Round

I’m reporting in from vacation, a brief stop at Starbucks for internet.

So far, so good on the diet front.  I’ve been able to successfully stick to low carb eating, passing up lots of junk at the beach and the full breakfast options.  My husband has been only mildly annoyed (he would love to just go to a coffee place for a muffin for breakfast instead of finding a place that takes longer and serves eggs) - he is very supportive, however, especially since I’ve now lost enough that it’s noticeable.  My own mom didn’t recognize me when we went to pick her up - she looked right past me, and for once I could see it was because I looked smaller than she was expecting, which was nice.

I haven’t even had an indulgence yet on this trip - every meal I’ve been able to find bonafide low carb fare to eat.  Yesterday after hiking in burning hot (110° F) Joshua Tree I did cave and get a sugar free Slurpee, I drank about half of it, but it was Sugar Free, therefore allowed, it’s just that I generally avoid artificial sugar completely.

For the next 10 days or so we’ll have a kitchen still on our vacation stops, which makes the breakfasts and chocolate a little easier.  The last week of our trip will be more restaurants 3x a day, which will be a bit more inconvenient.

I’ve been on this carb-restricted way of eating for well over 3 months now.  I continue to be amazed by the lack of hunger, the indulgent foods (butter! cheese! salad dressing!) and how easy it’s been to stick to. I’ve not had cravings, or the carb-flu or any other bad effects frankly.

Hardest for me has been giving up the fruit.  And the copious quantities of veggies that I’ve eaten for, gee, forever.  I still eat veggies, but I don’t go hog-wild on them (I have more meat if I’m still hungry).  And fruit is a Special Treat now.  I haven’t had an apple or orange in months, and almost all the fruit I have had has been berries.  Usually (but not always) in small quantities.  And often served with cream. (Jealous? Well, I’m not eating ANY bread and I live in Paris, so I suffer too…)

But my go-to stress reliever and diet-trick extraordinaire for years has been dark chocolate.  I have kept high-quality, expensive gourmet bars in stock at all times.  At home, at the office, in my suitcase.  In Summer I have to pay more attention, but knowing that I have Good Chocolate that I can have just a square or two from has kept me able to say ‘no thank you’ to tons of processed snacks and bulk-produced desserts over the years.  Plus, if you read the news, you always see that dark chocolate is healthy, right?  Flavinoids and all.  Whatever, it’s delicious and satisfying, and I am lucky to be one of those people who can eat a square or two and put it away (a big chocolate binge for me is like 4-5 squares).  So it’s always been part of my diet.

Until I read Good Calories, Bad Calories and it convinced me to give low-carb eating a go.  So out went the chocolate.

But recently as my husband has been hitting the cherries, the blueberries, the apricots, the peaches after dinner as his treat, I’ve been trying to find what will be MY treat.  When it was strawberry season I could indulge with him, but now? I’d been feeling a bit deprived.  I actually started to buy the mascarpone cheese when it was still strawberry season - because having fat with carbs slows down the insulin spike, so I would spoon out a bit and dip my berries into it.

And then a few weeks ago I hit on an idea.  Take the mascarpone cheese (which is really pretty much pure dairy fat with no flavor) and add a spoonful of cocoa powder.  We happened to have cocoa powder from one of the best chocalatiers in Paris at home (bought for some holiday recipe) … the result was : AMAZING.

Now, bear in mind I’ve always liked DARK chocolate, this is the key.  And I am doing the low-carb thing without artifical sweeteners (which I stopped using about 6 years ago and wasn’t going to add back just because I cut out carbs).  So basically I just never taste sweet anymore.  My few cheats since being on this diet have always had me putting the spoon down quickly when it comes to dessert, because they just taste cloying to me.

So pure cocoa powder (no sugar, no sweeteners) with the mascarpone cheese mixed together has been a rich, wonderful godsend.  Okay, it’s calorically dense and rich and indulgent, but it’s virtually carb-free and I don’t take very much in quantity (maybe 2-3 tablespoons total, of which 1 tsp or so is cocoa powder).

