Skinny Bitch (11 page)

When you’ve got one week under your belt, feel great about what you’ve accomplished. Then, immediately, while continuing to steer clear of the item you banished in week one, start week two by ridding something else from your diet. Every week, until you’ve completely cleansed your life of poison and toxins, eliminate one more thing. Apply the same mindset, dedication, technique, and excitement you used in week one. Resign yourself to purifying your thoughts, body, and kitchen of this crappy vice item; realize you’ve just made your life better by not letting this vice item infect you anymore; gross yourself out thinking about what exactly it is and the effects it has on your body; think of how bad it makes you feel when you partake in it; and finally, remember that if you did
choose
to eat/smoke/drink it, it wouldn’t make you happy or fulfilled.

Never feel like or say you are “giving up” your favorite foods.

Those words have a negative connotation, like you are sacrificing something. You’re not
giving up
anything. You are simply empowered now and able to make educated, controlled choices about what you will and won’t put into your body, your temple. Be grateful that you now know the truth about the foods you used to poison yourself with. Let all you think and speak of regarding this life change be positive. People who have positive attitudes are much more successful than those who don’t. Be excited about feeling clean, pure, healthy, energized, happy, and skinny. Enjoy every second of this metamor-phosis, knowing the journey is as important as the end result.

Confucius never said, “A hungry woman is like a tornado of red ants and wildebeasts,” but he should have. Because it’s true. A hungry woman is a crazy woman, who will destroy everything in her path to be rid of the hunger. So you must always be prepared with healthy food on hand. Otherwise, seriously, you will fall off the wagon almost immediately. Your kitchen should be stocked at all times with the appropriate foods. Pack your lunch and a snack for school or work. Keep an emergency stash in your car, at your desk, and in your purse. Never, ever get caught with your pants down. Unfortunately, depending on where you live, restaurants may not be a safe place for the first month. The menu might not have any vegan or even vegetarian options, and it is easy to be hyp-notized by the seductive smells of cooking. This doesn’t mean you can’t eat out ever again as long as you live. Just for thirty days.

(Unless there are good veggie-friendly restaurants in your neigh-borhood.) You can’t expect to change your life without a few minor adjustments. Your only priority for thirty days is to adhere to the regimen you’re creating. Without straying. After you achieve thirty days of pure eating, you’ll feel confident you have what it takes to get the job done. “I just survived thirty days. I’m so proud of myself. This is the healthiest I’ve ever been in my whole life. If I
want
to, I can eat an old vice item. But why would I? I just made it thirty consecutive days. I’m going to keep going.” If you test yourself before thirty days, you are setting yourself up for failure. Be patient and strong.

When you reach the thirty-day milestone, don’t run out and gorge yourself on crap. In fact, just keep doing what you’ve been doing. See and feel all the positive changes in your body, energy level, and self-esteem. Alcohol, cigarettes, coffee, and food are all addictive, physically and psychologically. Chances are, even after the thirty days, if you indulge in a vice item, you might go off the deep end. It is well known in Alcoholics Anonymous that you’re only “one drink away from your next drunk.” This means we think we can control our addictions. “I’ll just have one drink. I’ll just have pizza this one time. I’ll just eat half a piece of cake.” The truth of the matter is that we are powerless over our addictions. We don’t want to make you feel like you can never eat your favorite foods ever again. We just want to impress upon you that it is very easy to obliterate all your progress with one bite, sip, or puff.

Anyway, after one month of pure living, if you did eat the food you’ve been fantasizing about, you probably wouldn’t even enjoy it.

Really. You’d see that your brain has been tricking you and your taste buds all along. Now that your taste buds have healed and become more sensitized and your brain knows the truth, those old chemical, sugary, artificial, dead, rotting foods will taste “off” or “less than” somehow.

If you do decide to partake in a vice item after thirty days, it cannot be out of weakness or for lack of preparation. You should never be somewhere and just say, “Fuck it.” It should be a calculated, scheduled, premeditated choice. The portion should be decided on beforehand, should be smaller than you would normally have had, and served on a plate. (The package should be put away before you start eating.) Sit down at a table. Eat very slowly. Try not to finish the whole thing. Do not have another serving. Take note of how you feel while you’re eating it, immediately after, an hour later, in bed that night, and the next day. Chances are, because your body is now pure, the vice item will make you feel a little nauseous, or headache-y, at the very least. And it most certainly won’t taste as good as you imagine it will. Do not discount these negative feelings.

