Hi dudettes

My scale is cooperating. PLAN--- remember to stay ON PLAN. I am a more satisfied person when I am not satisfying myself with food that does not satisfy!!! Literally. I have been so so so hungry and I think it has to do with my food choices.

In the accountability thread I mentioned a dinner at a restaurant with another couple. They are relatively new friends. Last summer I first met the woman at a boy's bday party. She also had a little baby with her, he was nine months old. She looked thin to me, did not strike me as thick or skinny or anything, just normal. I complimented her on a cute jean skirt and she said had not finished losing her baby weight and could not fit into her normal clothing. I remember being surprised as I was thinking she looked great.

This year our children are at the same school. Now I know what she meant about not being at pre-baby weight. This woman is tiny!

When we went out to dinner she and I both ordered the special, a seared tuna with grilled romaine and fingerling potatoes. I transferred the potatoes to dh's plate. We also both ordered the spinach salad. It came with a hazelnut vinegarette dressing. She asked for hers on the side. I did not, and sort of regretted it after the fact. It was fairly heavily covering the salad. Another point of note. Next to the dinner plates was a slice of crusty wonderful looking sour dough type bread and dipping oil. I could not resist half, dipped into dh's oil and she did not touch it. Nobody at the table ordered dessert.

I was happy to note that this "naturally" thin woman absolutely monitored her own intake, pretty much just like I did! (earlier on that day I posted in accountability thread that I would be OP for dinner, minus the wine)

Sorry to go on and on, but do you all get my interest?

Kitty - I totally get your interest. I enjoy watching that kind of thing as well.

Shanon, thx for the validation When I was in college the girls would be ED competitive with each other. I feel like this is observation for edification purposes.

Kitty, I really appreciate your field notes & anthropological reporting on the habits of Naturally Thin Women in their natural habitat, out there in the wilds of the restaurant world. I'm beginning to think that we formerly fat people should all intern with Naturally Thin People, shadowing them during all their waking hours & watching their eating & exercise & incidental movement habits & if appropriate, modeling our behavior on theirs. For me, it would be helpful if we could also hook up electrodes & other monitoring devices to their bodies, because I want to know about their relationship to hunger: when they experience it, how they react to it & etc. Because I seem to get hungrier than they do, or more upset by hunger or even the possibility of being hungry, and I think it's part of the puzzle that I need to work on.

Silver, thanks for your praise on my behaviors during my long weekend with my mother. These occasions can be trying & call for a lot of stoicism at good restaurants & in the evenings, when she has her treat. We're slightly off-kilter at these moments. We used to eat together -- "binge buddies" would be an accurate term. Our outings usually ended with us getting some food & going home to share it together: a really big chocolate bar, a bag of Jelly Belly or SourPatch Kid candies, a bag of peanut M&Ms, whatever. I always have to fend that off.

Also, Silver, I have adopted your "high-quality protein" phrase. It's wonderfully apt.

And Midwife, your flower idea has stuck with me. It's how I got through Easter. No Cadbury Eggs -- I bought myself mini daffodils and hyacinths for my home instead. I want a big pot of blue hydrangeas. It should cost as much as some high-quality protein.

I am trying to think rationally about our office Chinese takeout order on Thursday. The restaurant serves affluent residents in Greenwich CT & thus is relatively health-conscious, as such places go -- it offers brown rice, uses good produce which is not overcooked & has reasonable portions. I should be fine with getting Buddhist Delight & a small carton of hot & sour soup. My goal is to eat this, to be happy, and then to have a large salad for dinner at home that night -- and above all, not to freak out on the sodium weight gain the next morning.

I will therefore weigh myself Thursday AM rather than Friday AM & record said weight here, because otherwise I will angst over the sodium & my travails in life & all my unrewarded labor & the futility of effort & etc. & etc., becoming insufferable to all of 3FC. All over a few transitory pounds from the magical, well-known superbloating properties of Chinese food.

I cannot believe what a momentuous, mountainous challenge that little Chinese takeout lunch with the rest of my dept. appears to be from here. It's not a natural disaster. It's not the civil unrest in Thailand. I can't die from it. Still ....

There's a mongraph in this. Tragically, anthropological monographs don't have very big print runs. We'd have to package it cleverly & use all our contacts to pitch it.

Ah, yes. Is that what the French woman (Mireille G - on BB so cannot check) who has Louis Vuitton & champagne in her blood did?

But this would be about the American (N American?) woman. Fascinating subject. Can I be the David Attenborough in the movie? I have the accent.

KC & saef: thanks for the laugh! But it's serious stuff, very worthwhile studying and very worthwhile pondering.

KC - good going.

P.S. I have just refused a milk chocolate caramel as being against my religion.

you guys are completely awesome

Fascinating observation, My Dear Kitty.

Perhaps I shall relay my own dinner observations from last night.

DD wanted Olive Garden for a family dinner status post graduation.

I was forearmed to order the apricot chicken.

I ate salad, 2 breadsticks (boo), 2 stuffed mushrooms, and the apricot chicken. I did not order dessert.

DD (17 yo) was on my right and she ordered dessert. DS (15 yo) was on my left and ordered dessert. They both ate about 60% of their respective desserts and stopped. They were "full"...they had no inclination to finish their desserts. They could stop and walk away. This idea is completely foreign to me. Walk away from an unfinished portion of cake? Surely there is room for a few more bites of deliciousness....I mean poison. Who the $*(#U$# walks away from the last bites of dessert? Apparently, 2 people who are related to me....I swear they are, but how in the world did they get this "walk away" gene? Not from me. This is where I relate that I finished DS's dessert.

I have always found it FASCINATING throughout my weight loss journey to watch how those I label as "naturally thin" people eat. They actually stop before they are uncomfortably full. They don't eat all the bread in the bread basket. They're not part of the clean plate club! They "eat when hungry" and "don't eat when not hungry." Simple concepts. Not so simple (or easy) for me to follow.

My kids are anomalies, too. Every year when they were little they'd go trick or treating. Afterward they'd put their bags of candy in the pantry and forget about them. For months. Who on earth can forget about candy. In the pantry. Just begging to be eaten? Well, not me. DH and I first ate all the "good stuff" and then when Christmas rolled around we threw away the icky stuff. The kids never cared one way or the other.

I wish I could ignore the bread basket. I just love bread so much!

I can sometimes lose track of candy for a little while. Not forever, mind you, but for a little while. I can forget totally that I have store bought cookies in the pantry. I can never ever forget fresh baked goods - cupcakes, cakes, bread, cornread, any of them...

My husband is one of those people, too. He will eat like 3/4 of a snickers bar and then put the rest away for later. Who doesn't finish the whole candy bar?

Plus, he started riding his bike a couple months ago. Maybe once a week, for 10 - 15 miles. He has already dropped about 10 pounds, and he wasn't fat to start with!

It's not fair!

That is totally not fair! I agree wholeheartedly!!

Maybe we need an ongoing separate thread for Field Notes by Formerly Fat Amateur Anthropologists on the Eating Behaviors of the Naturally Thin.

I would check that thing at least every other day. It would help me with my acting skills. I'm always trying to impersonate someone who's never been fat in her life.

This is so cool! All fast food places should do this: http://www.kpho.com/health/23593848/...ms_ss=facebook