About a month ago, my wife convinced me that we needed to go on a diet. In part to lose weight, but also to adjust our eating habits away from processed foods and, really, all the yummy stuff. Sadly, as we age, I can tell we need to do better with taking care of ourselves whether I want to or not.
So, we started the Whole 30 diet. If you’re unaware, the idea is to only eat whole foods, especially fruits, vegetables, and meat. This means no grains, no dairy, and most importantly, no refined sugars. We went so far as to buy “no sugar added” ketchup. We bought compliant salad dressings. We ate almond flour crackers. I even gave up my near daily chocolate and ice cream, which is as close as one can get to a starvation diet as far as I’m concerned. 😉
Now, to be clear, we’ve done our fair share of diets in the past, ranging from vegan to a very short stint on a raw diet (that was over the top), but I rarely ever stuck with any of them for longer than a week. They were just too much. But this one didn’t seem too bad at first. We had a plan…I mean, my wife had a plan.
And I tried. I really did. For nearly ten days I stuck with the diet, but as time went on I sneaked more chocolates and eventually reverted back to my usual eating habits about a week ago. My diet isn’t horrible, but it’s certainly not Whole 30 compliant. I just don’t see why I can’t eat regular ketchup. Or why the miniscule amount of sugar in a seasoning we already have, like taco seasoning, is bad. That just doesn’t compute.
But this post isn’t about my complaints with Whole 30 compliance or even diets in general…it’s about how such a massive change in eating habits has opened my eyes again to just how difficult a drastic change in the food you eat can become truly problematic from a survival perspective.
What kind of problems, you ask? Well, I started to get a constant headache at some point. My wife says it was sugar detox, which should’ve gone away, but I wasn’t taking any chances, hence, the sneaking of chocolates. There are a multitude of other troubles, such as bowel issues, a lack of nutrition over time, and appetite fatigue. Interestingly, although I wasn’t having appetite fatigue–a general lack of desire to eat–I was getting quite bored of eating the same foods day in and day out, and I was only truly compliant for less than two weeks. Just imagine how bored I would’ve been after months of eating the same foods!
Granted, I do my best to stockpile a wide range of foods, including bulk foods, a wide array of canned goods, including soups and meals, and freeze-dried foods, particularly, fruits and vegetables. My guess is that, if push comes to shove, we’d be okay for a while since we have a variety of foods to choose from, including a multitude of snack foods, but even these food storage foods won’t be available forever.
Over the past month, it did occur to me what life might be like if/when our food storage dwindled down to subsistence levels, possibly eating only rice and beans (or something similar) for weeks on end. Right now, I’m split on the topic. Part of me believes that if all I have to eat is rice and beans, then I’ll be happy to have it. But a growing part of me worries that this isn’t true. And, while I pride myself on being the only one in the family to eat leftovers until I’m blue in the face, I wonder just how capable even I am of staying on a diet that’s so drastically different from what I’m accustomed to. And that’s to say nothing of how my family might fare.
Generally speaking, we go to Costco once a month to stock up on fruits, dairy, meat, dog food, and the like. I’m allowed one trip, so whatever I can fit in a basket is what I get. 🙂 Interestingly, I’ve noticed just how much more food costs these days. Anecdotally, only a year or two ago, I used to bring home an overflowing shopping cart for roughly $400. These days, the shopping cart is barely full and I’m spending roughly $500. We also go to the local grocery store for odds and ends once a week. My in-laws, who live with us, also go grocery shopping regularly. The fact is that we bring home a lot of food on a regular basis, and that’s all supplemented by our vegetable garden, which is now done for the season.
The question, therefore, is what happens if this all stops? I guess it would depend on the situation, but I can foresee us adjusting our eating habits rather quickly. We would want to take stock of what we actually have, and begin to incorporate the very foods (e.g., rice, beans, oats, etc.) that Whole 30 suggests would should avoid. Certain foods, like milk, orange juice, and yogurt that we consume regularly will quickly disappear. (We do have quite a bit of powdered milk to rely upon but it’s just not the same.) The same would be true for many snack foods, like crackers and whatnot. My guess is that we will be able to keep our bellies fully, but our tastebuds will be consistently disappointed given far fewer snacks.
Perhaps only time will tell. I hope and pray that we never get to such a point in our lives, both on a personal level and a societal one, but a nagging feeling keeps poking at my belly. And that feeling keeps urging me on to prepare for harder times. I hope you have a similar nagging feeling poking at you…and your spouse doesn’t count.
What I can say is this: prepare now while you have the chance because tomorrow could be one day too late.
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