Food Related Tension

As I have been reading and learning about food, my tension level about my options and the things my family consumes has grown. It shrunk a bit as I learned how to find, create, and incorporate better choices into our pantry and diet. But now that I am pregnant, the tension has sprung up huge!

I want to eat the best diet for my growing baby (now the size of a grape!). To me, this means whole fresh foods and avoiding white flour, hydrogenated fats, and refined sugar as much as possible.

The tension is particularly evident when I get together with friends. I haven't told them I am pregnant yet, and I don't want to lie. So, I feel compelled/drawn to partake in their yummy but white flour and sugar laden offerings.

Today I went out for breakfast with some ladies from our expat group. I ordered two poached eggs with fruit on the side. My eggs took so long to arrive! Everyone else had already eaten and I was verrry hungry. Well the eggs came on some white-flour-and-sugar biscuits, with some suspiciously uniform looking hash browned potatoes. I was so hungry that I ate it all, but felt tense the whole time. And then they told the servers that it was my birthday (my third and fourth songs of the day!) and I got a piece of cake. How could I turn it down? More white flour and sugar down the hatch.

I suppose I could just stand firm in a guilt-free no, but there is something intrinsically pleasurable about eating together that goes beyond nutrition. I don't want to step on that either. Hence the tension.

That said, overall I am feeling grreat about my diet. And interested to note that as I have cut out so many of the goodies I used to enjoy, when I do partake I really don't enjoy them the way I used to. I can pick out the hydrogenated oils, and after I have too much sugar my stomach lets me know it wasn't happy about it.