Round

I am glad the end of the month of January has come, I always like the beginning of a new month, it feels like a new opportunity.

In February I’m going to do some of the thinking involved in the WHYs of losing weight - what are my motivations, goals, and the HOWs - what I’m willing to do in the context of low-stress weight loss.

Stress on the job front is increasing, I’m not going to also increase it with my weight. My husband is having surgery towards the end of February, that will also add to general stress.

What I am clear on is that just being at this weight is stressful to me. This is not a weight at which I can hover without guilt and self-reproach.

I was diagnosed yesterday with my first-ever urinary track infection (UTI). Not fun. I’ve been having symptoms off and on for over a week, but steadily for the past 4 days and yesterday afternoon they got worse so I finally caved in and saw the doctor. For those of you who’ve had UTIs, you know this was not a smart idea. For those like me who haven’t had the pleasure, DON’T WAIT to see the doctor when you have symptoms. If I’d gotten treated last Monday, I’d have taken 1-3 days of antibiotics. Because I waited, the infection is now also up in my kidney (not just in the bladder) and I need 10 days treatment and a second urine test after the treatment to make sure it’s gone… Dumb, and I know better. (My weak excuse : after the first symptoms I started drinking more water and some cranberry juice and the symptoms got much better for several days. As soon as the extra liquids & cranberry stopped, it was back with a vengeance…) It turns out your body almost never can beat a UTI on it’s own, you almost always need antibiotics.

I’m now on antibiotics and under treatment, but I’m going to chalk up the past few days of feeling yucky and lethargic to that…
Yesterday evening I was extra hungry (light lunch) and ate my way through 4 snacks in a row. Luckily when dinnertime rolled around I realized I wasn’t hungry so I didn’t eat. I think I usually would have just felt guilty about the excessive snacks and gone ahead and eaten dinner anyway. That’s one good thing I’ve learned from Dr Hope - eat when you’re hungry, and what you’re hungry for. I’d had 2 pieces of toast, a slice of cheese, a yogurt and about 1/2 cup of the leftover pear-chocolate crumble. It was the cheese that satisfied in the end (and the fact that I physically dragged myself out of the kitchen!).

I have been slacking off.

It all starts where it always does - I’ve not been keeping my food diary for the past 8 days. I am such a bad girl. It’s always fine for about a week, and then…. one little bite becomes two. No accountability, no visibility.

Slowly the old habits reassert themselves.

Today I noticed that I ate all of every meal. I haven’t done that in several weeks. It comes on so slowly. If I mess up one meal I generally get back on it for the next. But this weekend I paid less attention, and then today, none at all.

I don’t see what choice I have other than to get more serious with myself. There is “no stress weight loss” and then there is “no weight loss at all”. I still think I can do it low stress, but I need to do it with a little bit more attention. Last September I had come up with a scoring system for each day that was a kind of checklist. I think I’m going to dig that out and re-work it for my current plans, and commit to tracking it for the month of February.

On the menu front, I ate a serving of the lentil soup for lunch, and made the celery root puree for dinner (with roast beef, as planned). I was the only one to like the celery root, as it turns out. My DH’s plans to travel have been put off for a few days, so a week of me and veggies will be less do-able but we’ll see where it takes me. I also made a pear and chocolate crumble for dessert. We had pears starting to get too old, and my DH found the recipe when flipping through one of my new cooking magazines, so…. Definitely not diet. It was too sweet, not really worth the calories or the trouble. I like pears natural better.

I never plan menus, but I’d like to try. I like the idea of having a general idea of what we’re going to eat to help avoid the call to the pizza or sushi delivery guy. I also like the idea of double-checking that I’ve got the key ingredients for something I want to make, as often when that’s not the case I give up on making dinner that evening. My DH is good at improvising. I am not. But I don’t want rigidity. I don’t want to know on Sunday what I’m going to be eating at 12:41 on Friday. My life is scheduled enough, thank you very much, I want room to be spontaneous and flexible. But thinking though what I can make for a week - i.e. menu planning - doesn’t necessarily mean assigning everything a firm date, so I’m going to give it a try.

I figured this week is a good one to take a first step, as my DH leaves for a work trip on Wednesday, so for most of the time I’ll be single, therefore able to plan meals to 100% my tastes. Since I don’t feel the need for meat at every meal, and I don’t mind eating leftovers, that makes things much easier than in our life together.

