I Love Butter

After reading Lynn's blog at Escape From Obesity which happens to be one of my faves, it made me think about fats.  I am allowed healthy fats on the South Beach Diet, like low-fat cheese, Smart Balance Light buttery spread, olive oil, green olives, etc.  But I am supposed to put limits on them, eating 2 Tbsp or less per day total.  Lately, I have been putting Smart Balance spread on nearly everything.  It started when our non-stick pan became exactly the opposite entity.  Everything stuck, so I put a little butter in the pan so it wouldn't stick so much.  Wow, do eggs taste even better when cooked in buttery stuff.  And, I guess I could be cooking in olive oil, but when you compare, EVOO has 120 calories per Tbsp and Smart Balance Light has only 50 calories per Tbsp, and has omega 3s, EPA & DHA.   And, guess which one tastes better?  So, I have been consuming those fats with reckless abandon.   We did get a new pan last week, so I have stopped cooking in the spread, but now I still want to put it on everything.  For instance, for dinner one night I was feeling creative so I stuffed some celery stalks with ground turkey and put some Lawry's, pepper and garlic on top, then sliced up one piece of fat free cheese to put on top.  On the side, I had a piece of garlic toast (whole wheat bread with Smart Balance on it, of course) and 6 spears of Asparagus with, you guessed it, Smart Balance and sea salt.  My husband made a comment about the cheese.  I looked at my plate with all the "extras" on it, the cheese wasn't really neccessary, and most of it slid off during the baking process, and I surely didn't need the butter on the asaragus, it is already one of my favorite veggies.  But, I was feeling like making the meal "special", and that is what I have been doing a lot of lately, especially since I've been sick and have been watching my husband eating stuff like bagels w/cream cheese and turkey sandwhiches.  I have trying to turn my on-plan food into comfort food.  That is a little absurd.  At least I am not going off the deep end, and even after eating Domino's Pizza Friday night, I was able to turn it right back around and get my eating on track, without suffering any major carb cravings.  This is why I love South Beach Diet more than any other thing I have tried.  My whole life I have loved sweets, almost to gagging proportions.  If something was 'way too sweet' for everyone else at the party, I would be the one who volunteered to bring it home.  "Too sweet" was just the right amount of sweet for me.  I would want to add sweetner to already-sweetened drinks.  One or five pieces of chocolate was never enough for me, I had to have the entire bag, even if I was feeling sick halfway through.  And it wasn't just sweets, but starchy carbs too.  Potatoes, pasta, rice, bread, you name it.  When I first fell in love with my husband, he was vegetarian, and it was not too hard for me to give up meat (which already grossed me out a little because of the inconsistency of texture/taste and connective tissues) because that, for me, meant an all-carb diet.  Before I got into making veggie stews or discovered the tastey Morning Star Farms veggie foods, I would simply eat a bowl or rice with soy sauce and pepper.  Guess what?  Sometimes that still sounds good to me!  Some years later, out of convenience and for him (being a body builder) neccessity, we began eating fish turkey and chicken, he also ate beef quite regularily.  Good thing, because that all-carb diet was ruining my health in a hurry!  South Beach Diet has two solid weeks of carb-limiting, which makes it a ketogenic diet.  That means your body burns fat instead of carbs.  Some people might think of those two weeks as being restrictive, I think of it as sugar-detox, and for me, it was completely neccessary and so very effective.  Actually, by day 3 of SBD my cravings are pretty much non-existent.  I wake up craving eggs and turkey bacon instead of doughnuts.  If someone had told me that I could live a life where I don't obsess over chocolate every single day, and would no longer buy it and stash it and eat it all in one sitting so I didn't have to share it...I would have laughed in their face.  Will power didn't work, I couldn't will myself to not want things that were sending my triglycerides sky-high, even thoughts of dying and leaving my kids without a mother wasn't enough.  SBD simply made those things disappear as if I was always this person who can walk away from chocolate and ice cream, and I can not say this more matter-of-factly, I don't even think about the stuff anymore.   I am finding, I hardly even need willpower where food is concerned, I just eat what is allowed, and when I feel like I need a cheat, I have it and move on. 
Another thing I really like about SBD, particularily SBD Supercharged, is that it is made for real life.  I don't use the recipes, because I like to keep my meals simple, since I am the one making them.  And, after considering the whole fats issue, I have decided that how I am eating now, will likely be how I will eat for most of my life.  While I realize that I will have to analyze my diet at some point, in order to keep seeing changes, right now I feel like my diet is pretty natural and easy to maintain.  Now, if only I could make working out feel just as easy and natural.   But then, I wouldn't be growing as a person if I had NO challenges, right?