Fighting the Dark Cloud of pudge!!

Good morning!  It seems the numbers are going up rather than down.  Possibly the stress from wedding arrangements; possibly living with my mother’s perpetual depression.  I am not sure what one does with someone who refuses to get treatment.  Not sure how to avoid being sucked into it but she is my mother and I don’t want to abandon her.  Rock and a hardplace, as they say.  Certainly unpleasant to live with.  I wonder sometimes what she will be like when DH moves up here and we get our own place.  Also, her memory is going.  She knows it.  She gets frustrated when she interchanges nouns and I cannot follow her conversation.  Right becomes left (not great when I am driving!), bank account becomes VISA bill.  And now she is putting on weight.  She asked me how to lose it and when I told her she had to give up her abundance of chocolate and cookies, she answered “I was hoping there was another way”.  Goodness, if there was another way, wouldn’t we all be slim?!!  She can’t exercise due to her lung problems.

Now that I am in my 40s I am seeing the handing off starting of one generation to the next.  Mom never accepted that so now that she is in her 80s, she is having a great problem accepting that she/her generation are not at the centre of things.  Perhaps she is lucky to have avoided acknowledging it so long.

But as for me…the sun is shining!  Snow is actually starting to melt.  I have been thinking back to my teens and my weight loss then.  Back in those days of innocence when food wasn’t hammered into us (3 meals a day plus 2 snacks; can’t lose more than 1 - 2 pounds a week as it isn’t healthy; try to 5 or 6 small meals throughout the day).   I don’t think it was easier to lose weight then just because we were younger.  I think it was because we weren’t bombarded with information about how we have to feed our bodies. Meanwhile, we are told that detoxing is also good.  Don’t eat for a day or so- just take the magic liquid. Very confusing.  All I know is that the more I diette, the less I lose.  In fact, I have been gaining steadily since I started actively dieting.

So what is the answer?  Maybe just going back to starving myself.  OK, not starving, but not eating what I am “supposed” to eat.  I don’t plan to become one of those 80s supermodels who ate 1/2 a head of lettuce after two days of starving only to be told she was a pig! (incidentally, my classroom guinea pig at the time ate 1/2 head of lettuce a day!  Maybe that was the pig they were referring to!)  So for breakfast I had some cheese and an apple.  I am having some tea right now. Decaf!).

One somewhat yummy healthy treat I was recently introduced to is tahinni and  dates.  Technically you slice the date and put a drop of tahinni into it.  Sometimes I am too lazy so just dip the date into the jar - hey I am the only one eating it.  Anyway, it is a nice sweet treat when you crave one.  Not sure on the calories- probably relatively high - but no higher than chocolate and I am guessing much healthier.

That’s more or less where my head is at as I end my March break.