No Fun February

Welcome to Free February!  Because it is the shortest day of the month and so many people have slowly relinquished their New Years resolutions by now, February seems like a good time to buckle down and focus on reinforcing healthy habits.  For probably the first time, my brother-in-law has inspired me.  Every February, he eschews alcohol, meat, and other vices, in order to correct the excesses of the holiday season.  I don't feel like I really have any excesses to compensate for, but I do like the idea of challenging myself for a discrete time period.  A blog I used to read did something similar, calling the experience "No Fun February."  I'd like to think of these forthcoming 28 days as something other than "no fun."  That's hardly inspiring or optimistic, and I'm framing this experiment as a challenge feel better, lighter, and maybe even richer.

Because we all know that making your intentions public is a great way to ensure accountability, I hereby endeavor to free myself from a reliance on the following for the next 28 days:

• alcohol
• white bread, pasta, and crackers
• Amazon

OK, so Amazon isn't really a bad food habit, but it's kind of scary how easy it is to one-click your way to a big credit card bill while justifying it as "education" or "research." As to the other "free-froms," I'm thinking of February as being a mini cleanse and coining my own term:  Free February. 

There is a place in a balanced diet for wine, beer, and cocktails, but I'm finally realizing that I just don't need the extra calories.  I'm going to try to follow my own advice to my patients to eat my calories rather than drink them.  A five-ounce glass of wine has 125 calories, but I think my glass holds more than 5 ounces.  ;-) A four-ounce cocktail, such as a cosmo, has 213 calories.  My unwinding-after-work drink of choice, a manhattan, is a little bit better at 130 calories, but it's usually followed by a glass of wine or beer with dinner.  This after-work or dinner drink has become a part of my daily dinner/evening routine.  It probably isn't all that good for me, so I want to see if I can do without it and feel better.

My favorite cocktail, the Manhattan.  I'll miss you!

Bread, pasta, and crackers are not in and of themselves bad for you, but my family has been eating a lot of cheese with that bread, pasta, and crackers.   These simple starches are great sources of energy to fuel my long runs, but they offer little else nutritionally besides calories.

I also suspect that I might have a bit of a gluten intolerance.  Please don't think that I'm jumping on the gluten-free bandwagon, but I want to do an experiment whereby I eliminate gluten as much as possible from my diet to see if it makes my tummy feel better.  As any student of the scientific method knows, one cannot manipulate more than one variable if one wants to determine an effect.  That's why I'm only going gluten-free and not also dairy- or casein-free, meat-free, or--horrors!--caffeine-free this moth, too.

A pediatrician I used to work with believes that it takes four months to clear the gluten antibodies from the body.  Celiac disease support group sites report instant relief to 3-4 weeks to feel better.  I'm going to try for the four weeks of February to see if it changes anything.  Do you know how prevalent gluten is?  I'll devote an entire post to the challenges of gluten-free eating later.      

I've recruited at least one friend to join me in freeing ourselves from greediness.  We run together, so we'll be able to check in and commiserate over the lack of wine in our lives for a measly month.  Earlier this week, as we enjoyed bread, triple cream cheese, and a bottle of wine, then rehashed the horror that was our half marathon last Sunday, she told me she was actually looking forward to Free February.  Do you want to join us in Free February?  What do you think you could do without for four weeks?