Me too! I didn't get on the kale bus but DH and I DID have rapini with pasta for dinner last week. Funny what you can devise when you read the recipe on the package of stuff you've just bought out of interest.

Last singe digits cold day today I think

No booze or Easter chocs in the house

Long weekend looks to be shaping up well so far.

Dagmar

Further "normal" eating like a person on a vacation tonight, on my last night in Savannah. (Warning: Food porn to follow.) At Huey's on the River, I had a cup of file gumbo for an appetizer, with the most amazing slices of sausage in it, and then an entree of shrimp & grits, which was deeply comforting to eat, and I felt like a kid spooning it in like ice cream. I also broke off a corner of a cornbread square, and had a bite of white French bread sopped in the residue on the plate. Also several forkfuls of my mother's crawfish etouffee, which she couldn't finish. This is not food that I ever get to eat. (I've never been to New Orleans.) I will remember it for a while.

I'm struggling with guilt and fear, but I don't care -- but I do care, and I'm dreading the scale -- but still I wanted to eat this food. Nevertheless, I'm sure my weight is up at least seven pounds, possibly 10 pounds, from all this salt, butter, bacon grease or whatever else.

This is another world. I cannot believe all the Coca-Cola consumption occurring around me -- the regular stuff, the bright devil-red bottle, not the diet stuff. And also how I've always got to tell the servers I want my tea unsweetened. The default is sweetened. And oh, the aroma from the candy makers when we were walking down River Street. They were making these things called pecan pralines, dropping them in on slabs of marble. Oh my God. They hand out bits of the broken ones. I didn't dare, even in the mood I'm in. Handed it to my mother like they'd given me a crack vial. The smell was enough ...

Back to New York tomorrow. I've had a good time, but it was not restful. I'm conflicted. How am I going to live after this? Back into harness, probably. Back to the routine.

saef - I do need you to get back to New York. I've read your last post three times drooling over every word. Just can't order crawfish etouffee around here.

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you Dagmar for sending me to google 'rapini' to replace the images from dining in Savannah.

Shannon - My DW cooks our collards as you describe. I've had that "bacon, bacon and more bacon" style. It goes down sooooo smoothly.

saef I think we all feel a little guilt when we eat off plan. But you were on vacation and got to sample foods you will probably never eat again. Or prepare for yourself. You know how easy it will be to lose the "vacation weight" if there IS any (it sounds like your indulgences were quite civilized). You've said it already - you'll get "back in harness".

For the record if it were me I'd have bought and eaten a bag of the pecan pralines. Life is too short to spend it eating kale every single day.

Dagmar

Had my "long weekend indulgence" last night while watching "Wallander". Two beers and a big piece of lower fat cheddar cheese. No measuring or weighing - just broke off a hunk and ate it. Very satisfying.

Now I'm going to lower my caffeine intake from today - Friday - to Monday morning. One coffee per day and one energy drink - that's it. The caffeine dependency is driving a lot of the rest of things - lack of sleep, overeating, crashing, etc. etc. And all the cr*p in the energy drinks is probably setting me up for some kind of physical manifestation of illness.

I wish I had a week of no work to break the dependency but I don't. So I will chip away at it on weekends. I CAN do this.

Dagmar

I've always wanted to go to New Orleans--especially for the food. We'll get there one day for sure. In the mean time, I'll have to find some recipes. I have one for gumbo that is quite good and very easy.

Not much to report here. My weight is slowly dropping, but still not down to what I acquired in February. Close though.

Saef: good on you for enjoying your time there - sounds like you avoided the stuff that's not worth eating (at least to me - pecan pralines can be found in a lot of places, but shrimp and grits from the source? You gotta go for that). I hope the transition back to being "in harness" isn't too rough.

I'm stalled out for weight loss over the last month. It looks like if I want to try to lose more before the wedding, I'll have to dig down to about 1200 calories per day, something I've NEVER tried before. Neurodoc is currently grinding it out at that level, but it sounds very difficult. On the other hand, I tried on my dress and it looks pretty bulgy in the middle.

I was at a conference yesterday, and I successfully avoided a whole lot of high-calorie food and candy (though I caved and ate a cookie while stranded for 90 minutes at a train station). A man sat down next to me during one of the talks. He systematically opened and ate at least 20-25 small bags of M&Ms during this hour-long presentation. I was completely distracted by this - he would finish one, wait maybe 30 seconds, then slowly lean down, quietly open the next bag, then mechanically pop each one into his mouth every 5 seconds. He was a candy eating machine. At the end, he got up and left.