I was so happy to get to the market today - having been away for the weekend we were pretty low on all things fresh, but now I’m stocked up. I have celery root, cabbage, carrots, jerusalem artichokes, onions, beets, spaghetti squash, zucchini, apples, pears, grapes, oranges and clementines. And eggs, yogurt, cheese and a roast beef that will be dinner on Monday (and some leftovers too).

Here are some of what I can make :

• Jerusalem artichoke soup (I’ve never actually cooked them, but I have a few recipes. Maybe I’ll do something other than soup…)
• Cabbage (probably plain steamed, I love it that way, and no one to complain about the smell)
• French onion soup
• Spaghetti squash with tomato sauce
• Leftover lentil soup (in fridge - must eat this in first half of the week)
• Celery root puree (this is a typical French dish - I’ve never made it, but I’ve eaten it several times & liked it. One of my coworkers explained how to make it.)
• Maybe a good stir-fry. Been ages since I’ve had one… I could use carrots, onion, some of the cabbage, zucchini… Mmmm
• I think I’ll make some applesauce - we have a lot of old wrinkly apples.
• Oatmeal. I’ve been eating muesli for weeks, I’d like to add oatmeal back into the rotation…

What a good exercise. I see now that I can’t possibly eat all that in a few days, especially as I’m only home for breakfast and dinner. I guess I’ll put off the onion soup and the spaghetti squash, as both will keep for a while.

Desserts will be fruit or yogurt.

I’m new to this menu thing, am I missing anything?

I’ve gotten my act together and walked both days this weekend, which is something I *should* do every weekend, but somehow I often don’t. I also managed to walk for 30 min one day during the week, so for the first time in ages I actually met my exercise goal this week.

I started a new audiobook today too. My rule with the audiobooks is to ONLY listen to them when I walk - so on the metro and at other times I listen to my iPod it’s music or podcasts, but to move on with the story, I must move my body…

It was really nice today - sunny, warm-ish (around 50 F) and I even saw signs of Spring - little crocuses popping up in the park, showing their bright yellow sparkle against grass which is turning downright green! I LOVE Spring! Last night’s walk was also a mission to find Mexican products here in Paris. I walked to 3 addresses I’d found on the web, only one of which was valid. I bought chipolte peppers and jalepeno peppers and also some mole sauce. I just couldn’t bring myself to pay 7.50 euros (about $10) for a large can of refried beans… I am frustrated because I can’t find dried pinto beans here ANYWHERE, and the rumors that I’ll be able to find black beans aren’t looking too good either. So I’m mixing my exercise and my quest together for a series of excursions to some exotic food markets hoping to track down the suckers to have a steady supply for the future. For short-term, I have a friend visiting in February, and my brother in April, and both of them will bring me the stuff I ask for, but long-term I’d like to find a local source. The walks are also a fun way to combine exploring the city with exercise, and since I’m really determined to find these things, gives me something to look forward to…

Yesterday was a day of hunger. It’s odd, and in the past, “dieting mode” I’d have just suffered. Instead, I ate a bit more than usual, because now that I’m evaluating hunger before I eat, I’m more comfortable knowing what’s real hunger versus just a desire to eat.

It started with breakfast, where I was extra-hungry before eating. After my muesli, I was still hungry, so I had a slice of toast w jam. Lunch was a burger patty and salad. At 6pm hungry again I stopped at a bakery near the metro station that sells these really yummy and not-too-bad-for-you little bread rolls that they fill with various toppings. I took banana and chocolate (it’s actually the only flavor I like) and ate about half of it. Dinner was lasagna. Now written down it doesn’t look like so much more than usual, but I think it was a bit more in quantity, and certainly it was more in terms of my hunger. Maybe it’s hormones, maybe just random variation. I’ve had several meals this week when I didn’t eat that much because I wasn’t very hungry, so it’s possible this is just my body trying to even things out…

Last night I cooked again - I made lasagna, from my mom’s recipe. My mom used to make it when I was a kid growing up - it was a special occasion dish and it was clear last night that it will be the same for me - it was a LOT of work. Her recipe has you make meatballs that are the meat part of the lasagna, instead of a tomato-and-meat sauce layered in. So you have a bunch of stuff to chop and mix for the meatballs, then a ton of mini meatballs to roll (about 3/4 inch each), you also make a tomato sauce from scratch, and THEN you start to put it together… 3 kinds of cheese (ricotta, mozzarella, parmesean) and of course the noodles. I was in the kitchen for a long time, but I enjoyed it.

