Round

So this weekend’s big challenge meal was this morning’s brunch at my mother-in-law’s place.

As expected there were croissants of all kinds, breads galore, butter, jams, etc.

I ate :

• 1 slice brioche w sugar-free jam
• 1 soft-boiled egg
• 2 small slices bread (1 w butter) for dipping into the soft-boiled egg
• 1 mini raisin croissant
• 1 2-inch piece of baguette w butter
• handful of cherries
• 1/2 a kiwi
• tea w milk
• “verrines” (glass w layered items)
  • one small shot glass of strawberry-banana on pistachios
  • grapefruit w fromage frais and whipped cream
  • raspberry rhubarb
• small slice of melon
• one slice of coppa ham

All in all I did okay. I ate way less than I usually eat at a brunch, helped enormously by the fact we weren’t at our house (with all the favorites that we like), and also by the fact that I’ve been doing really well for several weeks now — and have a weigh-in on Monday.

Interestingly, I did watch my MIL and my SIL and saw that they both sat for long periods at the table without eating anything - something that I have a really hard time doing. If I’m at the table w food around me, I almost always keep nibbling at something. I need to learn how to do that, as social meals in France can often last for many hours.

The rest of the day I’ll mainly eat veggies, maybe some popcorn if I feel a need for crunch, so the day should be fine overall.

My diet coach, Sandra Ahten (also see links on the side) sent this in the daily email the other day - and I loved it!

“When I buy cookies I eat just four and throw the rest away.  But first I spray them with Raid so I won’t dig them out of the garbage later.  Be careful, though,because that Raid really doesn’t taste that bad.”   — Janette Barber

I actually did this months ago - although I used mustard, and called the entry “cookies in mustard sauce” - still, it’s a great strategy!

Luckily for me this week it’s been fairly easy to stick to healthy eating, the overeating I’ve done has been mainly around roasted vegetables or the fruit bowl at a meeting yesterday - a big improvement from a few weeks ago!

Yesterday evening I came home from work to find my stepson (DSS) ready for a snack — and I was too. I wanted to make myself my new Tabasco-fired air popcorn, but thought that I’d offer him a treat and finally make the microwave popcorn my DH bought a few months back - Jolly Time Mallow Pop which is supposed to be a marshmallow flavor like Rice Krispie Treats.

I thought I was safe as I had a plan for myself and I don’t like sweet popcorn (although - warning - I do like Rice Krispie Treats, I just never eat them). I made his popcorn first and was kind of fascinated / grossed out by the slimy white goo that is the “flavoring pouch”. We eat mainly whole foods around here - packaged foods are rare for us, and its been a long time since I’ve seen a slime pouch like that. My DSS was pretty excited by the whole process. He had rarely seen me make microwave popcorn, so even that was exciting to him, and the sugar-slime mix was a perfect treat for an 8 year old…

Well, it was pretty tasty. Terribly sweet and more than a little chemically, but creamy and greasy and sticky. He loved it. And I tasted more than I should have. And then kept grabbing another few bites. I never made my own air-popped hot-sauced version, and I think I ate about 1 1/2 “servings” of his - which I have just dutifully looked up on the box and figured out to be around 300 calories. Which doesn’t blow me out of the water (although the trans fats could blow up my arteries…) but did make dinner automatically a “light” one.

Lessons learned :

• Do not let this packaged garbage food into the house. My DSS was happy with this treat but would have been just as happy with air-popped corn with butter and sugar, all of which are REAL ingredients.
• Do not eat the stuff just because its around (if only…)
• Make my own snack first. Had I done this I doubt I’d have touched his, except maybe a bite out of curiosity. I kept munching because I was hungry and wanted to crunch…

I was able to have a veggie-only dinner so the day was fine overall.

There are so many lessons to learn on this path!

Yesterday I sat in a meeting from 8:30am to 1:20pm. I had lunch after and breakfast was a smoothie in the car at 7:30. In the meeting room was a big basket of croissants, chocolate croissants, and raisin croissants. At 8:15 when I showed up I decided I would not eat any of them. By the time the second break rolled around at 11:00 I was faltering. By 12 I was really hungry. I clearly wasn’t the only one - I noticed a lot of people who hadn’t touched the croissants earlier were picking up a half of one (or ripping in half a whole one) and eating it. And maybe going back for the second half too.

As time went on I kept feeling hungry, and then was able to focus on THAT being an accomplishment too. I usually eat BEFORE I get too hungry, or at the very beginning of hunger. But I was able to just be hungry for a little more than an hour, NOT touch the croissants, and then head to lunch where I knew multiple menu temptations loomed.

Luckily I ate with a fit friend, who immediately chose the fish, and I did the same, even replacing the potatoes with green beans (which she didn’t do) and I was helped on not eating the bread basket by our spacey waitress who forgot to bring it (which NEVER happens in France!).

So what I’m proud of :

• Having a healthy, good breakfast to prepare for the day
• Not eating a single croissant despite temptation for hours!
• Letting myself feel hunger without stressing out
• Choosing a good, healthy meal after the hungry, temptation-ridden morning

We’ve been away for 9 days in the past two weeks, including both Sundays when I normally stock up on fruits and veggies, and milk and yogurt. The fridge is bare - at least of healthy things.

