clinical Health Psychology program at Bastyr University and the Film and Video Communications program at Seattle Central Community College. She responded: "Wow, you sure have a wide range of interests!" I said: "If someone gave you a course catalogue and told you price wasn't an object, you could take anything you want, you'd have a hard time deciding." The truth is, we all have a wide range of interests; the tricky part is figuring out which ones to pursue academically, which professionally, and which avocationally.

I worry that studying film theory, for example, might negatively impact my love of film. I studied creative writing and Spanish in college, and by the time I had my B.A., I was ready to take a break from both. I never really came back to either area, even though I was obsessed with Spanish in high school and wrote poetry and fiction fairly regularly back then, too. I'm also not sure academic analysis is the way I want to look at film; I enjoyed being a film critic for the Weekly largely because I got to choose the level of diction and analysis for each movie, and because popular criticism seems more accessible (and, frankly, enjoyable) than academic articles and books. For me, the idea of becoming a film studies professor isn't beyond the pale, but it doesn't feel like one of my best options, either.

Seattle Central's filmmaking program includes some theory, but its emphasis is on production. I attended an info session last week that laid out the two-year curriculum and included talks by two of the program's main professors. One is a documentarian whose film Sweet Crude played at SIFF this year; the other didn't mention his body of work, but I liked his no-nonsense personality and his sense of humor. Both teachers stressed how challenging the program is, and that it's a great deal, financially speaking: $7,800 or so for six quarters of quality instruction. Renting equipment and studio space for a single day, one of the professors pointed out, might easily cost $1,300, the price of one quarter in the program. We watched a short film made by members of a previous year's class; the acting was surprisingly good, the writing was decent, and the cinematography and editing were impressive.

We also talked about the logistics of finding work after graduation. Both teachers admitted that graduates have to work hard to find jobs, and many of them are freelance gigs. But they balanced this sentiment with the notion that there's always some work, somewhere, for a highly skilled production person. I was dazzled by the info session, as I imagine many of the other people in the room were; the session was packed with the most diverse group of people I've been around in a long time. The program takes a team-oriented approach, placing students in small groups to work on production projects. Finding ways to work well with virtual strangers, we were told, is a common challenge in the industry, and the program tries to recreate that challenge from the start.

If I want to enter this program, fall of 2010 is my first chance. Students can only enter it in the fall, and no spaces remain for this year. (There's quite a waiting list in case anyone drops out; I decided not to bother including my name on it.) It's a full-time program, which means holding down a full-time job in addition isn't an option. (One of the professors said that even working 20 hours a week while in the program is a tough row to hoe.)

The Bastyr program is a horse of a very different color. Fall of 2010 won't work because of all the prerequisites I need to take before applying; 2011 is more like it. I'll need nutrition, chemistry, psychology, anatomy, and biochemistry, all but the last of which I can take at either Seattle Central or North Seattle Community College. (Biochem isn't offered at the community colleges, so I'd probably have to attend a proper university for it.) I just paid for two classes for fall quarter: nutrition and a general prep class for chemistry. The former will give me a small taste of what I'd be getting myself into if I decided to pursue the MSNCHP; the latter will enable me to take the required chemistry series, if I end up so desiring.

My decision to go back to school was the pretty direct result of a realization achieved in therapy: I keep waiting for something external to tell me which direction to go professionally, but it's impossible to know what will suit me and what won't without trying something. I can't try everything, varied interests or not, but I can try something. And two community college classes are a whole lot cheaper than a year of grad school. Might as well try a subject that interests me on for size.

Some people who don't know me well, or haven't known me long, are surprised by my interest in nutrition counseling. The fact is, I've knowingly struggled with eating and body image issues for 15 years. Even after my bout with anorexia nominally ended, I veered back and forth between overeating and self-starvation. Only in 2006, in Brooklyn, was I able to achieve a level of mindfulness (thanks to daily meditation) that allowed me to understand what healthy eating habits might look like for me. And only now, a year after joining the food-intensive Kibbutz community, am I able to recognize that I'm heavier than I want to be without completely melting down about it. (I credit meditation, life wisdom, and Lexapro for that.)

In the proverbial perfect world, I'd study nutrition, counseling, and filmmaking and would win an Oscar for a groundbreaking documentary on disordered eating. For the moment, I'm excited to be a month away from starting classes. Studying algebra and pre-calculus to take the community college math placement test was more fun than grueling, thanks to the lessons that 12th grade calculus class apparently branded on my brain. I think relearning chemistry as an adult, from a competent teacher (my 10th grade chem teacher wasn't), might be a great experience. And I expect to really like nutrition class. My sense of how the body uses food, and what foods help or hurt us in which ways, is shaky at best. While mindfulness is definitely a part of the healthy-eating equation, information is also key, and no matter what I choose to do in the coming years, I won't regret having taken either class.