Round

I have been thinking about my Low Stress Weight Loss approach and what is working and what is not.

What is working :

• It is indeed Low Stress
• I am enjoying food more than ever
• I am learning new ways to think about eating, which should eventually lead to me eating less & feeling satisfied, which I think is the basis for managing my weight for the rest of my life

What is Not Working :

• I’m not actually losing weight.

So, this isn’t computing right for me. On the one hand, I’m willing to give Dr Hope & her methods a real try. And I’ve read enough about “Intuitive Eating” (which is basically what I’m doing) to know that actually gaining a little at the beginning is normal. But it feels really odd because it’s not the direction I want to head. I don’t think I’ve been GAINING weight (holiday indulgences not withstanding) but I am pretty sure from the fit of my clothes that I’m not losing.

So what am I going to do? Take a baby step backward.

One of the first things I did when starting Low Stress Weight Loss almost 2 months ago was to ditch the scale. But at the time I was counting calories, which I’ve now stopped. So I’m going to add the scale back in, weekly. Just to have the accountability, and a reminder to myself of what I’m trying to achieve.

I am comfortable going with all the other steps of Low Stress Weight Loss through the end of January, but I’ll no longer be going scale-free.

I was unable to join the Skinnies for the day because my being sick finally got intolerable and I caved in & went to the doctor instead. We had decided to have the last dinner together at home, and the Skinnies wanted to cook, in part to thank us for staying here, and in part because they knew we missed good Mexican food, and Mr Skinny’s family is Mexican.

My cousin actually decided to add Chicken Soup to the menu because of my incessant coughing and so our menu was a bit odd - chicken soup followed by tostadas. I offered to make dessert but they said, “oh no, we’ll have way to much food already”. Unheard of in France to have a dinner party without at least 3 courses (starter, main dish, dessert) and just skipping the cheese course (which normally comes before dessert) is unusual.

I’d had lunch out at an Asian restaurant near the doctor’s office, and had Pho, which is a super-yummy Vietnamese broth soup with noodles and bits of meat in it. I love Pho and haven’t had it since I’ve been in Paris, which is crazy, since there is such a large Vietnamese immigrant community here (Vietnam was a French colony for a very long time). If you’ve never had Vietnamese food, and you like Chinese food, you are really missing out. As one of my friends said “It’s like the French taught the Chinese to cook with subtlety”. So my soup was very good - and warm and comforting….and gone to the last drop without a second thought. Right. No “pausing mid-way through the meal to evaluate remaining hunger” and no “leave a little bit uneaten”. Just gone. It’s VERY VERY hard for me to do these new exercises, even when I am thinking about them at the beginning of a meal.

As dinnertime rolls around the Skinnies come back from their day victorious, for they have found one of the specialized grocers and found all the missing ingredients for both their tostadas and the chicken soup (with matzo balls!). They also bought a bag of tortilla chips which they eat from time to time while cooking. Not pigging out, but not counting them carefully either.

The chicken soup was very good. My cousin called my aunt to make sure she had the proportions right for the matzo balls and she added potato to the soup because “she likes it that way” whereas I wouldn’t do that because matzo balls are starchy and potatoes are starchy and for calories it would seems stupid to me to double the starch like that. But Mrs Skinny just thought she liked them, so she added them. Good for her.

The main deal was of course the tostadas. The only thing not from scratch was the tortillas because Mr Skinny says they take a huge amount of time and are hard to do. But he managed to find fresh corn tortillas at the specialty store, and he fried them himself. Yep. Fried, as in a big saucepan full of oil, splatters everywhere. My DH, who has been probably even more intrigued by the Skinnies than me (because Mr Skinny is also very macho, and my DH relates being careful w food as rather un-macho) joked to them - “whoa, aren’t you the ones worried about carbs in your airplane meal and the butter & cream in French cooking?” To which Mr Skinny replied “I pay attention to those things so I can have this from time to time”. Ahhhhhhh, interesting. Naturally skinny he is not, I gathered.

The tostadas themselves were very good. The shells were crunchy and golden and extremely fresh-tasting. We can find Old El Paso taco shells here in France but they are stale right out of a new package, and for me at least not very interesting. The Skinnies had managed to whip up some refried black beans, and made a wicked beef taco mixture w onions and red peppers that was really good. Lettuce, homemade guacamole and salsa topped off our towering tostadas. I had found aged cheddar at the market a few weeks back so we used that - the cheese is one of the hardest things to deal w in Mexican cooking in France, because the Mexican cheeses don’t exist here, and the French substitutes are all so very different it makes it yucky.

We each had 2 tostadas which was a lot of food. Except Mrs Skinny who never got around to getting her second one. Everyone else finished two. Except me, who I am proud to say actually did stop mid-way through tostada #2 and I forced myself to leave about 20% of the tostada uneaten on my plate. That was very hard, as it was a “Rare Treat” but I did it anyway.

