Round

I was late to my appointment with Dr Hope yesterday. Can anyone say “Self-Sabatoge”? I got there, but late, so we had a short appointment. My bad.

I talked to her about my weekend indulgences of dessert 4x and bread and butter 4x. She shrugged her shoulders and asked me if I enjoyed it. What??? I took in WAY too many calories to lose weight, almost all from empty carbs with little nutritional value (well, there were raspberries & pistachios in one of the cakes, does that count?). No, all her discussions were about did I enjoy it, did I do it consciously with attention.

To answer her questions, on the cakes, the second one (Saturday night) I really did enjoy. The others not so much, and in fact we decided to not return to the bakery where we got them (it’s a famous one but we’ve been unimpressed several times now). Of course, I was aware the cake was not excellent but still I ate it.

On the bread & butter : I started on the bread & butter being over-hungry for dinner on Friday night. I started out w just bread in the kitchen standing up while I did other stuff, then pulled out the butter and continued in that mindless way. At the table I would dive into the bread and butter when my DH & our guest talked shop. Are you seeing a pattern yet? At Saturday’s dinner I had bread & butter while the others spent an hour and a half eating oysters and raw clams. I am not a big seafood person, especially not raw, and while this was a huge treat for 3 of the 4 of us, for me it was NOT. I ate 3 jumbo shrimps during that time. And a lot of bread and butter. Ok, now the picture is even clearer.

It was an interesting discussion, because I felt guilty about the fat and calories and empty nutrition, and she was only discussion HOW I ate and if I ENJOYED it.

I told her I hadn’t been good about my homework but that I’d put together the document and was now on the ball. She didn’t say anything about it, nor look at it (I could have cheated)! That said, we were pressed for time because I was so late…

She gave me another homework assignment.

I’m to eat “normally” through the weekend. For those of you who, like me, have had that “normal eating” thing broken for most of their lives, that means eating with attention, adjusting each meal to your hunger (eating only a dessert is an option), being relaxed during meals, and ENJOYING what you eat. So, that’s what I’m supposed to be trying to do every day, and in particular until Monday.

Then Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I am to have PIZZA FOR LUNCH. Come again? Yes, that’s right. Pizza. You know, the crunchy-chewy crust, tangy tomato sauce, gooey cheese and a few heavenly toppings — that stuff. Every day. EATING PIZZA EVERY DAY - THAT’S MY HOMEWORK!!!

Oh, I’m also supposed to really pay attention to the taste, to my satisfaction, my hunger, and I’m supposed to try to stop before it’s all gone. (Here in Europe pizzas are individual size - about 12 inches in diameter. You can eat a whole one but it’s a good amount of food. I usually eat the whole thing….)

The idea is to re-train my brain with my “taboo foods”.

I’ve decided to really give Dr Hope & her methods a true effort. I agree with her diagnosis that I am too uptight and un-natural with food. It’s not easy to change that, and it’s clearly not the same thing as dieting, but I think it’s more important to me right now than putting myself on yet another strict and restrictive eating program. I’m hoping to find a new normal at the end of this, one that will allow me to enjoy my life - and my food and manage a lower weight with ease and joy.

…and no, she still didn’t weight me!

…I’ll fill you in on Dr Hope tomorrow, but suffice it to say I followed my diet doctor’s advice and had whatever I wanted for dinner tonight.

It was pizza.

She planted the idea in my head.

I followed my hunger and had a light lunch (soup, cottage cheese and a pear).  Cottage cheese is actually a huge treat for me, it’s really hard to find in France and very expensive but something I really like so I buy it from time to time.   I felt like dessert so I had that too, but not a lot, and I didn’t eat one thing because I didn’t LOVE it.   How’s that for progress?

Just because I can’t let go, I entered everything into my food diary, and guess what?  I’m slightly under for the day anyway.

Ha ha ha ha ha….

I have an appointment tomorrow with Dr Hope and I haven’t done my homework.

I am a bad girl.

I have been thinking a lot, and eating well (except the weekend), and doing some walking, and finally feeling better physically, and keeping a food diary, but I did not do her exercise of rating my hunger and where I was for each meal, plus what I ate.

I saw Ratatouille, do you think she’ll give me credit for that?

It’s funny how those ingrained childhood reactions never leave us. I am nervous and dreading the appointment because I didn’t do my homework. Never mind that it is ME paying the woman, and ME not getting the benefit. I feel guilty.

And feeling guilty has no place in my Low Stress Weight Loss world.