Last weekend my wonderful, under-appreciated, very attentive and quite cute husband took me into one of the good chocolate shops near his office and they had 99% cocoa chocolate disks.  I’ve actually had these before and next to sugared chocolate found them too harsh, but now?  Divine.  I mean, DIVINE. And very low carb to boot.

Full of cancer-busting flavinoids and stress-reducing anti-oxidants and all the other feel-good factors I think I deserve, but also consistent with my diet and as always - a little bit is enough.

Today?  Feeling a little stressed, I had BOTH the mascarpone/cocoa mixture and also several disks of the 99% variety.  And stayed on my “diet”.

In times of stress, I eat.

I have done this all my life, so why would I think now is any different? It’s definitely a time of stress.

I suppose what is different now is what I’m eating.  I would never have believed it, but this low-carb thing has really changed the way I eat.  I don’t mindlessly graze and after eating I’m not immediately hungry again.  So it’s now been over 8 weeks since I’ve had bread, pasta, potatoes, dessert & the like.

I’m eating plenty of other stuff, and if I was counting calories or grams of cholesterol or fat I’d probably be seeing numbers that scare me, but since I’m trying to be gentle with myself I am just sticking to low carb and following the right kinds of foods without tracking anything.  I know by the kinds of foods I’m eating that the carb grams are low enough - but have tested for ketones a few times just to be sure.

I have gone for walks yesterday and today, both of which help me relax and enjoy my life here in Paris (lovely in Spring), and I’m enjoying being on a diet where I can eat meat, butter eggs and cream (and veggies too, but that’s less indulgent!).

My tests this week all came out well, thank god.  I have a busy weekend ahead of me, then my mom flies in on Monday, and Monday evening is hospital time.  I suspect the waiting for the pathology report will be the worst, of course.

A little extra eating right now seems like not such a big deal, and I’m quite pleased that I’m able to do it within the constraints of my diet without feeling deprived.

I’m also starting to look into meditation as a stress-reliever.  If anyone reading has any experience with this I’d love to hear your thoughts.

I took my team out for lunch today.  It was the first time we’ve had a birthday in the group, and I wanted a rapid teambuilding thing, so figured it was a good choice.  Our office in Germany is in a business park in a suburb, and frankly there isn’t much around.  We eat everyday at the company cafeteria.  But today I decided to try one of the local restaurants near the train station (5 min walk) and the birthday boy chose a pizza place.  Pizza.  Pasta.  Oh, finally I found a chicken with vegetables option, but it was looking iffy for a while.  No sweat, no hesitation, no longing for something else.

Then for dessert he didn’t want the desserts at the pizza place, but instead wanted to return to the crazy ice cream shop we’d passed earlier, so we went over there and I passed easily on that too.  It’s one thing to decide ahead of time to have a special treat of gelato in Rome, but I’m not having ice cream in Germany that is in technicolor hues only found in chemical sets, not in nature.  Another easy pass, but again one I thought was worth noting for a pat on the back.

Lunch had been small so I did have some of the German salami snacks I keep on hand at the airport, knowing that otherwise I’d be ravenous by the time I got home.  I still ate quite a bit of the roasted chicken my DH had made, but managed to make my DSS pasta without even tasting it for doneness (called him to do it).

Yesterday I did track my carbs to midday as I mentioned I might.  Freaked myself out a bit by seeing how many carbs were in the small box of raspberries I’d just scarfed down - and I realized that I could quite easily be eating many many more carbs than I thought… Probably that realization helped me stick to the straight and narrow today.

I am pretty surprised that this restricted-carbohydrate way of eating is turning out to be not-so-hard.  This week I made it through a week of travel, market research, 2 business dinners, 4 flights & rarely being in control of my lunch choices and still did okay.  I think I’m eating too many nuts (because they are one of the few semi-legal foods I can easily have on hand) and I’m still cheating with berries, but overall it’s going well.

I am premenstrual and was really craving chocolate last night and so I took out 5 grams of chocolate chips, then decided to trade them in for 5 grams of a really good dark chocolate bar (after tasting one chip and it’s waxy, cheap consistency).  And then I only ate half of what I had carefully measured out, because I felt guilty for the chocolate and after a few teeny bites the taste need was satisfied.

