Sweet fancy Moses, it smells good in here (or, How I Became A Healthy(er) Eater)

My apartment smells delicious right now - if you like curry. I'm making curried lentils and vegetables, and the aroma wafting through my living room smells... well, if I walked into a restaurant and it smelled like this? I would eat at that restaurant.

It's just lentils, carrot, onion, celery, curry powder, ginger and garlic, brought to a boil and simmered for a while. I also made a yogurt, tomato and cilantro mixture to eat with it.

It's amazing to look back a few months at how I was eating before Lent kicked off this "eat less crap" phase. It was pretty common for dinner to be half a box of Cheez-Its, along with part of a dark chocolate candy bar (antioxidants!) and a glass or two of wine (heart healthy!) along the way. I don't think it's a coincidence I also sat around and watched a LOT of tv.

(Side note: the lentils taste as good as they smell.)

Anyway. Lent rolled around and I made the same sacrifice I do every year - no more fried food, no more foods made with processed sugar, no more fast food or anything grease-laden. Blah blah samecakes. But then the damndest thing happened:

I did it.

I started grilling fish and chicken. I steamed a lot of vegetables. I made the healthy choices when eating out, and ate smaller portions. There's a gallon of ice cream in my freezer that I bought on February 2nd. It's still unopened. The woman who could mainline a bag of chocolate chips like sweet Colombian nose candy was suddenly eating edamame for a guilty late night snack.

WTF?

So what did I do differently this time? I'm still not sure. But there are a few factors...

1. I started running. Three or four times a week, just for 30 minutes a night. I decided to do a 5K, and then I bought some sweet-ass running shoes.

2. I started reading. Specifically, I started reading Michael Pollan's
In Defense of Food.

3. I started feeling better.

All three of these small things made me want to keep going. What I ate started to matter more, not in a self-righteous earth-mother way, but just out of common sense. I honestly couldn't think of a reason I wouldn't keep doing this.

So Lent is over, and here I am with my curried lentils and vegetables, drinking water, happy as can be. I'll probably start eating less, um, healthy foods once in a while - I saw a girl with McDonald's french fries in the Atlanta airport last night and I almost tackled her to steal them - but that's definitely the exception now.

So.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Who knew?