JayZee Jay - the M&M guy would have driven me totally insane.

Saef - I found that I didn't gain on my trip to New Orleans because I walked so much while there. Sadly, I didn't keep up that pattern when I got home. The food choices you made sound delicious. I hope you enjoyed some of your trip. you sound so stressed when you talk about it.

That's a lot of M&M's! We buy huge bags of mixed fun sized candy for the office and it's usually the M&M's that I'll eat. But I'll eat ONE fun sized package and be done! That's like less than 20 candies. That guy had to have eaten several hundred! Yikes!

M&Ms. I used to be able to eat a ton of them (minor exaggeration, not major). Sometimes I miss them, but only if I don't have great dark chocolate lying around.

saef - one word: Yum!

Shannon, well, it wasn't relaxing. It was partly a Christmas gift for my 73-year-old mother, so there was a lot of herding of and watching over her, as she's pretty physically healthy but reverts to needy, rather childish behavior when she's in my presence for prolonged periods. I find myself doing & taking care of the same things for her that my father used to while he was still alive. This is mentally tiring.

But Savannah itself was worth it, beautiful and fascinating, one of those places that I felt I could have stayed for another week or two, or would wish to return to yearly. I wish I could have ditched the tours (and my mother) and just wander, on my own, for hours, walking where I wished and looking around at my leisure. What an extraordinary place, from the squares and streets, to the row houses, to the mansion houses, to the alleys and the carriage houses, to the churches and commercial buildings, to the cotton warehouses repurposed into bars and restaurants. And I've got a list of things I didn't see, like the two historic cemeteries, and also the wildlife refuges, and the beaches.

I'm so sad to be back.

So saef, put in your list of places to visit again, this time alone, for a week, so you have the time to explore at your leisure.

JayZee, is your status accurate (135 lbs @ 5'6")? If so, any bulges must be fairly minimal, and can be taken care of by Spanx. Putting extra stress on yourself before your wedding by eating way below your usual calories is a terrible idea. Also, for the record, it's pretty rude to eat continuously through an entire presentation, regardless of whether its candy or carrots.

Saef, I'm really glad you enjoyed your time off. Even with your mom to watch over, I'm betting you got to disconnect a bit from your daily responsibilities and that alone may have lowered your stress cortisol enough to prevent real weight gain. Once the excess salt is out of your system, I'm betting you will carry only the fond memories of shrimp, gumbo and crab cakes into next week.

My 8 year old had a HUGE tantrum this evening (just done about 10 minutes ago) and the stress of it is killing me. I think I need to go unwind in front of a mindless movie from Netflix. Hope everyone's weekend is good.

I'm about 137 right now, not too far off but a bit dismayed that I am moving in the wrong direction with 2 months to go. My dress is a loose sheath, nothing fitted or frilly but it has a sash belt that unfortunately hits right at my apple-shape trouble spot. Oh well, spanx were invented for a reason.

The guy eating candy at the meeting actually made me a bit sad. It's entirely unprofessional behavior, and something most people would never do while surrounded by colleagues. Something about his machine-like consumption of so much chocolate so quickly, it struck a chord with me. My former binge eating was always in private, but otherwise was very similar in that I was inserting food in my mouth with no mindfulness of the act.

Saef: ditto to the wish that you will have the chance to wander Savannah on your own, unfettered.

I'm ashamed to come back here and tell you all this, but I think not telling you would be a step backward for me in being upfront about weight and body image issues.

I did not gain any weight while I was away, even though I didn't get to the gym for three straight days, even though I ate out for five days and this included two pretty serious meals. I stood on the scale this morning, carefully, after re-setting it, braced myself, looked down -- and found I'd lost a pound.

Shannon and Andrea, you called it accurately. It must have been all the walking. I don't know if my cortisol levels dropped. I did feel overly preoccupied by planning the days' activities, and as I said, my mother requires minding, rather like a toddler.

I'm going to have to take a long, hard look at my irrational feelings of panic if I don't get to the gym for a formal exercise session, and the utter inaccuracy of my perception of my weight, as I was convinced I'd swollen up when actually, I lived up to the title of this subforum and I maintained.