Clean Eating?

I have a food problem. The problem is that I love food so much, so so much, that my cravings are completely in charge. I eat based on whim. So I want to eat three blocks of delicious cheese? Okay. I will. Hungry for salt and vinegar kettle chips? Better try a dozen brands until you find the best out there. No worries. But that is...terrible for you. Majorly terrible.

To add to my problem, I eat when I'm anxious. If I'm eating, I'm concentrating on chewing and deliciousness, not on how I'm about to die because some unseen force is going to destroy me and everyone I love.* That's bad, because when I'm anxious, I go from eating small meals to eating constant meals. As in, I leave the dinner table and munch on chips. Or I come home from work and eat lots of cheese. Or I impulsively buy ice cream on the drive home from work because it will make me feel better. Or I buy a lemon meringue pie and then eat nearly all of it in 48 hours. (Thank goodness Mum wanted a few pieces over that time span, because it would have been ALL of the pie if she hadn't helped.)

As always, The Awkward Yeti understands my life.

But food can't make you feel better. In fact, it usually does the opposite for me. I eat too much junk, then I feel gross. Not guilty (I never feel guilty for eating, which is good I guess?), but sick because I can't digest the same way I used to now that my gallbladder is resting in that giant medical waste dump in the sky.

Here are the food observations I've had in the last month of high-anxiety:

1. If your life sucks before you eat a bag of salt and vinegar potato chips, it will still suck when the bag of chips is gone.
2. If you are anxious, you will probably stay that way until your brain decides to be your friend again. Food will not speed this process.
3. Cheese is really awesome.
4. Good cheese is expensive.
5. Expensive cheese is not an everyday sort of treat.
6. Stop spending $17.00 at the cheese store like it's normal, Laura.
7. No, really.

I need to make more healthy decisions. Since I suck at self-control, I've decided that these decisions need to happen at work, because there, food is a choice. At home, it's a slot machine. What is there to eat? Who knows. Stick a quarter in the machine (the fridge) and pull the handle to find out! It will be different than what was in there last time you you checked. If you close the refrigerator door and open it right away, it will be different again! Nothing in the fridge is ever the same. Do not trust the fridge. The fridge lies.

So I have decided to do healthy, meatless lunches beginning Monday. I will embrace clean eating at lunch, since breakfast is already good (usually natural peanut butter on whole grain bread). Then, I will be so in love with my new clean-eating lifestyle, it will become second nature and I will become repulsed by fast food. This is totally doable, coming from nowhere without a plan. I mean, I checked out two books from the library. That's all I need, right? If I even succeed in having half of my weekly lunches and dinners healthier, I'll consider it a victory.

I'm thinking I'll be eating a lot of dry lettuce while I figure this thing out.

Seriously, though. This might become something of a challenge for me. I hate beans, so I look at a website that announces yummy meatless meals and...they are all beans. Beans everywhere. What do vegetarians eat when they aren't eating things with beans in?

If you are a vegetarian, vegan, or make lots of meatless meals please give me recipe ideas that do not include beans, lentils, chickpeas, or other hated legumes, because that isn't happening. Also any food blog recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

* Yeah, really. That's anxiety.