The result was fabulous - it tasted just like my mom’s (well, maybe a bit too salty, and I needed a different pan, I should have had one more layer). My DSS loves lasagna and was my excuse for making it, and he loved it, which was really nice. My DH is never a big fan of tomato-based pasta dishes, but he said it was good. We’ll have it today for lunch with a big salad, and then I’ll freeze the rest.

I’m glad I’m able to find a way to eat when I’m hungry these days, and to make favorite dishes too… As you can see, I’m also doing well on my “cook regularly” goal for 2008!

I had an interesting exchange w iniya on her blog a few weeks back, and I decided to expand our discussion for my own blog.

One of my key philosophies in life is this : UNDER-promise, OVER-deliver. I am a fanatic about it at work, constantly fighting my bosses to get timelines and project goals that my team can accomplish, then pushing my team to beat those goals. When successful it makes you look and feel like a superstar. The opposite is awful, and unfortunately, much more frequent - Over-promising, and then Under-delivering. In work meetings I’ll often write on the board ______ - Promise ______-Deliver when we are working on planning a project, or at various steps in the completion. And I’ll try to remind people that maybe we’re getting it backwards again, we want to UNDER promise, OVER deliver, not the opposite. So when the young whipper-snapper tells me he’s calculated every step needed to get the project done, and if he works really hard and everything goes perfectly, it can be done in 10 weeks. That means I tell my management we need 14. I explain to my team that things will come up - someone will miss a flight, an exec will be in a meeting the day we need an approval, certain steps will take longer than planned, etc - 10 weeks is a theoretical timeline - for real life you need to add more time for the unexpected issues. We almost always will bring the project in around 11-12 weeks with that approach - and everyone is happy.

For years when I began a diet I would calculate what my weight “should” be at a certain date in the future, calculating from 2 pounds per week in a straight line. I would chart my weight progress vs that “should” line. In the first weeks it was usually pretty positive (in early weeks of weight loss you often see big numbers) and then about 8 weeks in I’d start to fall further and further behind.

I am a perfectionist who pushes myself very hard, and I am also very competitive. I am by no means an expert at applying this philosophy to my own life, but I’m trying. If you see on my progress page I’ve tried to apply this to my exercise goals. I selected 500 minutes of exercise as my first goal - chosen totally at random. I was surprised when it was pretty easily and rapidly achieved. So I thought about upping the goal, to 1000 or even 2000 minutes. Instead, I’ve kept it at 500 and I’ve now almost completed my 4th 500 minutes.

This way I keep MEETING and SURPASSING my goal. It’s at least as motivating, maybe more, than having the bigger number as my goal. Same basic approach has been true for me getting back on track since my backslide this Fall. I set goals each week that I can meet pretty easily, and surpass. In fact, I think I’ve surpassed each goal by quite a large margin, which just gives me confidence to keep going and set the next goal just a wee bit higher. Maybe it’s stupid, but I think that approach of seeing myself WINNING and SUCCEEDING is pretty important to my success. I can’t tell you how many years I spent beating myself up because I’d only exercised 5 days that week (instead of 7) or that I had one day when my calories went over by 150. I didn’t focus on what I DID do (the exercise, the great control of calories), I focused on the gap between my accomplishments and my goals.

I read similar attitudes in so many other people’s blogs… I just want to point out that there is another way, and life is so much nicer…

Back in November I decided to start counting my exercise time towards a goal. I am currently walking for exercise I chose to measure in miles. Since I’m very interested in the Basque country, and we have a weekend planned there in February, I chose Bilbao Spain as my destination. So I’m walking to Bilbao.

Bilbao is 462 miles from Paris (my home). Some of you suggested I makes some stops along the way, which I found to be a big improvement to my original plan.

Sometime over the weekend, with all the walking around we did in Amsterdam, I passed over the threshold for my next stop. My current mileage is at 132, but I’ve selected my second stop to be Le Mans, France, which is 114 miles from home in Paris. Walking around a new city for 2 days will really rack up the miles!

I chose Le Mans as my next stop because I’ve actually been there, unlike most of the other cities approximately 110 miles from Paris. It’s on the outer reaches of the Loire Valley.

I had a friend who got married here a few years back, so I got to wander around the town and church for a few hours that day. The old town center was really charming, with old buildings where the wood beam construction, ‘colombage’ is showing.

Le Mans is most famous for the 24 hour car race held here every year. Car racing doesn’t interest me in the least, but my friends actually got married the same day as the race in 2005, and we needed to book train tickets far in advance to be able to come.