I bought ketostix at a pharmacy on my travels and was pleased to see it turning pink, which means my body is indeed breaking down fat.

Turning down bread and pasta and dessert has been really easy - it’s fruit I miss the most, but I am finding that juicy veggies like cucumbers and peppers do a reasonable substitution.

Most interesting to me is that I am really not very hungry except after about 5  hours between meals (or less if I ate really lightly).  And by having the nuts in my bag I have an accceptable choice with me.

I must say the ability to eat cheese living in France is nice.  I don’t miss the bread with it, which is strange, because I always used to have bread w cheese.  Last night our dinner was cheese and salad (and cauliflower for me).  We had all kinds of cheese collected from my husband’s travels and from the local cheese shop, and it was kind of strange to eat cheese on a diet.  But there is a limit of how much cheese one feels like eating, even if it’s a smorgasbord of choice and there is no ‘limit’.  Similar to meat and roasted chicken.  I can eat a lot of roasted chicken but no matter how hungry I always seem to stop at the same point… Meat is a little differerent, as I sometimes just get grossed out by meat and stop in the middle of eating it.

I have found that the best breakfast is 2 fried eggs and tea w half and half.  If I have more eggs I get grossed out, and 2 keeps me satisfied all morning.  If I add anything to them they seem too strong.  At home this is fine, on the road I’ve been lucky as most of the hotels where I’ve stayed these weeks have served eggs to order.  This week is a different hotel, we’ll see how it goes…

I was expecting eating out to be a real challenge but it turned out okay.  I can usually find a salad or similar for a starter, and a main course that is mainly protein and I just don’t eat whatever starch comes with it if I cant sub it out for veggies.  As for desserts, it’s always acceptable to pass on that, and at one of the meals there was a cheese plate that I split with 2 other colleagues.  The chocolate Easter bunny will be harder to fake, but since I was barely in the office this week I didn’t open it, and this week I will open it, break it into peices, and leave him to be devoured by my staff while we sit in a meeting all day.  I’m sure no one will even notice that I’m not eating him…

I’m down a pound again this week - not the rapid loss I was expecting, but given the nuts and cheese and fact that I’m premenstural it’s okay, and it’s the right direction, and it wasn’t too hard to achieve.

Bottom line : I’ve decided to stick to this for a few more weeks and then re-evaluate.

That’s my Friday summary of the first 5 days of low-carb eating.  I could also add that it’s socially awkward and not easy to find suitable food on the run…

I made a smart move of packing a bag of almonds before my travels this week, and had to dip into them twice on airplanes when delays and hunger hit together and only carb foods were available.  I also have been eating strawberries because they are the first fruit most low carb plans let you add in, and I was just feeling totally deprived today and so I bought some.  I mean, come on, if the big indulgence is some strawberries I’m doing ok, right?

The social aspect has probably been the worst - I am never someone who likes to announce that I’m on a diet, but obviously this makes you eat very differently from everyone else.  So far I made it, but who knows how long before I have to let my work colleagues know - we usually eat both lunch and dinner together (we all travel together). 

Breakfast turned out to be okay at the hotel this week because I could order eggs.  Being home (today) is MUCH easier but it’s been do-able on the road (not in a really strict “Atkins” sense because of the almonds etc but I think except the strawberries it would pass as South Beach). 

I have been surprised that the hunger pattern seems different so quickly.  This morning I made a really nice omelette with feta, onion & mushrooms and didn’t get hungry for lunch until 6 hours later.  Yesterday I had a totally low-carb but not very voluminous lunch, and was starving 2 hours afterwards because it wasn’t enough (hence the almonds). 

This weekend will be a challenge, in that I am leaving for a weekend with a friend and I don’t know how well the eating options will fit, but I’ll do the best I can…

I know that to be successful on a diet it is SO much easier to be at home, where you are in some control of the environment and can find the diet-friendly choices that you prefer.  To not be constantly surrounded by temptation.