MIDNIGHT UPDATE : I felt so bad about not having done the homework that I whipped up a word document (table) & played around to make it pretty and set up a page a day w room for 3 meals and 3 snacks (although I rarely eat all those times in one day). Filling in today was a snap & w my food diary I was able to reconstruct the Monday & Tuesday without too much trouble so I have some of the homework done. Whew, now I can sleep without that on my mind!

I am starting to realize that every choice of every day leads me either closer to or farther from my goals.

There is no lazy hang-around-in-the-middle that is possible.

When I choose to go for a walk, I move closer. When I drink the hot chocolate, a bit farther. Maybe not as far as a hot fudge sundae, but not the step closer the tea would take me.

All these small choices, day in, day out, move us towards (or away from) our goals a bit at a time.

It is cold and dark and winter-like here. Brrr.

I have started making soup a lot. I take just about any veggie we have on hand and throw it in a pot w some broth, and viola, soup!

Well, it’s a tad more complicated than that - I usually sautee an onion first and play w spices a bit, but basically that’s it.

Most of the time I blend the whole thing up with my hand blender.

I put about half in the fridge, half in tupperware & into the freezer.

They are very low cal, just a few cups of veggies and a teaspoon of olive oil for a big pot. Sometimes I add a dollop of creme fraiche (like sour cream) to the bowl of soup.

In my bowls it’s 2 min in the microwave to have hot homemade soup on the table. It’s usually just for me, my DH isn’t wild about soup (although last week I made a sausage-chickpea soup for him because it was “hearty”). Longer obviously if it’s out of the freezer.

So far I’ve made spinach, celery, pumpkin, carrot, zucchini, and the latest was broccoli. I haven’t been mixing the veggies yet because I’m trying to get an idea of what each one tastes like before I play that way.

I *might* start to read some cookbooks to get some fancier soups going, but I’m kind of liking the simplicity of these one-vegetable soups.

These soups warm me up and make me feel like I’m nourishing myself — full of vitamins, nothing weird added, and homemade.

Dr. Hope gave me an assignment during our first meeting that I completed this weekend - going to see the movie “Ratatouille”. Why? Because the main character, a rat, is living and preaching the good doctor’s belief in eating for pleasure. The movie is basically about the triumph of enlightened eating over mindless munching. And you thought it was just good fun!

We saw the film on Saturday, in French, and we really liked it. Very funny, and for the diet student in the room, plenty of good perspective. The best excerpt was Remy (the rat and main character) talking to his brother about how to enjoy food, but I’ve not been able to find that quote online.

I did, however, find this :

“If you are what you eat, then I only want to eat the good stuff.”

Very clever, isn’t it?  We’ve heard that line ‘you are what you eat’ so many times but did we ever think of what that means in terms of how our daily intake translates…

So, I’m still on the learning path on this totally different way to think about food and dieting, but I do find it interesting. I’ve slacked on my Dr. Hope homework this week, but I’m going to reschedule my appointment and get cracking.

I am filled with wonder and awe at the forces of the world that bring the right things to us at the right time. We took a gourmet cooking lesson in June (it was a Valentine’s Day present to my DH, he loves to cook). Guess what we learned to make? Ratatouille. It’s actually a hugely labor-intensive process that takes hours of chopping and cooking and in the end it’s heavenly and delicious but no where near as pretty as in the movie (it’s kind of muddy red and lumpy). We’ve made it 3 times since the lesson, and I have a feeling another batch is coming up before too long…

I used to be a scale-o-holic. Or “scale ‘ho” if you are into vulgarity. I have had that foot-square piece of equipment in visible sight in my bathroom for … years. And every day, after potty and buck naked before my shower I’d get on it. Even when I was totally neglecting my weight the evil little square would taunt me on my way to shower, although it didn’t always get regular lovin’ at those times.

My last little dance with this evil critter was on Oct 14th. I was newly pregnant and thrilled about it, but knew I’d need to be careful with my weight. I was down to only a few pair of pants in my wardrobe that fit, and even those were TIGHT. During those early weeks of pregnancy I was paying a lot of attention to my nutrition, but not the scale. When I miscarried a few weeks later I knew my weight was around the same (by how my clothes felt) and I started back on healthy living soon thereafter — without the scale.

And I haven’t missed it at all. I read on others’ blogs their stress about being up a pound or . something of a pound each day. Their screams of victory if they lose the same . something of a pound the next day. Oh, the hills and valleys of the Rollercoaster. I don’t need it. My life has plenty of ups and downs, thank you very much. When I started back to healthy life I gave myself 2 weeks to ease in without pressure or a scale. I’m now about 3 weeks in (still fragile, I know). I don’t think I’m pulling out the scale anytime soon.

