I looked for nurturing in a fruit tart last night. Didn't find it. Alas....

My goal for today and tomorrow: don't blow it! The fruit tart was a speed bump, that's all. Won't undo all my efforts last week.

Have a good weekend all!

So much for posting every day.

Nurturing. Need it. Food does not provide it. I find organised space helps me. This includes planned meals and only eating when sitting down.

Hurtling onward. (Can one hurtle and trudge at the same time?)

PS Up 2lbs today. My scales are ridiculous. I may invest in new batteries!

The last two days have been an inner struggle against my own rigidity & lack of flexibility. Which is my problem & my burden, far more than lagging motivation or laxity.

My mother's been visiting, to support me through the MRI & the re-testing & now this new verdict that it's unlikely my hearing will ever be normal again, all due to this random virus that got into my inner ear. Anyway, I've had to change my routines to accommodate her. This is maddeningly difficult for me. I have to do a lot self-talk to calm myself down.

For example, on Friday, she wanted to go to dinner to someplace nice. Okay. I, too, like to sit at a marble bistro table in summer with a glass of brewed ice tea in front of me, preferably outside, or in a room so chilled I need a light cashmere over my bare shoulders. I like watching the people go by, the men with their bare tanned legs & Italian loafers, the ladies in summer dresses. I have a nice, cared-for, catered-to feeling.

Oh, but there's the eating thing. So again, I had the usual menu jitters -- scanning so carefully, looking for the key words, preparing my questions for the waiter. And then, after ordering, menu remorse: Did I choose absolutely the best, healthiest, lowest-calorie choice on the menu? If I did not, why?

Then the following day, my mother wanted to go antiquing in Connecticut. She sees Saturday as a fun day. For me, it's a workout optimization day. Usually, that would be my day to take spin class & Pilates class, & maybe mess with some weights at the intervals in between. Anything "fun" gets relegated to after my morning of thoroughly working my body.

Oh, I was sooo annoyed at having to miss the usual classes. As if they were college classes & I'd be behind afterward for not getting the day's lesson. (But I did get to the gym in the early morning, before the Saturday schedule of classes started, for an hour of cardio. That, I made clear, was non-negotiable.)

And of course, while antiquing, there was lunch out, with the same restaurant challenge. The minefield of the menu.

Anyway, the results: Friday night was a seafood salad appetizer of calamari, octopus, shrimp, scallops, with olive oil & vinegar, sliced olives & capers -- really earthy, elemental & great, but salty, which worried me -- and then an an entree of grilled swordish piled atop haricots verts with roasted red pepper. (What I call "food that sits on a nest.") They would have sauced it, but I told them not to.

Saturday afternoon was an arugula salad with strawberry slices & melon vinaigrette topped with a couple seared dry Cajun seasoned sea scallops. Nice peppery arugula & then the red peppery seasoning. A bit wet, but good.

Some very plain eating will be happening after this.

I really need to relax. This is life. Life is to be enjoyed. Working out is not life. It's important, but it's not life.

saef - come round here for lunch. I'm having a pile of raw veg (no dressing), a tin of fish (probably mackerel) and a seeded biscuit/cracker. And a glass of water. Plain, plain, plain.

And we can go for a stroll on the beach afterwards. Relaxing. Wear your sunglasses.

(Note: I'm actually at work, flogging away at a proposal. The food is right but the beach is unlikely to happen today.)

Home - work - food - exercise - sleep balance. That's the kind of thing I'm working on and it keeps getting out of balance. When I give up writing all my food down because I want to use that time to read a story, then I find I put on weight. When I spend time just mucking about, then I find that my work gets behind. And when I spend time away, then stuff at home goes haywire. Oh, there are so many examples like that.

We're works in progress, friends.

Yeah, saef... You really do need to loosen up the stressing... You are already under a lot of health stress!

None of the foods you listed are in any way terrible. In fact, I'd be happy to have eaten so well. How fortunate you are to have these choices.

No, working out is not life. It's only one small part of life. Same with eating.

I'm going to have to give you an "A" for the weekend. Don't try to argue with me, that's the final grade.