But this year is one of enormous travel and little quality time with my husband, so when he proposed that I join him for a weekend in the Loire valley visiting chateaux because he had a meeting on the Saturday morning I could hardly refuse (plus I didn’t know I’d be starting a diet when I accepted).

It was a weekend with 3 luxury meals in gourmet restaurants, and breakfasts where the choices were between french bread w butter and jam vs croissants… I tried not to overindulge but I had a bit of everything all weekend.  I’d been careful all week, not dipping into my weekly points, but still…

The worst of it was it left me heading into the next week in bad shape.  Scale showed stable weight for the week, no loss (in week 2!) and I just was out of the groove.  I spent the week making some good and a few bad choices.  And not using my food diary (which was no doubt the biggest mistake).

I also have poor timing in choosing my reading material.  For several months now I’d been planning to read a book called “Good Calories, Bad Calories” by Gary Taubes.  In my travels this year I always have a book with me because in airports etc I have a lot of time to read.  Well - this choice was a long, complex scientific book that totally makes you re-think basically all public health messages on nutrition, health and more specifically Weight.  There were lots of moments that really hit close to a nerve - including the fact that many of my diet attempts in my life the low-fat way have been extremely difficult to maintain.  And that I’ve been overweight forever & was born a month early because my mom had gestational diabetes and have always followed the studies that have basically shown that babies born in that circumstance are very frequently overweight kids and adults (as I am, contrary to my siblings - where my mother kept her eating and weight in very tight control her other pregnancies).

Anyway, the basic premise of his book is that 1) the evidence that makes up most of the health recommendations on diet and exercise today are rubbish, and 2) there is a reasonable hypothesis that insulin-generated hunger & fat storage contributes greatly to being overweight and difficulty losing weight.  If his second hypothesis is true (which of course today looks quite likely) then the way to approach managing weight for someone in that situation would be to focus on controlling the insulin response.  Which in turn leads you to low-carb eating or at the very least low-GI.

So now these ideas have been swimming in my head at the same time I’m starting weight watchers (which is pretty much a low-fat, high-carb, calorie-restricted plan).  So my committment to the approach has been faltering but I’ve yet to find the courage to attack low-carb or any of it’s variations (South Beach seems one of the most reasonable).

But every day I find myself thinking more and more about it.  I’ve done a fair amount of searching online.  And I’m starting to feel like giving it a go is a matter of time - in which case there is no need to wait.

Will keep you posted as I try to work this out.

Sometimes the hardest thing is just seeing where you are - and once you do that it’s somehow possible to see at least a hint of a path to where you want to be.

Since writing to acknowledge where I am and how hard it is, it’s seemed just a little bit easier to get on track. Yesterday I made healthy choices. Today as well. Not perfect, but healthy, and definitely in the right direction.

The cafeteria at our offices in Munich has a pretty nice salad bar and the soups are good too. Soup and a salad with a yogurt for dessert is healthy and diet friendly, available to me most days I’ll eat in the office, and can help eliminate some of the choices and temptations. This is one of the strategies I used 8 years ago when I traveled extensively AND lost 60+ pounds, and it’s something I need to do again. At the time I also had fixed rules for what I would eat for breakfast (ignoring a lot of the calorie-loaded choices at big hotel buffets) and that is something I do naturally now 90% of the time. I’d kind of forgotten about limiting my lunches to limited options, stocking up on fruit every chance I had (started this yesterday) and reigning in dinner choices too (not at that point yet).

I remember that with this approach I was a bit boring but was able to control food choices in about 80% of the situations, which gave me enough leeway. At the time I was also in hotels that had good gyms, something which is not currently the case, so I’ll need to see if I can get myself to do DVDs or go for walks or something in the future.

In any event, I’m feeling better and more in control about it.

In some ways it’s a bit like it was 8 years ago - a job so out of control that being in control of my diet was a big comfort — at least ONE THING I could manage. We’ll see if I can get the job in a better degree of control in the future - right now it’s not looking good for the first half of the year, and I’m trying to show flexibility and roll with the punches at work. But the dissatisfaction is deep, much deeper than it was 8 years ago, and I’m much less patient and willing to sacrifice than I had been…

Setting up a new organisation, new functions, new responsiblities and new competencies is no easy task, and frankly might turn out to be one I’m not up for.

