before music

I’ve been eating “healthy” lately, and by that I mean I haven’t gone to McDonald’s in over a week. I’ve been cooking my own food and generally trying to avoid ridiculously fatty things. Well, okay, that’s not true, I made a huge pot of mabodofu last night (and it was AWESOME) but at least I’m trying to get more fiber and vegetables in my diet.

I’m currently dealing with these challenges:

1. Cooking takes up a ridiculous portion of my evenings. From start to finish, it takes about two hours to cook the food, eat it, and then wash all the dishes. Compare that to before, when I would just go to the convenience store and buy a bento: I eat it in five minutes and then throw away the package. I know, I know, that’s not the point, but seriously, two hours? I suck at this.
2. I always feel unsatisfied. Always. I can make a huge salad and stew and rice and EVERYTHING, and I’ll feel ridiculously stuffed afterwards, but I still have that gnawing feeling in the back of my brain that just wants to scarf down chocolate, or a hamburger, or just anything that is terrible and unhealthy. I know that’s kind of the point of dieting, but man, bullying my body into behaving kind of sucks.
3. Because of my work schedule, I wake up kind of late (around 11) and go to work by 12. My lunch hours are totally erratic, which means that depending on what time I ate breakfast, my whole day’s food planning is spoiled. For example, if my lunch hour is at 1pm (only one hour after I started working) then I’m still full from breakfast, and don’t feel like eating… except that after that, I don’t have any breaks until I get home at about 9:30pm. So sometimes I anticipate having those early lunch breaks, and wake up earlier to have lunch at, say, 9am… only to go to work and find out that my lunch break actually isn’t until 6pm. I always feel like I’m starving, and from what I’ve read, that starving feeling means I’m killing my metabolism and actually negating the purpose of dieting. So, awesome.

I’ve been practicing cooking and multitasking, so I figure I can fix #1 pretty soon. And once my term at Aeon ends in a couple of weeks, I won’t have to deal with #3 anymore either (knock on wood). As for #2, well, that’s just self-discipline, something which I sorely lack. I’ll be 24 years old this year, so now’s as good a time as any to start learning.

But since I have a bad habit of focusing on the negative, here’s what’s great about cooking:

1. Even if what I cook isn’t actually healthy, it certainly feels that way. For example, a pot of mabodofu with rice is probably not much better than a McDonald’s hamburger in terms of fat, oil, calories, and carbs, but just the fact that I cooked it and made the effort gives me such a positive feeling about what I’m doing. And since it’s not like I make mabodofu every night, what I cook actually is healthier than my normal diet.
2. It’s way, way cheaper to cook than it is to make a bento. This sounds totally naive and stupid, but in the beginning it shocked me just how cheap it is to buy ingredients compared to buying prepared food. I used to spend over 1000 yen a day on average to buy my three meals. Now, I can buy ingredients for food that will last me the entire week for just 1000 yen. That, to me, is absolutely crazy. And awesome. Crazy awesome.
3. As I mentioned earlier, just the idea of cooking my own food makes me feel like I’m eating healthier. And thusly, just the idea of eating healthier has inspired me to exercise consistently, or as consistently as I can with my crazy eikaiwa schedule. I don’t use escalators anymore, and aside from my apartment, I don’t use elevators. And the only reason why I use the elevator at my apartment is because the stairs are FREEZING. In the spring, I’m sure I can bully myself into taking the stairs anywhere. I still don’t feel fit, but I’m at least motivated to get there. And if my Wii Fit is to be believed, I’m the lightest I’ve been since high school.
4. Before when I used to buy bento boxes for lunch, it would take me at least fifteen minutes or so to walk to the store, buy it, and come back. The store was close, sure, and fifteen minutes isn’t long at all, which is why I did that for so long. Then there was another ten or fifteen minutes or so to actually eat the food, and that meant by the time I was done, half my break was over. But now that I cook my own food and store the leftovers in little Tupperware containers in my fridge, it takes ten seconds to put the containers in a paper bag and bring them to work, and zero effort and time to start eating once my lunch break begins. That means that it takes about ten minutes total to open my bag, eat the food, and put it all away again. That leaves me with fifty glorious minutes to go window shopping, study, walk around, basically do whatever. It feels like I have an hour break, which is what it is, rather than half an hour where I feel obligated to just hang around the office because there isn’t enough time to do anything else.
5. I can cook for my boyfriend. I CAN COOK FOR MY BOYFRIEND. How awesome is that? Sure, I’m still cooking basic stuff like French toast and stew, and my cooking level is nowhere near his, but it’s an AWESOME feeling to be able to cook for someone else. It’s my goal to be able to prepare a nice dinner and invite my friends over. That would be so lovely.

I love this feeling. I can’t believe I’d been missing out on it my entire life.