Round

I was inspired by seeing Fl0wer’s post the other day that contained her food for the day. As a daily blog subject it’s not the most exciting, but as weight-loss bloggers it is our, um.. ‘bread and butter’ and it adds a note of reality to what we’re doing.

I obviously have biased the selection by choosing to report on a day where I did well (had you seen LAST Friday it wouldn’t be so great).

I also had spent some time this week looking up recipes and playing w menu planning (thanks DonnaLynn!) so I was very excited to cook dinner. I should give you some background in that I usually cook NOTHING, and when I do, it’s one dish, not a whole dinner. That whole thing of thinking of different things to go together and getting the timings down has always seemed out of my reach, but today I did it anyway.

So what is a food day for Round in Low Stress Weight Loss ?

• 8:00 am : home alone in office
  • double espresso w 1/4 c of milk
• 9:30 am : home alone at dining room table
  • one bowl full of : 1/2 cup muesli, 1/4 grated apple, 125 grams whole milk plain yogurt
• 11:00 am : office w my MIL
  • green tea w mint (unsweetened)\
• 1:00 pm : lunch - at restaurant w colleagues - fixed menu
  • French bread roll. Left 1/2 uneaten.
  • appetizer of sauteed mushrooms in a light crepe. Left 1/4 uneaten.
  • main dish of pan fried fish in an garlic-lemon-oil sauce. Left 1/4 uneaten.
  • dessert of fruit salad. Left about 3 bites uneaten.
  • chocolate that came w the coffee. I meant to leave a bit uneaten, but I didn’t… I didn’t drink the coffee, does that count?
• 7:00 pm : come home and begin COOKING DINNER. Yes me, cooking! From scratch! Here’s what I made
  • Fava beans which I soaked last night. I had never HAD a fava bean, and saw them dried in the store so decided to buy them & found a recipe that looked interesting. The recipe had me bake them in the oven w onion and tomato, but I had to cook the suckers first and even in a pressure cooker that took over an hour and then they needed to be taken out of their outer skins. A lot of work, frankly. I still have half the package left but don’t know that I’d buy them again, because I could do the same recipe with easier beans. The taste was interesting, however.
  • Roasted pork tenderloin. I ran out of time this morning and didn’t get the marinade done, so it was the first thing I did coming home tonight (the meat marinated an hour, but all day would have been much better). My DH (which means Dear Husband, for the person who asked that recently in the comments) had recently bought this weird pomegranate sauce which apparently is to be used in place of balsamic vinegar, and it’s taking up space in our small European refrigerator, so I did my recipe search based on balsamic vinegar to find this recipe (which also had maple syrup and tomato juice and spices). Whipping up the marinade was pretty easy - gotta love those hand blenders!
  • I had bought these great pears about a week ago, but had 3 starting to get too old on the table that I threw in the fridge & also looked up recipes for light pear desserts - I made a pear crumble but forgot to put the sugar in the topping so ended up serving it drizzled with honey.
  • That’s right, THREE recipes for ONE meal from the woman who never cooks. There was also one convenience food, a packet of whole-wheat organic bulgur as a side dish.
• 8:30 pm : dinner is served! At home, w my DH & DSS (7 years old)
  • The pork tenderloin was good, sauce a bit spicy and only mildly sweet, probably too much rosemary. I had about 4 ounces and left about 2 bites.
  • The fava beans were much better in the recipe than they had been on their own when I tasted them for done-ness. If I ever make the recipe again, I’d cover it in foil before putting it in the oven. I took about half a cup and I left a bite uneaten.
  • The bulgur was bulgur - plain, unseasoned, slightly nutty tasting, not terribly interesting. I didn’t take much and it was no problem to leave some uneaten.
  • My pear crisp was quite good, and because I forgot the sugar very healthy (topping had 1/4 cup flour and 2 T butter, plus oatmeal & some spices, so not very bad when divided in 6). I had a large half cup. I tried to leave one bite uneaten, but threw it in my mouth when clearing the table
• 11:00 While watching a movie w my DH I decided I wanted chocolate. I had 3 pieces of dark chocolate w fillings of some kind (we had received a small box as a gift). I stopped at 3 and really would have preferred a few squares of a really good dark chocolate bar (but I’m out at the moment).

No exercise for the day - a pretty busy work day, plus my MIL stopping by before I had to run to a meeting (which got out late) and come home to relieve her in babysitting.

I was pretty happy to do so well in the “think-while-you-eat” department, it gives me a lot of confidence going into next week.

And the cooking was fun and very appreciated by my DH. We were left with a few extra servings which I immediately froze for lunches or dinners on the run.

I saw Dr Hope again yesterday. I got kind of nervous beforehand, actually, because I haven’t been keeping my food diary, have barely paid attention to the new food rules, and have eaten “Holiday Fun Style” more days than not these past 2 weeks.

Luckily, I didn’t listen to the little voice in my head telling me to cancel, and luckily Dr Hope is really nice and understanding. Her first words, after “best wishes for a happy new year” were “well, it’s that season…”.