They are your new, healthy, clean, pure organs speaking to you.

Enough of all this melodrama. It’s not like you’re gonna be hungry and cranky for all of eternity. We know that dieters always “crash” when their favorite foods become forbidden. So we devised the Skinny Bitch plan to allow for cookies, cakes, chocolate, burgers, ice cream, etc. They just aren’t the same ones you’re used to.

You’re not giving up anything; you’re just trading in all your old, gross food. Big deal. The new stuff is just as good. So don’t kid yourself with the old “I had a craving” routine. Nobody’s buying it.

The only thing more annoying than the “Where do you get your protein?” question is the “My body is craving meat, I must need iron” comment. Most cravings are not reliable indicators of what your body needs. Smokers crave cigarettes, alcoholics crave alcohol, drug addicts crave drugs, and junk food eaters crave junk. If you eat shit for a few days, and you begin to crave a salad or a piece of fruit, that’s a craving you can trust. Otherwise, it’s just your addiction talking. Bitch-slap it, and get a hold of yourself. But feel free to try and understand your addiction first.

In order for us to survive, our brains came equipped with dopamine, a pleasure-producing chemical. Dopamine is released during sex (or even just while flirting), so that we procreate and the human race won’t die out. And food stimulates dopamine release so that we’ll remember to eat and nourish our bodies. Basically, anything the brain perceives to be as enjoyable will cause dopamine to lock onto brain cells and build a permanent memory trace of where pleasure comes from. Even though this evolved out of the need for survival, sometimes this can be a bad thing. Heroin, cocaine, alcohol, and nicotine all trigger the brain’s pleasure circuitry. And not surprisingly, chocolate, sugar, and cheese also affect this same part of the brain. So you see, we can be
physiologically
addicted to food. Any food can trigger the brain’s pleasure center. Some of us are fortunate enough to experience dopamine ecstasy while eating broccoli, and we actually crave this healthy food. But the types of food and the degree of pleasure they bring will differ from one person to the next.

The trick is resetting our memory traces to feel pleasure from healthy food, and no pleasure from junk food.202

Easier said than done. Especially for people who are addicted to cigarettes, alcohol, or drugs, or are overweight. Studies have shown that these people have fewer receptors for dopamine than other people. For them, the pleasure-giving chemical has fewer places to attach to brain cells, making it difficult for them to experience pleasurable feelings. So, because they aren’t getting that “pleasure rush,” they tend to smoke, drink, use drugs, gamble, or overeat.

Now don’t automatically diagnose yourself as one these people and assume you’ll never get healthy. We are not at the mercy of our bodies. We are the commanders of our bodies.203

Unless we eat cheese. Cheese will rule our lives and fatten our asses if we don’t kick the addiction. Cow’s milk actually has traces of morphine in it! And for once, we can’t blame factory farming.

Morphine, along with codeine and other opiates, are naturally produced in cows’ livers and end up in their milk. But that’s not all. All milk, whether from a cow or a human, contains
casein,
a protein that breaks apart during digestion and releases a whole slew of opiates.

All these “feel good” chemicals exist so that newborns will nurse and thrive, and to ensure a bond between mothers and their young.204

Are you starting to get the picture? When a woman breastfeeds, her milk has an almost drug-like effect on the baby. The baby is totally hooked. He’ll cry, not because he’s hungry, but because he needs “a fix” of that pleasurable feeling produced by the opiates.

Nature has guaranteed that our babies will nurse and grow. And when they reach a certain age, we wean them, and stop giving them these “drugs.” And they’re fine. But then we start them on cows’ milk and an addiction is born.