So in the morning I took advantage of a later-than-usual first meeting to zip to the market and get some fruits and veggies to get me through the week. Cauliflower, romaine, tomatoes, zucchini, bananas, kiwi and celery. No fennel this week!

In the evening when I should have been working I walked to the grocery store and picked up yogurt and milk (and a pineapple).  Got a few minutes of walking in too.

I felt really proud of myself for managing to fit in the shopping despite a hard schedule, because it removes the biggest challenge of the week - how to eat healthy in a house without the right materials. So the materials are in place, now for me to play my part in the game…

I was so jazzed about my 4 pound drop on the scale (when I’d hoped for 2) that eating healthy at lunch was really easy.

I got on the scale this morning and was very happy to see a new decade - the scale read 209.

I actually think that it’s probably abnormally low and won’t be too surprised to see it the same or up one next week, but the needle moving in the right direction is a great motivation to keep going and settle into this for the long haul. That idea of settling in long term has been a real point of resistance for me in the last two weeks - I keep thinking through all the things I need to do long-term to manage my weight long-term and it’s seemed so impossible and overwhelming.

But in fact, it’s not that big a deal. I went to the gym this week and instead of being filled with anxiety and pain, I was really happy I did it, and was remembering those rare sessions where I touched that “exercise high” and was looking forward to getting back that feeling, plus the general comfort of moving my body better.

And food, in moderation and with attention, actually tastes better and is more pleasurable than that numb overeating I’ve been doing for so long (and recently). This weekend was a case in point - we were away with friends in Brittany and all the food was brought by the friends - I had no control of what would be served (an argument point between me and my DH…). In the end it was fine, plenty of veggies were on hand, and there were also many fruits even if I wasn’t partaking of them as I should have. In general I ate fairly reasonably (although certainly not diet, and I need to find a way to lay off the cheese).

This week is a busy one work-wise, but the biggest weight-loss challenge will be the fact that the house is completely un-stocked due to our having been away for most of the past 2 weeks.

For those who’ve been following my story longer (or anyone who’s looking into Intuitive Eating or any of that type of approach), I spent a few months seeing a diet doctor (a real MD) here in France who I nicknamed Dr Hope. Her basic premise was that diets don’t work and that if you re-learn to listen to your body you’ll find your correct weight.

Someone asked a few days back whatever happened to Dr Hope, as I haven’t mentioned her in a long time. Well, I stopped going but might someday go back. I really liked her approach but found her “thinking” method too unstructured for me, and she seemed way too happy to take my money every week or two while I continued to gain weight. I gained about 12 pounds while working with her, and then went on to gain several more afterwards.

I learned a lot from her, some of which I am still using, some of which I’ll go back to with time. Thanks to her and things like the Pizza Test I learned to de-mystify problem foods. I learned to pay more attention to pleasure in food. And hunger. And to try to figure out what “satisfied” means.

My new Project YOU approach is not a rejection of Dr Hope - it’s kind of building on that. Sandra talks about “Top-Down/Bottom-Up” dieting - a mix between thinking about why you eat, how you eat etc (Top Down — and very Dr Hope) and building in structure (what, when to eat - Bottom Up). I think the mix of the two can make me successful.

I’m also still committed to doing this low-stress. That hasn’t changed, nor has an acceptance that this will take a while. I’m not at all tempted to follow suit of those I see “miraculously” losing 20 pounds in 10 days on meal replacement or 800 calorie diets. Not for me, and I couldn’t have said that without regret a few years back.

Quite unexpectedly, I went to a gym yesterday.

My plan had been to take a nice long walk in the afternoon while my DH took my DSS to an indoor rock-climbing place. As I was getting into the shower my DH told me that the rock-climbing place had a gym too. Did I want to go with them and use the gym there?

Now, to put things in perspective, I haven’t set foot in a gym for over a year. My over-enthusiasm to get in shape for my wedding last year had me pushing myself very hard at the gym and something I did aggravated a herniated disk I already had - and I ended up with severe, debilitating sciatica that had me out of work for months, on tons of narcotic pain-killers, in surgery, and canceling our honeymoon. Not to mention that gyms in Paris are always dingy and smelly and old and ugly and dirty too.

I wasn’t missing the gym here, but I do miss feeling good and I know exercise needs to be part of my life. Getting back into the gym habit is something I’ve been thinking about for a while now, and while I haven’t moved to action I’m aware it’s a question of When, not If.

So I took the opportunity to go w my DH to this new-to-me location. Clearly it’s a climbing center, but they do have a lot of weight machines (forbidden to me since my back surgery) and a few rickety and very dirty cardio machines.

I’ve always felt the hardest part of the gym experience is getting there, and this was no exception. Once there I made the rounds of the machines, got on a treadmill, then took a few minutes on a stepper, back to the treadmill for a long walk at a reasonably rapid pace (faster than I walk when I walk for fitness around town for sure!) and played with moving the incline up and down every few minutes. I ended w 10 minutes on a bike. In all, I did one hour of exercise and was sweating (in part due to the lack of air conditioning, but it was also the most serious exercise session I’ve had in a LONG time).