On Wednesday morning I was getting dressed and hadn’t done laundry so I decided to try on 2 pair of pants that didn’t fit 2 weeks ago. They were snug, but they worked. I was thrilled. (Of course, I found something else baggy to wear instead!). I think if I watch my progression by my wardrobe I’ll have a good idea of where I am without the pressure I put on myself w the scale.

Maybe you don’t do the pressure thing too much. I used to do Excel graphs and I would calculate how much I “should” lose in a week, a month, for X holiday or event, etc. If I was a pound or two short I considered myself a failure. If it was more than that, I’d usually give up.

I’m hoping that with my soon-to-be-patented Low Stress Weight Loss approach I’ll lose inches, sizes, pounds all in due time. And not kill myself in the process. And not beat myself up because I didn’t lose weight in the regular pattern of my pretty chart. And not ride the daily Scale Hell rollercoaster.

I don’t know why, but I went a bit nuts last night at dinner.  I was more hungry all day than usual, and despite a snack of yogurt, walnuts and fruit I still was really hungry at dinnertime.

My DH bought takeout Greek food - not my absolute favorite, but it’s all fairly high calorie.  And we had a fresh baguette and really good butter, and I ended up eating pretty much as I did before I started 3 weeks ago.  Aside from our weekend in Cognac (where I was intentionally not dieting) it’s the first real slip-up.  Needless to say, I also had dessert (although luckily it wasn’t that good so I didn’t go overboard).

Well, I’m back at it today.  The past is the past whether it was last night or last year, it’s over & I’m just moving on.

I’ve been fascinated by the Basque people for quite some time. The Basques are an ethnically distinct group in Europe currently living in Southwest France and Northeast Spain and are coming close to the end of the line as they become more and more assimilated each year with the European culture around them (Spanish separatist movement & violence notwithstanding).

I’ve been in France for 4 years now & have never made it there to visit, even though I’ve read several books on the topic & am very interested.

Well, my husband proposed that we take a weekend there early next year - in February.

In the meantime, I’ve been trying to decide what to do for my exercise tracking. I’ve seen these neat programs where you do a virtual walk across the US or Canada but couldn’t find that for Europe, so I calculated the number of miles between Paris (where I live) and Bilbao (capital city in Spanish Basque country) and viola — 462 miles.

Yikes. I don’t think I can actually walk 462 miles between now and our trip, but at least it gives me something to measure against, and it seems more meaningful than counting the minutes. Last week I set up an exercise ticker w minutes, with the goal randomly selected at 500, but I’ve actually been making good progress towards that (as of yesterday I’m at 285 of 500 minutes, so clearly that is do-able). I think the miles to Bilbao will be a better goal, and even if I’m far off in February, I’ll get there eventually.

So, here’s the ticker :

…it’s also on my Progress page!

I had an exercise boost today. There have been major transportation strikes in Paris for the past few weeks, and today I had a meeting across town. I considered my options and decided to WALK instead of fighting the crowds of the metro or risking crazy stress levels from terrible traffic jams on the roads. So I put on my iPod and set out… and ended up walking home at the end of the day too. 6 miles round trip! Not bad at all, and the most environmentally-friendly and least-stressful choice I could have made! Plus I’m that much closer to Bilbao

I just wanted to wish all of you Americans a Happy Thanksgiving.

I am not doing Thanksgiving this year (although some years I have done it in France).

I’ve been following all the stuff on the net about recipes for pie, dressing, turkey and sides, and all the stress of so many on how to deal with the overflow of food (and family) and not blow the diet. I’m feeling the approach of the holiday right along with you, even if I’m not shopping, cooking and cleaning my house like many of you.

I can say that I’m very jealous of the time you’ll have with your families (even those who are keeping it small this year) and a little bit envious of some of the Thanksgiving classics (I love turkey, and mashed potatoes, and gravy, and I like pumpkin pie once a year). I’m not at all jealous of the stress of overeating and the leftovers.

I hope you all have a very nice day and enjoy what you eat. It’s one day, so if you overdo it, just forgive yourself and move on!

Its so much easier to say that, and to see that, when it’s not YOU facing the holiday (and your grandma’s special recipe for xyz).

I have so very much to be Thankful for, most especially my husband, but also my family and my friends, including you in cyberspace reading this.