All dairy products contain casein, but cheese has the highest concentration. In fact, cheese contains far more casein than is naturally found in cows’ milk. It also has phenylethylamine (PEA), an amphetamine-like chemical. So when we kid around and say, “I am addicted to cheese,” it’s not a joke—it’s true. We are chemically addicted to cheese.205

Casein even finds its way into soy cheese. Whether manufacturers use it to up the protein content, to aide in melting, or because they know of its addictive quality, casein still has the same effect. So if you see casein on the list of ingredients, run! (Follow Your Heart’s Vegan Gourmet cheeses are casein-free and totally vegan, so enjoy.)

The following hormones and natural chemicals have all been identified in cows’ milk: prolactin, somatostatin, melatonin, oxy-tocin, growth hormone, leuteinizing hormone-releasing hormone, thyrotropin-releasing hormone, thyroid-stimulating hormone, vasoactive intestinal peptide, calcitonin, parathyroid hormone, cor-ticosteroids, estrogens, progesterone, insulin, epidermal growth factor, insulin-like growth factor, erythropoietin, bombesin, neu-rotensin, motilin, and cholecystokinin.206 If you think your will is strong enough to conquer all those mother-fuckers, you’re on drugs! Dairy is fattening,207 and if you eat it, you’ll never get skinny.

You cannot control your addiction. You can’t “just have one slice of pizza,” or “only have cheese at parties.” You’re only one piece-of-cheese away from a total relapse. Eat the substitutes; they’ll get you through.

Thankfully, our bodies produce a few different chemical substances that help tame our appetites. One such hormone, leptin, is made by our fat cells. When fat cells in our bodies get adequate nourishment, they release leptin into the blood for two purposes.

The first task at hand is alerting the brain to diminish the appetite.

Next, our metabolism gets boosted, encouraging the body’s cells to burn calories more quickly. Pretty cool, huh? Until we start “diet-ing.” Typical low-calorie diets confuse the body into thinking it’s starving. So our fat cells slow down their leptin production, to help
increase
our appetites. Release the hounds! Now, we feel like we’re starving! So we trash our diets and binge like rabid beasts. But diets high in fat don’t fare any better. Fatty diets (think animal products) also lower leptin levels. You know where this is headed: Low-fat, plant-based diets actually boost leptin levels, helping each molecule of leptin to work more effectively. So help yourself succeed. Eating healthy foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and beans will help curb your appetite and stimulate your metabolism.208

But when we have PMS, all bets are off. There’s no telling when we’ll cry, whom we’ll kill, or what we’ll eat. One culprit of mood swings and cravings is estrogen. Every month, our bodies produce extra estrogen in case of pregnancy. When we don’t become preg-gers, estrogen levels plunge, triggering bloating, irritability, and cravings. The trick to avoiding these heinous feelings is maintaining balanced estrogen levels throughout the month. Like everything else, this can be done through diet. Fatty foods increase estrogen levels, while fibrous foods help reduce estrogen production. The
Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology
conducted a study exploring the effects of diet on menstrual symptoms. Women who eliminated animal fats from their diets experienced dramatic decreases of bloating and cravings. On average, menstrual cramps were reduced from four days to about two and a half days.209 Less cramps, cravings, and bloating! Those reasons alone are enough to swear off animal products.

Even if you do have some serious PMS cravings, the good thing about the Skinny Bitch regimen is that there are plenty of naughty-tasting foods that you don’t need to feel bad about. So eat all day long. As long as everything you put in your mouth meets Skinny Bitch approval, it’s fine. Just be sure that when you’re full, you
stop
eating
. We know this is a foreign concept, but we’re hoping it’ll catch on. Imagine the actual size of your stomach (about the size of a one-quart container) or imagine what size you want it to be.

There is no need to cram it full and stretch the shit out of it three times a day, every day, for your entire life. Look at the portion you put on your plate. Do you think it will fit in your stomach nicely, or that you’ll need to force it in? Pare down.

Just because you’re “starving,” you don’t need to eat faster.

When you’re done eating, if you have the hiccups, indigestion, a stomachache, or you’re burping and farting, that means you’re eating too fast and gulping down air. Slow down. Breathe evenly.

Conversely, make sure you aren’t holding your breath while you speed-eat. It takes time for your brain to get the message that your stomach is full. The slower you eat, the less likely you are to overeat. Also, be sure to chew your food purposefully and slowly.