How Many Restrictions Is Too Many?

It’s hard not to feel restricted when most of your meals look like this. Credit: joyosity

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I’m dealing with TMJ, which means that everything I eat is either in liquid form or soft enough that it doesn’t require proper chewing. Needless to say, this puts quite the cramp in my eating style.

On top of that, as you know, I’m a pescatarian (meaning that, aside from seafood, I don’t eat meat). While I truly don’t see that as a hurdle, still, it’s there.

Now, let’s throw another log on the fire. Because of the heavy training I’m doing for my next race (many days I’m getting in two full workouts), I’m in need of a considerable amount of food for fuel. If eating crap and not paying close attention to my nutrition was an option before, it’s really not now. Not if I want to continue feeling human.

And, one more thing: Many of my favorite bloggers and Tweeters and Instagram-ers have kicked off 2013 with some serious healthy eating. Lots of them did Whole30 (and there is a vegetarian modification), and, oh, it all makes me feel really inspired to see just how clean I can eat, at least for a set period of time. Can I really cut out all the processed foods in my diet? Like, all of them?

Now is clearly not the time to add any optional restrictions to the laundry list of things I cannot eat. This much I know. However, it made me think: How many dietary restrictions are just too many? At what point is it just craziness?

My thought is that it really all comes down to the “why.”

I mean, I can deal with the liquid diet thing because, well, I’d like to be able to eat a sandwich without having to take a muscle relaxer sometime in the fairly near future. It’s not fun (at all), but it’s out of my hands. And it’s necessary.

The pescatarian thing, well, sure, that’s a choice. But it’s a choice I made nearly a decade ago, and it’s a choice I feel good about. That’s not going anywhere.

And, as I already said, getting plenty of protein and good nutrition is non-negotiable right now. If I’m going to ask my body to do more than I’ve asked of it before, I sure as hell had better give it plenty of good fuel, don’t you think?

When it comes to why I’m interested in taking a close look at my diet and what I can revamp, well, that’s easy. It’s because a lot of people I know are doing it. It’s because I’m always interested in ways to eat more cleanly. It’s because I suspect it could help with some of the stomach issues I was dealing with earlier this year. It’s because it would challenge me to get in the kitchen and come up with some new dishes. But it’s not because I need to do it in any way whatsoever. And so, for the time being at least, it’s on the shelf. (Next to the raw, unsalted almonds that I can’t chew, of course.)

How many dietary restrictions do you deal with on a regular basis? Are there any diets (vegetarian, Paleo, etc.) that you would never try, even temporarily? —Kristen