Hi, everybody. My name is Laurie Ruettimann. I am forty-two years old, five feet tall, and I weigh 130 pounds. My BMI is 25.4, which makes me “overweight.”
Thankfully, BMI has always been bullshit. I’m sexy AF, climb skyscrapers that tower over America’s largest cities, and get drunk at business events and still wake up early to run. I do pilates, yoga, and I have another marathon in 20 weeks. I don’t have time for someone to tell me that I’m too fat.
But I am currently in the market for a new way of eating. Turns out, I can’t digest foods high in FODMAPs. Also, long-time readers know that I have allergies to essential foods that make it tough to eat like an average person. White bread and sugar? Yes. Please. But fruits and vegetables will kill me. So will fish, nuts and tofu.
If you overlay my vegetarianism on top of this shitshow of a diet, you get a Venn Diagram that resembles the diet of a freshman in college. That’s why I’m back on the market for a new approach to food.
My pilates and yoga instructor is on the Keto plan. She likes it. I’ve also researched the anti-inflammatory diet and cooked a few meals from a delicious cookbook. There’s so my pseudoscience and garbage advice in the market. Should I start intermittent fasting? Count my macronutrients? Become a Breatharian? Unless I eat meat, I have no idea how I’m going to make it over the finish line of my marathon.
So I’m going to start eating meat, again. At least for the next twenty weeks. I won’t eat pork, I can’t wrap my mind around eating a chicken, and I tried to eat a cheeseburger and threw it up. Maybe I’ll eat whale. TBD.
But here’s what I do know: I can’t digest any of the protein powders on the market, and I’m sick of feeling sick by my disordered diet. It totally sucks that my values are incongruent with my behaviors. No animal should have to die for my body, but until someone invents a fuel-rich version of soylent green, I need to make some changes in my life.
Can’t wait to try torture-chicken and torture-beef from China. Mmmmmmmm. Wish me luck.
Diet changes are always tough. You’ll find what works for you. Stick with it! ????
It might be worth it to find a good Registered Dietitian who can work with your dietary needs and your lifestyle to help you find a plan that will nourish you during times you’re training and times you’re not training. S/he could also be helpful in finding ways for you to have meat that addresses your desire for compassion (and to not have antibiotics and crap added).
I’ve thought McKel Hill would be interesting to work with nutritionstripped.com/about/ when I’m ready to try transitioning to a vegan diet (it took me several tries to transition to vegetarian before my body decided it would align with my values).
I’m rooting for you!
I get the absence of torture thing. Is it possible for you to get meat from a local butcher that processes (ugh, but that’s what it’s called around here) truly local non-feedlot, from-frolic-in-the-pasture-to-your-grateful-plate meat? I write this from the heart of Amish country, so I am likely skewed in perspective. Are there 4-H ers or FFA students who have named their steers after their girlfriend/boyfriend (that’s a thing that farm kids did when I was a kid) and butchered them subsequently with love and reverence, and from whom you could buy a side of beef and put it in your freezer? That’s actually a thing you can do.