What about the food? The city is famous for it’s Rillettes. Rillettes is a kind of pork spread that is made with seasoned pork cooked in a whole lot of lard (pork fat) and then chilled. They usually spread it on bread. At the wedding there were huge bowls of it, and everyone said it was fabulous. Here at home our local butcher won the national rillettes competition a few years ago, and we often buy it as an appetizer when we have guests over. The concept of it grosses me out completely — as you look at rillettes you see the white lard among strings of pork and it makes me squeamish to even see it, let alone smell or taste it. Yeah, that white stuff is lard.

Despite the creativity in using “all of the pig but the oink” which the French love to do, Le Mans is really a nice city.

I also found that there is a type of apple from Le Mans, called “Reinette du Mans”. I must admit that I’ve never seen these apples sold in the market near my house, and from what I read online (in French) they don’t seem worth going out of my way for them, but it’s nice to know there’s a local food I’d like much better than Rillettes!

Click here for a site offering a virtual tour.

I saw Dr Hope again late last week.

I continue to be awed by the way the universe sometimes provides what you need when you need it. I wouldn’t have been able to appreciate Dr Hope a year ago, but right now she’s exactly what I need.

I have never, NEVER felt so peaceful and eaten so well while trying to actively lose weight.

Did you see that? I said I am “actively trying to lose weight” — BUT I AM NOT DIETING.

Oh no, dieting certainly not. I ate pasta carbonara for lunch yesterday. And I had 3 chocolate truffles too. In the past few days I’ve eaten waffles, french fries, fried eggs, bread and so much more. Not to mention that I use real sugar, real butter, full-fat milk on a near-daily basis.

And yet, I am losing weight - slowly, slowly - but surely.

I am starting to get the hang of some more of the Dr Hope guidelines.

I now pretty systematically evaluate my level of hunger before eating. I’ve even skipped a few meals in the past week because I wasn’t hungry, or eaten “too soon” because I was. I’m not at 100% on this yet, but it’s definitely in the majority zone.

The thing I am probably best at of all the Dr Hope tricks is evaluating my food for pleasure. Everything I eat, from a breadstick to an elaborately prepared gastronomic treat, I try to think about the taste, texture and how much I like (or dislike) it. What is that subtle spice? How do they make it both crispy and creamy? It’s a lot of thinking, but it makes the eating much more enjoyable. And, as I learned at my weeklong work meeting in early January, if it’s not good, I don’t eat much of it anymore. I would say I now evaluate my food for pleasure about 90% of the time.

And to respond to a few comments on the blog in the past few weeks - I RARELY thought about the pleasure from my food before November of last year. Only at Special Events where food was a featured item (fancy restaurants, someone making me dinner, etc).

The latest challenge Dr Hope added has been to leave something on my plate uneaten. This has been really hard for me, but finally this week I started to see some real progress. The idea of this one is to actually build up to being able to stop eating when you have had enough. If you are like I was, “enough” meant when the plate is empty. I still have a long ways to go for this to be routine for me, but I’m now more and more consistent, leaving something over more meals than not. Sometimes if something is particularly good I set the “leftover” bit aside early, and finish the rest, which isn’t quite the same thing, but it’s helping me to get over the “mine! all mine!” mentality, and work on giving up some of what is on my plate. In the past week I’ve had 2 times when I stopped much earlier than one bite uneaten - really able to sense my hunger and leave a good amount untouched. It feels really good, and I can see how in the future this will really help.

I’m much less stressed about food in general. Yesterday afternoon one of my employees wanted to stop at a local bakery because “they have the best chausson aux pommes (apple croissants) in Paris.” Mind you, this is AFTER we’d had pasta carbonara (loaded w cream, egg yolk, bacon and cheese) for lunch. Did I sweat it? No. I was glad to have an expert showing me something, glad to find a good address for this flaky treat. I was not hungry at the time so I took it home. Knowing that I’ll eat it when I’m hungry. And I know I’ll enjoy it, or I’ll stop eating it. I haven’t eaten enough chaussons aux pommes to know which is the best in Paris, but I’ll be able to tell if it’s really good or just ok. And I won’t eat it all, either.

My discussion w Dr Hope also centered around emotional eating. I’ve stated this before, but for the record I wouldn’t categorize myself as a binge eater or an emotional eater. I’m just an eater. I eat with or without emotion, but apparently a bit more with emotion.