So it has been. The season of Overindulgence. The season of Overeating. The season of dropping some of my good food habits. The season of very little exercise. The season of the clothes getting tighter, the face looking puffier.

I decided that yesterday was back to totally normal (although Wednesday wasn’t so bad). I started with a check-in on the scale, up one pound from when I last weighed in a month ago, which isn’t so bad considering what I’ve been eating, and I’m still in Onderland (but barely!). As I mentioned recently, the scale will now be my helper, coming to check on me every 2 weeks or so. I don’t want to get into letting the scale rule my life, so it’s staying in the closet to prevent daily (and more) check-ins. But it’s not hard to take it out, and I’ll do that periodically.

I started eating a lot better Wednesday, (dinner excluded) and Thursday was downright good. I have listened to my hunger and eaten at odd times of the day, helped by my schedule which was remarkably flexible today. I made muesli again, and I am yet once again reminded how much better I do when I start with an oatmeal or muesli breakfast. Anything else seems to open too many doors to temptation, whereas the oatmeal or muesli are delicious and Satisfying.
I am away next week for work again. I discussed the challenge of next week w Dr Hope. It’s a big national meeting of my company, with about 1500 people crammed into some hotel. Almost the whole time is spoken for, from breakfast meetings at 7:30 am to “disco nights” until 2 am. Don’t worry, I need my sleep and won’t be drinking and dancing, but I’ll need to do some socializing until at least 11pm every night and just the thought of that makes me grumpy. I think we have one or two 2-hour free sessions during the week. I am not a big fan of this kind of meeting personally, although I recognize it’s importance for the teams to help them get motivated for the year, so I put on my best “team player” smile and go at it.

The food challenges will be considerable - there are not so many ways to give great and healthy food to that many people who eat at once, so the meals will probably be almost all buffets and filled with starch and oil. Alcohol is the social lubricant of choice for these events, and I’ve decided that apart from an occasional glass of champagne in my hand, I will not drink (and I never drink very much of cheap champagne, so the glass will be mainly decorative).

I also don’t know if I’ll be able to blog (there is apparently very little internet access), and I’m sure I won’t be able to read others’ blogs. I’ll at least write while I’m there, even if it’s only to post it upon my return.

Dr Hope & I discussed this coming week, and the plan is three-fold.

1) Keep the food diary every day (the document contains where I ate, hunger level, what I ate, did I leave anything left over, pleasure rating and relaxation level). I know this will help me. Some structure usually does.

2) Drink at least 2 liters of water a day. Should be do-able, and it will give me something to do at coffee breaks besides eat the snacks, since I’ll be in line for the bathrooms… I agreed to this step quickly, because I know hotel air and travel is dehydrating, and I’m a big water drinker anyway.

3) Leave something uneaten at every opportunity. Breakfast. Coffee breaks. A square of chocolate served w coffee. At meals, at the appetizer, the main dish, AND the dessert.

We talked a lot about the difficulty I was having with this ‘leaving something’ uneaten bit and this was her suggestion. Out of habit, out of comfort, without thinking, I eat what I am served. It is ENORMOUSLY hard for me not to do that. Its even harder when I serve myself. I need to be able to FORGO some of “my” food in order to be able to move to a place where I can judge which portions will satisfy me. But until I can stop myself from cleaning my plate mechanically, I can’t get to that next step.

So I’m taking a step backwards to concentrate on just this. I’m not going to worry about pausing in the middle of my meals and evaluating hunger again for now.

I will be packing my walking shoes, and a new audiobook. Not sure how much opportunity I’ll have, but certainly more than if I leave the shoes at home! I’ve been pushing myself to get back into my mild exercise, and have walked 3 times this week and hope to post a “walking to Bilbao” update soon after my trip.

In Low Stress Weight Loss you can eat anything. One of the key ideas is that Nothing is Taboo. So anything is really Anything. Cheese, butter, pastries, pizza, steak, pasta, it’s all good. French, Chinese, Mexican, Italian, no limits.

Another key idea is that of Satisfaction. As in, the question you are supposed to ask yourself when you are hungry is “what will satisfy me?”. I am just starting to Get It that “satisfaction” does not mean “desire”. It’s not an eat-whatever-you-want thing, it’s about finding what is essentially the lowest-common-denominator between your hunger and your desire - that is Satisfaction.

If you’re dying for a cheeseburger then a salad probably won’t cut it. But maybe a small steak would Satisfy without going the full-hog approach of the burger. And sometimes, the only thing that will Satisfy is in fact the cheeseburger. In which case, go ahead, and absolutely 100% guilt free. …But you said it was the cheeseburger you were desiring - so will ordering it without the fries Satisfy?

I am learning and re-learning every day. For the past 6 weeks I’ve been thinking satisfaction = desire, but that’s not the right way to think about it. Only in recent days have I come to think of this concept of Satisfaction in a way that makes sense in the context of weight management. Basically I’m looking for that point minimal Satifaction to eat with pleasure and still lose weight.

The light bulbs keep coming on, but there’s a lot of path in the darkness between the lights still!