I am very proud of myself for going. It was good to be w the family doing an active outing (even if I didn’t do the rock-climbing with them). It also really got me thinking about how to get more of the sweat-type of exercise into my life - either my DVD, my dust collector elliptical machine, or biting the bullet and going back to gym membership.

I have been listening to diet and weight-loss podcasts off and on for several years now. I started not long after iTunes started including podcasts, and depending on my mood and weight loss (or gain) phase I’ve listened off and on.

One of my favorites from the beginning was The Reasonable Diet by Sandra Ahten. She is a former WW leader who is now a private weight-loss coach and her first series of  podcasts (and honestly my favorites) were recordings of her telephone-based weekly group meetings with her clients. It was kind of like listening in to a real-life, real-people Biggest Loser without all the commercials and Hollywood. Her advice was always really practical and kind, and by listening to other people’s situations and struggles I really learned a lot.

I signed up for her newsletter and have been following along ever since.

Want an idea of what she’s about? She sums it up nicely as “for the I-know-what-to-do-I-just-don’t-do-it crowd”. Bingo. That’s me.

A few months ago she announced a new program called “Project YOU” which is email, handouts (well, PDFs on the www) and support as you want it from the forum and a few phone calls. There was also a plan with weekly phone calls, but with my schedule right now (plus the time difference between France and US central time) I didn’t think the phone calls would work out. So I decided something was better than nothing and I signed up.

So far it’s been good for me. I was heading back on track already when I signed up, but I think the flexible type of structure it offers (daily and weekly check-in sheets, articles and things to think about each week, etc) is pretty well adapted to my needs right now.

The basic concept is for you to think through what you’re going to do, adapting it each week, and be accountable to what you plan to do. For me, who’s always been someone who created her own diets (although I read a lot of books and magazines for ideas) it’s a good fit.

You can find the links to her podcasts and Project YOU page on my blogroll. Her website has some good articles too.

I’ll be blogging from time to time about some of the exercises she’s giving us. The page I added about “my plan” is one of the first ones.

Yesterday I wrote about trying to make myself like fennel. But I also recently tried to get myself to like air-popped popcorn — and this time it actually worked!

I love popcorn. I especially love it popped in oil and then tossed w real melted butter and salt. But I can’t have that regularly and lose (or even maintain) weight, so it’s out. I substitute two things - either air-popped popcorn w the melted butter and salt (which is really only marginally better) or microwave popcorn. I did manage to find an air-popper machine online here in France about 2 years ago, but honestly haven’t used it that much because I know the calorie count of the prepared thing is a whopper. When I bought it I had visions of air-popped corn somehow having changed, or myself being able to change and start to like the stuff plain … but right after I got it and tried it — blech!

The microwave popcorn is relatively calorie-friendly. The big bag can substitute for dinner pretty easily and even as a snack it doesn’t blow your calories out of the water. I buy only the 94% fat free stuff. But I have a few problems with it :

1. I can’t get low-fat microwave popcorn in France, so I have to get it from the States (a trip to Costco, everything in my suitcase retains that fake popcorn scent, and in general the hassle factor is quite high even if I ask friends to bring it…)
2. My DH hates the smell. I mean really hates it. Sometimes to be nice to me he’ll suggest I make a bag and then as soon as I do he is airing out the house and complaining of the smell… Even if I do the closed-kitchen-door routine and open back door, open microwave, fan on full blast, put the popcorn outside in a bowl to let it air out… nothing really gets rid of that microwave popcorn smell.
3. It’s a bag of chemicals. Whatever stabilizers are put in the bag to replace the trans-fats are probably not a whole lot better. Shelf-stable and cheap fats in general are not good for you. And there are scary things on the net about the chemicals they use for “flavor” (especially butter flavor). Over the past years I’ve become more and more a whole-foods person, so this is one of the few “packaged” foods that makes it into our home… and microwave popcorn is so processed it doesn’t really sit well with me.

As you can tell this popcorn thing is something of a dilemma. I never liked plain air-popped popcorn. But a few days back as I was thinking about filling, whole-grain, low-cal foods I remembered air-popped popcorn. And decided to give it a try to see if it was as bad as I remembered.

It wasn’t.

It was kinda bland as the salt won’t stick to the dry kernels (and they don’t sell I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter spray here, nor Pam…). But it wasn’t bad, and I realized I could eat it plain from time to time and be reasonably happy to have the crunch.

Then I googled for a bit and found a flavoring idea that seemed good - Tabasco (that I can find in France!, plus, I love spicy). So I made another little batch and shook some Tabasco on and some salt (as Tabasco is wet…) and shook it around in a covered bowl (well, at first it flew around the kitchen from a not-so-covered bowl, but I learned that fast…) and then tasted and… YUM.

Spicy, crunchy, salty, and LOW CAL!!!

So - trying the foods you thought you didn’t like does have it’s payoffs. But it’s okay to still not like them too.

I loved the comments from the last post, so chime in if there are any foods you want to make yourself learn to like!