The picture is a "blobfish". No kidding! Here's a link - it's #8 on the list.
http://www.weirdworm.com/10-strangest-fish/

Bargoo - I've never had blueberry pie. I suspect that I would love it, so I must never, ever try it.

I'm greatly entertained by the blobfish pic.

I am so wrong about that picture, because I thought it was someone trying to copy the cartoon character Ziggy.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...gy-cartoon.jpg

And Becky, no, the Dinosaur Barbeque originated in Rochester, NY, and moved from thence to Syracuse and also down to the city. It's very famous in the area where I grew up. I've never eaten there, on the theory that you can't crave or miss what you've never had.

Syracuse - oh gosh, just a little different from Buffalo. I apologize to the New Yorkers! Saef, thank you for the correction! I figured Dinosaur must have been memorable, since DH ran out an bought the cookbook. I'll have to flip through it and see what the fuss is about.

I must stop reading this thread before dinner. Brownies, BBQ, I'm so hungry now I might even take a stab at eating the blobfish! :rofl:

Dagmar :hungry:

Well, the work lunch has been decided without me! LOL The guys want to do a carne asada barbecue--one guy has already volunteered to bring his BBQ. Everyone wants to contribute a dish, so I'll do signups so we don't have too much salsa and not enough tortillas. Whatever the guys don't bring, I'll supply. Done deal. Glad about that!

Potlucks all always fun, I have gotten some of my best recipes from potlucks.

Thanks for not kicking me out of the maintainers club! In two days I lost 3.6 pounds of the 10 pounds I gained this month, by just standard dieting, low sodium and almost no sugar. The sugar cycle was really bad for me over Thanksgiving etc but to my surprise I had only a one-day sugar crash (oversleeping plus an hour nap and raging cravings). Yesterday I felt back on track, and my weight shows it. The next 6 or 7 pounds will of course be slower to lose but that is OK.

Cultivating gourmet tastes definitely helps me on maintenance. Junky-tasting brownies don't do much for me. If it's just a sugar and faux-chocolate delivery system, it's not worth it to me. My favorite acronym these days is ITWY (Is this worth it?). A treat had better be worth the calories or why bother?

It's funny to think of the maintainers thread as a source for temptation! Real-life temptations abound in my day to day life, so mention of potlucks and brownies here don't trigger me much. But I try not to get too graphic in describing my overeating here, because it can tempt me and all of you to at least some extent...

Chris, nobody gets kicked out, we all know the temptations that surround us....sometimes we give in to them , we are all human.

Chris, I'm actually fascinated by how often we talk about food in our chats & I think a lot about what it means.

As for whether a gourmet palate prevents one from eating junk: I can't decide if I have a more exacting palate, because I don't like the initial taste of a too-sweet or too-salty, artificially jacked-up flavor. (I said "initial" because after a few bites, I forget my laboriously learned tastes and wallow just as I used to.) Or if I have a dumbed-down & simplified palate, because, contrary to the behaviors of a lot of my acquaintance, I try NOT to obsess about new recipes and trying new things and feeding people spectacularly and showing off cooking skills, as this way leads to madness for me.

Sophistication about food is a kind of class marker & a sign of culture. When you're discriminating about food, you show that you've made it, you have the leisure & resources to learn about foods, to travel, to eat in restaurants, to try different ethnic cuisines, to spend time mastering cookery at home. And in some ways, I have turned my back on that because the primary criteria for me has become health, with taste second, and exoticism last of all. The order is somewhat reversed among my friends.

But my past history shows that I am subject to the binge/restrict cycle. And in order not to punish myself with overrestriction and self-recrimination, I really need to dial down the "binge" part. I have extended the my own personal definition of "binge" to any fetishizing of food or spending too much time over recipes or living a too-food-centric life.

It's hard to maintain that balance: My life is already far too food-centric because I have to work so hard at consciously making healthy choices instead of easing into the default setting of easily accessible junk.

This conversation has me thinking about my own temptations and how I deal or fail to deal with them.

I'm curious about how many maintainers still blacklist some foods. I do. In some cases, entire classes of foods. Sometimes it's because they don't meet my cost/benefit ratio criteria. Or because I deem them too lousy a fuel. In others, I just don't think I completely trust myself as I know well I could set off some physiologic cycle of binging.

Saef, How can we not be food-centric as maintainers in an culture with a broken food system that heavily markets the poorest of choices? Here in Appalachia, any healthy attitude towards food or lifestyle is regarded as some kind of eccentricity.

I have found myself in a position that I never thought that I would be in. I was told by the dietician and MD that I saw that I should be no lower then 115. I also promised DH that this is as low as I would go.

Today, after running on the treadmill I weighed in at 113.8. I usually weigh 1.5 - 2 pounds less right after my long run, so I'm sure I'm at 115-ish. I found the old me inside my head justifying that I could now eat a whole bunch of candy I bought for my nieces and nephews for Xmas.

I didn't indulge, but I guess I'm going to have to up my calories a little - that thought is extremely disturbing to me!

Jen

It is going to be difficult to target a weight and never weigh less or more than that. If you can figure out how to do that you could make a million dollars. It is perfctly normal for weight to fluctuate by a few pounds, with me it is usually about two pounds either way. So what do the Dietician and MD plus your DH plan to do to you if you are 113-114 not 115 ? I can see if you are 105 , not 115 there might be cause for concern but a pound or two ! Sheesh ! ! I wouldn't let it bother me just tell them it is normal fluctuation and you are doing the best you can.

Jen-- what Bargoo says makes sense......

When I worked at WW, we had minimum weights-- you can't weigh less than the minimum and still be a member, because you are underweight. I found myself teetering towards the minimum some months-- for me at 5'5", the minimum was 120. We definitely had members that were underweight and knew it-- they would weigh in their shoes/ jackets/ etc. while most of us strip down as much as possible! For your height Jen you aren't technically underweight (at least according to BMI charts) unless you are 98 pounds-- I'm sure you'll never be that low.

Out of curiosity, what are you weighing habits? Do you always weigh in right after exercise?

The part that I pulled out & quoted: This is what you need to work on. Not dropping below your "promised" weight but your reaction to that occurrence. Some possible reactions:

1) Oh, well, that's lower than promised, but I kinda like it. Maybe it would be okay. Or even to go a little lower. (That would have been my thinking in my eating disorderish days -- I was always pushing to go lower even when my Better Half told me no, I shouldn't, and that everyone was telling me not to. There was no such thing as "too low." For other people, maybe, but not for me.)

2) Hey that means I can eat that particular food that I just coveted the other day, which has gotten itself lodged into my mind, so that I'm convinced that I need it, I absolutely HAVE TO have it. Of course, it's not a healthy food, in fact, it's cruddy, but it's something that once, I used to enjoy immoderately. It's okay, I've exercised it off already, in a sense. (This, in me, is the Voice of Temptation, and should NEVER be listened to. Because it's the voice of an accountant, in which exercise = permission to eat. I have never been able to get into the accounting mode without also crashing into eating disorder territory. Because you can't out-exercise a bad diet, as is frequently written here. And because exercise session then become a form of repentance and a form of self-flagellation.)

Is it possible for you to moderate your exercise regimen on the following day? For me, who clings desperately to the idea of exercise like a cross & garlic to keep the vampire of obesity away, this would be difficult, but it seems like a sane reaction.

Or would you be able to increase slightly your intake of healthy foods? Extra nuts? More fruit? Even a slice of whole-grain bread? Whatever you eat & enjoy that is actually good for you?