But at least what I’ve learned in the past is coming in useful again!

When I get back home tonight I’ll upload the pictures of all the goodies piled on our meeting table these past few days.

I resisted almost everything, but yesterday I did open the cookies and had 3 of them, which were probably about 100 calories (they’re pretty small). They weren’t very good, and for that I’m very grateful, because 2009 will be full of meetings in this building and those cookies are likely to be present almost every time - and it will be SO MUCH easier to turn them down knowing they are not so good.

The chocolate I already know is not so good from other trips here. Although the packages are cute as hell, the chocolate itself is only milk chocolate (and I prefer dark) and is that too-sweet German variety where you almost gag with the cloying sweetness in the back of your throat. Still, it’s chocolate, and therefore can’t always be resisted - but by bringing my own bars of the good stuff in my suitcase I can avoid eating the junk and instead allow myself a small amount of the good dark chocolate in case of need.

Yesterday we had this big platter of desserts that were obviously too big a size for anyone to dare to eat. After about 2 hours my boss got the idea to cut each one into thirds and then she passed out plates. The only one that vaguely appealed to me was the apple pie, and luckily my three colleagues each took that, making it very easy for me to say “No, thanks” and reach for another piece of fruit instead.

The big bowl of fruit was in fact the good news. It had grapes, bananas, clementines, oranges, apples and kiwi. I had a banana, clementines & an orange.

I think in the future I’ll add to my food diary when I travel a line about all the temptations around me that I manage to pass up — sometimes it’s quite an impressive list!

It’s frightening how easy it is to go off course, especially since I was doing so well.  The good thing is that it was a minor blip, and that it happened really early in the year, before I’ve finished my Best Year Yet work (upcoming post sometime this week), because I am now certain I’m going to give the weight loss a high priority (actually different components will probably each get a high priority).

Yesterday I felt like the little devil of my shoulder nudged me and then said “watch this”…  I’d done fairly well through lunch, although to be honest I’d eaten lunch (rather heavy) with my husband mainly for the social obligation rather than out of hunger, which should have been my big red flag, but wasn’t.  Then in the car on our way to the Chateau de Versailles we passed Pierre Herme’s shop, which is a favorite and somewhere we don’t visit very often (thank goodness).

For those who don’t know, Pierre Herme is considered by many foodies to be the best of the best of the pastry chefs in France or in the world.  His stuff is original, beautiful, incredibly expensive & also not diet-friendly.

Nevertheless, my little devil said to my husband “oh look, Pierre Herme’s shop is right here…”  I could have just shut up.  I mean, my DH was concentrating on driving, he didn’t realize the shop was right there.  And we’d discussed pastries the night before, so I knew it wouldn’t take much for him to go in.  And I also know my husband.  He is incapable of buying just one or a reasonable amount.  He generally buys pastries for about 3 times the number of people we have - and in this case that meant major danger, because the only people were the two of us and my 8 year old stepson, who still has that magical childhood gift of saying “I’m full” when he really is, not just when the yummy stuff is gone.  Which meant even more potentially for me to overeat.  For days.  And I knew this BEFORE the little devil voice said “Oh, there is Pierre Herme, and we’re running ahead of schedule so we have time…”

Ugh.  The rest of the story is painfully predictable.  After our visit to Versailles (where there is a Jeff Koons exhibit in it’s final days) we came home and had dinner.  Which started well (crabmeat) but took one fatty turn after another (French cheeses, and several of them, followed by the pastry Gallette des Rois which I ate every crumb of my ginormous size serving, then popcorn with real butter). 

Where did that “pay attention to your hunger” and “leave something uneaten at every meal” thinking go?  Out the window, I guess the devil side needed to throw it overboard in order to speak up.

The good news, I guess, is that I immediately felt guilty, and although I started this morning with breakfast of more Pierre Herme pastries, I did at least manage to come to my senses again, and am planning a nice veggie-fillled day or two to come.