The same day I saw Dr Hope I got a call about a job opportunity that is moving into the next phase. It’s flattering and a big move, and I’m very conflicted because while it’s a great job, it would also be a big change in lifestyle (lots more travel and pressure) and I really like my life right now. So after a few email and phone exchanges to set up the meetings, I found myself wandering around the house looking for stuff to eat. I wasn’t hungry. I was conscious that I wasn’t hungry. But still I was looking for stuff to eat. Specifically, I wanted Crunch. Apples. Popcorn. If I wasn’t actively trying to lose weight it would probably be something else. But I wanted, really wanted, to crunch my way through the stress. I didn’t. But knowing that this issue would keep bugging me for the next several days or weeks I discussed it w Dr Hope.

She said she found it interesting that I was looking to eat because of it, and a great sign that I was aware of the emotional pull and not giving in to it. She then told me to have a fun weekend and to spend Tuesday - Friday when I was back at home paying attention to think-as-you-eat principles. And to enjoy my weekend vacation.

A diet doctor who tells you to enjoy life…. not bad at all!

By the way, just identifying this stress-induced desire to eat was enough to keep it from coming to pass. I haven’t had the crunch-fest nor any other food-fest that I could easily justify from the stress.

We left Friday for the airport, heading to take a flight to Naples only to get stuck in a monster traffic jam near the airport. We ended up missing our flight and when I started to tell my DH of all the household projects we could get done with an unscheduled weekend at home he became bound and determined to get out of town anyway. That man will do ANYTHING to avoid Ikea…

There was no reasonable way to re-book our travel to Naples, so we looked at the monitor of flights leaving soon and selected Amsterdam. I don’t even want to know what the plane tickets cost us - he was the one who insisted on leaving anyway, and he whipped out his credit card and sent me away - I’d have calculated how many other trips we could take for the same fare, etc… A few phone calls to hotels and we were booked into Amsterdam and canceled in Italy.

It was rainy but not terribly cold, and we walked around a ton. We visited the Anne Frank house, the Van Gogh museum and just had a nice, relaxing time. We had a few great meals - one really nice “modern Dutch” restaurant, and one really good Indonesian restaurant. Most of the other stuff was the standard garbage you find in any modern city with a lot of tourists - overpriced cafes offering greasy and not very good dishes.

I did really well with my think-as-you-eat efforts. It helped that I didn’t LOVE what I ordered at the ‘modern Dutch’ restaurant, and that Indonesian food comes in lots of small servings of a bunch of different dishes, so chowing down on a big pile is not at all an option. I think I left something uneaten at every meal all weekend - it’s becoming easier with practice.

On Saturday, I stayed longer than my DH at the Van Gogh museum (I love art; he can only handle one hour of any museum at a time). While walking to meet up with him I stopped and bought a waffle. I threw a few bites away. Then I had this weird desire to go and buy another one, or find some ice cream, simply because I was alone and no one would know. It’s true I was hungry - we’d had eggs for brunch at 11 and it was 5:30, and dinner wasn’t until 8:30. But still, it was strange to have that compulsion to stuff my face like I was “cheating” on a diet. I did look into a few more food stores, but bought nothing except another bottle of water. A few minutes later I was back w my DH and it was in the past.

On Sunday we had a great breakfast at the hotel. One of those huge buffet things with lots of fresh and hot dishes. The kind where I typically either eat my standard hotel breakfast of fruit, yogurt and cereal (thereby bypassing most temptations) or I go hog-wild. I decided to have what I wanted. I had a small amount of eggs, some bacon, a small waffle. I took what I thought was a yogurt but turned out to be panna cotta. I ate a slice of bread. I had a large but not unreasonable breakfast - nothing hog-wild. I was pleased to be able to eat what I wanted without going crazy and leaving stuffed to the gills.

We flew back to Paris and I was not hungry on the flight, nor afterwards. I took the next flight on to Zurich - still not hungry. I didn’t get hungry again until dinnertime, where I had 2 apples in my hotel room & that was fine. It was really nice to see myself able to eat to my hunger and able to recognize when I felt the need for more copious food (breakfast) and lighter fare (dinner). I’m really hoping this becomes standard for me.

I was only in Switzerland overnight for a very early meeting on Monday morning, and by Monday noon I was back in the airport heading home. I’d had a roll with jam very early for breakfast at the hotel, at the airport I found a cafeteria where I got soup and muesli at the airport which was the perfect fix for me. Later at home I ate some leftover carrots and cheese for a snack, then a light dinner and I’d had another great eating day.

I had a really nice weekend, and the detour to Zurich was a bit tiring but otherwise fine. I managed my stress without eating, which I’m very proud of. I’m very glad to be home, and glad that this weekend is a homebody one…