Jay

Thanks for the reality check. This kind of behavior is, of course, a pattern of mine. If I think life is going crazy, I tend to over-exert control in certain areas, which are, invariably, eating & exercise but also other daily routines. If I carry out the daily routine perfectly, almost like a ritual, then I feel safe [saef ;], in spite of being buffeted by stress or crises. Probably the feeling of safety comes from controlling completely what I can actually control, when much else feels uncontrollable. But that leads to be my being perfectionistic & hard on myself about food consumption. Obviously I'm a veteran of years of fighting eating disordered behavior.

And yeah, you're right, Jay, I'm fortunate in being offered these good menus. By luck, I inhabit an area in which foodies, the appearance-conscious & the health-conscious proliferate, and that clientele can be very demanding of the restaurants they frequent. I should be able to feel confident, as long as the restaurant is well-chosen. I just tend to second-guess myself a lot.

Silverbirch, your meal sounds fine to me. I'm a fan of tinned sardines myself.

saef - oh, I do remember that post! She articulated that feeling so, so well. I would probably do just fine if I didn't share space with a spouse who is a) a phenomenal chef and b) insistent on keeping lots of tasty embellishments PLUS a number of my trigger foods around. Our pantry is truly a danger zone! Agreed, there is no nurturing in there. As a significantly hearing-challenged individual, welcome to the ranks, even if it's temporary! I think having poor hearing makes me much more attuned to body language during conversation. But on the other hand, I am not easily distracted by things going on around me. And, I get lots of email since talking on the phone is an ugly process - lots of "Whuh?" and "Say again?"
I second Jay's assessment of your weekend - sounds like the only possible improvement would have been your being able to enjoy it a bit more!

The weekend wasn't quite where I want to be food-wise. We hosted some friends/family to celebrate DS10 becoming DS11. Even with restraint, I'll have some overcoming to do this week. No surprise there, but fortunately the scale just remains stubbornly ... there, at 149. Lots of good stuff ripening in the garden; it will definitely be easy to get in more veggies!

You made stellar choices, Saef!

Becky, my kitchen is a full of problems today. All the kids are at camp and I was on call yesterday. DH went to the store (problem#1) and had friends over to watch the World Cup. So we have 2 trays of cinnamon rolls, bags of chips, several dips, cokes, etc., stuff I mostly never touch, but I'm tired and hungry and stressed and fell face first into some of it. I'm thirsty and I'm tired....why does my body read discomfort of any type as hunger?

Saef, sounds like you made great choices! Not so much for me, this weekend I fell into biscuits & gravy, samosas, chili cheese fries, and cheesecake. This week will be healthier since I don't want to screw anything up for my race on Saturday. I have a feeling after the race I will feel entitled to junk though.

Jessica. I too, even with choice of a decent salad, chose biscuits and gravy at a Denny's-type restaurant Sat night. Why?? Why did those words come out of my mouth when the waiter asked? Some days I just don't know my brain. I did eat eggs (and not all of the biscuits or gravy) and drank water, but still, not one of my finer moments. Rest of the weekend was fairly decent, and I was able to get some nice stuff at a farmer's market yesterday. New week, moving on.

Midwife asked a wonderful question, which gets to the heart of a lot of my food issues, and I'll bet to a lot of everyone else's:

Bingo.

So what do we do about this? I try to pull myself out of the moment & away from the food (on the way to picking up yet another script, step away from the aisle where CVS sells the cheap chocolate) & in that calmer space, interrogate myself & figure out what is going on. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Feelings can be so big & blurry & weird-shaped & unintelligible. Putting something in one's mouth is always such a simple solution.

saef - The simple solution wasn't simple at all! It amazes me what those cumulative moments in time have cost. I tend toward the compulsive, negative type of perfection, including all the self-hatred that goes with it. During the most successful phases of my weight loss, I wore a ruby ring to remind myself to "jump out" and talk to myself as if I were a good friend instead of me. So the internal conversations would go more along the line of, "Look, girlfriend, let me pull you off the potato chip bag. We KNOW this doesn't work. Let's go outside and weed for 10 minutes and see what happens," instead of "Nice work, @$$hole - there's another 600 calories of poison. Give it up, you're weak, and you will always be a weak little sneak eater."