I have come to realize a great truth. I overeat. I eat too much, and too often. I don’t always make good food choices. Duh, I weigh almost 200 pounds, so if you saw me on the street you’d already guess that. But it’s still a surprise to me.

Why?

Because I know how to eat well too. Or I would have sworn I did 3 months ago, even if I wasn’t doing it. But in fact I knew how to select low-calorie food. I knew that if I ate low calorie foods I would lose weight, especially if I also exercised.
But eating well is not about having bad eating behaviors and just using them on low-cal foods. This is my great awakening these past few months, working with Dr Hope, reading on my own, and my search for Low Stress Weight Loss.

I suspect one of the keys to permanent weight loss is being able to manage to eat anything in small portions.

For years I dieted rigorously and filled up constantly with low-calorie fare. And I lost weight. I lost a little weight when it was low-fat fare, and I lost a lot of weight when it was low-calorie fare. But for the most part I replaced eating too much junk and high-calorie fare with eating too much low-calorie fare. I didn’ really learned a new way to eat, to approach food, and therefore when low-calorie fare was scarce, or hidden among high-calorie options, or too much trouble, or simply boring me, I would go back to overeating the high-calorie stuff. And regain weight.

In short, for years now, when I lost weight I replaced overeating w high-cal foods with overeating low-cal ones. It’s still overeating.

My own type of overeating isn’t bingeing, and I’m not into the OA thing or other overeaters types of things, it’s really so basic as eating a bit too much and a bit too often. Except those might be BIG ‘bits’.

I think the fundamental behaviors around foods - when to eat (when hungry) , when to stop (when not too full), how to eat (slowly, savoring your food) are critical things for me to master.

I managed to have the New Year’s Eve I’d wanted, just me and my DH home alone, romantic and cool, cooking, snuggling, enjoying each other and our house. Naked.

We ate a LOT of very good and very fattening foods. Caviar (him). Giant Alaskan King Crab legs with lemon butter (me) and homemade mayonnaise (him). A fabulous duck breast that I cooked myself. Roasted winter veggies (kholrabi, beet, parsnip). 2 bottles of wine (neither one finished, don’t worry!) . Fabulous and wild desserts by Pierre Herme, including a slice of the black truffle buche, a truffle macaron, several other macarons, and a few other of his wonderful desserts .

A very nice way to spend the evening. The food fest is over now, time to get serious again.

I spent a lot of time these past few days working on my Best Year Yet 2008 plan. I did the exercises more thoroughly than in the past few years and gleaned plenty of new insights.

Here are my top 10 goals for 2008 :

1. Have a healthy baby
2. Nurture my marriage (build the couple at least 2x/wk)
3. Slowly but continuously lose weight
4. Keep up my weight loss blog
5. Get my French driver’s license
6. Master AdminisTrivia – personal & professional {I am an administrative mess, both personally and professionally, and I need to beat this}
7. Cook regularly
8. Catch up on nagging old projects (wedding photos, scrapbook, etc)
9. Be moving into next job by early 2009 at latest
10. Keep a personal activities accomplishment list for 2008 (do at least 2 items per month) {this includes books read, movies seen, museums visited, etc}

This year was a very interesting project. My number 1 goal, to have a healthy baby, was as I expected, but I changed the wording several times on some of the others, and was surprised to see things that I’d had on the list for a long time drop off, and things I’d never listed make it to the top 10 (administrative tasks, cooking). The other good thing is several things I’d been putting off due to the hassle factor have now gotten “offical top goal” status which should help them get completed - including the horrible process of the French drivers license and a bunch of old “should do them” projects around the house. All of those things put a negative drain on my energy by not being done, and I want to live with a clearer conscience. I was also surprised to see the determined side to change jobs in about a year’s time…

There are 3 goals that are direct links to my weight loss effort. First is to lose weight slowly but consistently. I *think* I will be doing that via Low Stress Weight Loss & my work with Dr Hope, but if that approach doesn’t work for me, I’ll try something else. At first I wrote that following Low Stress Weight Loss was the goal and then I thought about it and realized it’s the method but not the goal.

I also made keeping this blog into a full-fledged goal. It’s pointing myself in the right direction. Making a long-term commitment to keeping a focus on my weight. I know when I get busy or stressed it’s easy to skip it, but I find the thinking needed to have regular blog posts is really helpful to ME. I also love the community of support and the interaction w comments, which is what pushes it to be more helpful & interesting than just keeping a diary. Plus more accountable.
Finally, cooking. I choose to make cooking “regularly” a goal because I think it will be a good thing for various aspects of my life. I think it will be appreciated by my DH (who does most of the cooking now). It is also one of the best ways to control my diet (my DH cooks with lots of fat). It’s also creative and can be fun, and is helpful in the context of the Dr Hope exercises of thinking about what I really want and satisfaction and all of that. I gave myself plenty of leeway with the word “regularly” because I didn’t want to be too rigid with a certain number of times per week, but the idea is to cook frequently.

Well, that sums up my outlook for 2008.

Hope you all have a great year!