Monday, January 4, 2010

Nixing the Nuts?

I'm dejected as I admit this, but nuts are a huge trigger food for me. I think I need to cut them out of my diet, at least for a little while.

I LOVE nuts. I'm particularly partial to pistachios, raw cashews, and pecans. Since surgery, I've gravitated primarily toward pistachios because they are less calorie- and fat-concentrated than the other nuts - 10 pistachios have about 40 calories and 1 gram of fat, while I can eat only 4 pecan halves or about 5 cashews for the same number of calories and even more fat. The lower fat conentration in pistachios has been more "pouch-friendly" as well; almonds, cashews, and pecans have occasionally caused minor stomach pain, while I rarely get this kind of reaction from eating pistachios.

However, I recently bought pistachios as an experiment to see if I had any self-control around them. The results are overwhelmingly negative.

One day last week, I ate 70 pistachios at one sitting. That's nearly 300 calories and over 20 grams of fat! Yesterday, I had 75 pistachios, including 60 at one sitting.

I've been binge-eating nuts for years. During my first go-round on the Atkins Diet in high school, I carried a huge can of cashews around in my bookbag and nibbled on them all day long. My grandparents are also lifelong nut fiends. My late grandfather would purchase Brazil nuts (which, in his typically un-PC fashion, he referred to as "n----- toes") for my sister and I as holiday gifts. I can hear his voice now, "Monic-O! I went down yonda and got ya some n----- toes!" I would grab a nutcracker and quickly dispatch of them, not to mention a massive amount of pecans and peanuts.

So anyway, my nut-love makes me nervous. Nuts are WLS-friendly, but they may not be Monica-friendly. I'm still trying to decide whether I'm going to set a firm anti-nut rule or take a more moderate approach. I should definitely avoid buying another bag of nuts, but I'm not sure whether I need to take a more extreme approach by cutting them out completely.

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