On midwife's question, I think my mind is the traitor - for me it's "why does my mind read discomfort of any type as hunger?" Eh. I am still learning.

Woke up 3 pounds heavier, and truly do not know why. It acts like the color allergy, but I didn't get into anything processed yesterday. Salt's never an issue for me, I was on plan, and PMS should still be a week off (but maybe at 43 I can't take that for granted any more!). Odd. I credit 3FC completely for teaching me how to roll with this. More green tea, more water, more sleep. Perhaps it is the stress coming home to roost.

Hmm, seems I cannot have ice cream every day. Nor can I have as much cheese as I want. ANd, jeez, I really do need to exercise. Hmmm, thought I knew that already. Well, I have learned again.

Becky I like the idea of actively self nurturing. I am going to find myself a reminder ring that I will use. I need to find the ring first! Do any of you chicks think of great hiding places, a place where you put something so you will not forget where you placed it only to forget where that is? My ipod is in that place too. And my favorite sunglasses. And our safe key. Note a pattern?

Saef, I have been reading along and feel the suckage of your situation. SOmetimes random bad things happen to good people. I am so sorry you are going thru this. A patient called me yesterday to tell me her full term healthy baby died days prior to her due date. No obvious reason why.

Silver, how far from the beach do you live and how close to the airport to pick me up?

Midwife, I think certain people (most) are wired to feel hunger/snacking as response to just about any discomfort, or comfort (joy as well) and some others just do not. Those others have something, everyone has something. A friend of mine has never had a weight concern, food is just not her thing. Hard for me to imagine but true.

Pat, I will laugh and move on also. And I will raise my ticker number in the hopes I will soon be lowering it.

Jessica, when is your tri? Its coming soon isn't it? I have seen your workout posts. They are inspiring.

Jay, please visit more often. I very much appreciate you

OK, once again, back to basics. See you all very soon as I plan to stay very close to this place

Kitty, yes, my tri is this coming Saturday and I have another one two weeks later. I'm definitely starting to get both excited and nervous. This week is basically a recovery week to get ready for the race -- my legs are still really sore from last weekend's workouts though so I'm hoping they will be okay on race day.

I had the weirdest experience with my new HRM this morning. The previous times I used my HRM was on the bike and during a brick. On the bike, my heart rate pretty much was where I expected, given I'd been basing my workouts on perceived exertion before I had the HRM. My "zone 2" perceived exertion corresponded to a heart rate of about 140 on the bike which is in zone 2 for me according to the chart. On the bike I had to work pretty hard to get my heart rate into zone 4 and keep it around 160 bpm.

The problem is that when I run, it is basically impossible for me to get my heart rate below 150bpm. I can't get my heart rate lower than that unless I'm walking. My slowest run can maybe get down to 148 or so, and when I run at a normal faster pace it's around 165. This morning for the first time I took my HRM when going just for a run without biking first and it was totally spastic. When I was walking to warm up, it was at 116. As soon as I started running (and we're talking easy, slow jog -- 13:30/mile) it shot up to 208. I didn't feel like I was exerting myself very much at all so it seemed really weird. It went back down and hovered in the 180's for a while, then started to drop, and after about 15 minutes was down around 150 which was where I had expected it to be. Is this some kind of weird warmup effect? Do you guys see this? Or is my HRM just not working or I didn't have it on right?

I was reading in the book my training plan is from about race nutrition since I'm trying to figure out how to schedule my breakfast. I laughed when I saw in there that they specifically say, multiple times, that on days you have hard workouts and on race days you should absolutely not restrict calories in any way. The book is about triathlon for women, so of course it has a weight loss section (funny how you don't see that in the book for men), and they were like, women trying to lose weight while training tend to cut too many calories and not be able to go as fast. So go ahead and cut calories on the easy days, but on hard days eat as much as you want.

That's weird, Jessica. I'd tend to blame the HRM (cause I have a general mistrust of gadgets). Are you able to carry a conversation when you run slower? Can you check your radial pulse while you run?

Kitty, that's just terrible about the baby.