Detox Her Quick, She's Gonna Blow

Pin It Sugar. Caffeine. Fat. Does anybody know what these things do to a woman's body? I can tell you what they do to mine. They provide it with peace, comfort, and the ability to move through the day without wanting to kick a tree stump until my toe is bloody.

I'm just saying.

I really kind of wanted to kick that tree stump instead of writing this blog post this morning, because that's the kind of mood no sugar and no caffeine put me in after a night of insomnia and restless legs, but I opted for a yet more therapeutic means of expressing myself. I want a Coke. Or even a glass of SWEETENED ICED TEA. Instead, I am writing a blog and sticking to this super delicious mango-peach green tea, along with other assorted choices such as water with mint, lemon, and cucumber, multi-grain pita chips that are hard as the rocks that line my flower bed, veggie-soy-black bean burgers (they're actually pretty tasty), assorted fruit and leafy green vegetables, and an impossible list of "no's." NO sugar, NO caffeine, NO dairy, NO refined white flour, NO salt...and lots of others that I don't remember until I get hungry and open the refrigerator or cabinet door.

Oh, wait. I'm kind of hungry all.the.time.

It's called Clean Eating, and it kind of stinks.

To make it worse, I'm really bad at it. I cheat. For instance, I put a pat of butter on my sweet potato last night, because as I looked at it, sitting all forlorn on my plate beside my grilled pork tenderloin, I just couldn't convince myself that I could actually eat it without butter and enjoy it. So I skimmed a tiny, transparent slice of butter and settled it into the folds of potato. "It's roughly a fourth of what you normally put on there." I told myself, licking the tip of my finger. "You can be a heathen next time."

How on earth do people actually eat like this? It's so...hard!

I attempt the ascent into Clean Eating every now and then, when I am seized by the conviction that my Southern upbringing has ill-prepared me for anything remotely resembling long-term health. Southern cooking, after all, bears the hallmarks of all that is both right and wrong with the belly: sugar, butter, brown sugar, lard, cheese, flour, butter (oh...already said that, didn't I? well, some recipes call for it twice), mayonnaise, eggs, milk, bacon...just take a look at a few Paula Deen recipes if you're not convinced and you'll see what I'm talking about.

To eat cleanly is the almost comical antithesis of eating southern. For example--many of us have gardens and we eat vegetables. We usually take those vegetables and "cook them down," though, in salt, pepper, a little sugar, and...wait for it...butter until they're nice and soft. Examples: butter beans (limas), squash, stewed tomatoes, pole beans, and virtually every type of the ubiquitous vegetable casserole known to man. So, where eating cleanly is concerned...there's a learning curve that goes along with that whole sugar/caffeine/bad junk detox process.

I'm hoping that by next week I'll be sans headaches and random spasms brought on my Coca-Cola and sweet tea cravings. In the meantime, I'm just going to go eat another stinking banana, because I am positive that that will make everything much, much better.