My DH, bless him, did not listen to me when I told him to get NOTHING for dessert at the bakery. He had discussed the “Gallette des Rois” with the Skinnies the other day at dinner, and he picked one up despite my telling him not to. A gallette des rois is a puff pastry cake filled with frangipane (almond cream mixture) linked to Epiphany and sold from just after Christmas through January. It is basically pure butter and sugar with a tiny amount of flour to hold it together. It is super flaky and so not-diet it is unbelievable. Actually it’s only good if it’s a high-quality one. From the average bakery they tend to be really greasy tasting and heavy, overly sweetened inside and just not so good. My DH, of course, went to one of the best bakeries in town to get ours. Mr Skinny ate every crumb of his gallette with enjoyment. Mrs Skinny was a bit preoccupied on the internet but ate about 2/3 of her serving, stopping after she found the ‘feve’. I ate all of mine.

All in all, a very tasty day, but not a diet one. I went to bed with that uncomfortable full feeling in my stomach. Isn’t this supposed to be a weight-LOSS blog?

I got several interesting comments yesterday on what it’s like to eat with Thin People and decided to dub my cousin & her husband “Mr & Mrs Skinny”. Based on your inspiration, I now have a secret mission while I am around them - I am recording their food behavior to see how close it is to Dr Hope & my other notions of Low Stress Weight Loss.

Can’t tell you too much about their breakfast and lunch, because they set out from my house without breakfast to go exploring the city (and find a bakery, according to my cousin Mrs Skinny, who said “I’m in Paris, I’m having a croissant”).

Having the Skinnies in the house did make me more conscious myself. I had a very good food day on my own during the day before meeting up with them in the evening and for dinner out. I started my day with my muesli mix, which really is delicious and healthy and fast as long as I’ve had the presence of mind to prepare it the night before.

I got hungry for lunch around 1:30 and decided to use up my only old vegetable, a small cabbage. I might be weird, but I’ve always liked cabbage, so I stir fried it w some shallots and butter and threw in some frozen peas. Voila, lunch. I was thinking of trying to find some protein to make it more filling, but the butcher is still closed so we don’t have much. I had bought a nice goat’s cheese at the market and had some fruit and nut bread in the pantry so I made myself three small open-faced sandwiches of the bread, a thin spread of goat cheese, and thin sliver of pear on top. Delicious, and very satisfying. Next I ate my green concoction, which was really good. I must say a small amount of real butter does add a lot of flavor. And I did two things right - I paused in the middle. And I didn’t eat everything! I had 4 litchis for dessert & a cup of tea.

I was proud of myself for taking the time to cook, for using up the old vegetable, for the fact that it was my only leftover vegetable in the first place, for pausing, for making the goat cheese sandwiches which were wonderful and fast but felt so luxurious. For stopping eating before it was all gone.

Dinner w the Skinnies : At a traditional French restaurant with traditional French fare.

The first sign the Skinnies are not like us : they didn’t touch their bread. Now, I know that Mr Skinny apparently worries about carbs, but for goodness sake, we are in Paris, and the bread here is usually divine. But no, no bread for them.

The Skinnies both ordered soups for their appetizer (as did I) but Mrs Skinny ate very very little of hers. She had ordered a cream of mushroom thing that was served with this bowl of whipped cream on the side, which she didn’t touch. Later she found out that the foie gras was in the whipped cream bowl, not the soup itself, so she really missed out on the gourmet touch on her soup. I ate about the same amount of my soup as Mr Skinny, it was a big bowl & I knew we had more food coming…

The main dish : Mr Skinny was daring and ordered a steak tartare (raw!) and he ate a good portion of it, eating maybe 7 ounces of 10 that were served to him.  Steak tartare is almost always served with salad and fries, and Mr Skinny had a little of both, but not much of either.  I order steak (cooked, thank you!) fairly often in restaurants, almost always w a salad, and I ALWAYS polish off my salad.  Not just take a bite here and there.  And if I had fries - you can bet they’d get the same treatment (but I eat fries almost never).  It was interesting to see someone able to eat a few and it not be a big deal.

Mrs Skinny had a chicken dish in a rich sauce and served with veggies and she was the last one eating. She eats very very slowly. When she’s talking OR listening she does not eat. I don’t eat and talk at the same time, but while others are talking you can bet I’m chomping away. She ate maybe half of what was served to her, in tiny little bites and most of what she ate must have gone cold. I ordered sole, but don’t congratulate me, because I ordered it “sole meuniere” which means cooked in butter, so it was plenty rich. I did use my Dr Hope techniques, and when I paused I actually stopped eating, leaving about 25% on my plate! I also ate slower than usual because I was paying attention to the way my cousin pecked away at her dinner.

Dessert time : I had a hankering for chocolate but couldn’t talk my DH into it, he wanted the baked alaska (which I had never tried). He told me to go ahead and order what I wanted but I wasn’t very hungry and I didn’t want to order a dessert and only eat 3 bites, or worse, eat a lot of it because it was there in front of me (while Mrs Skinny would again eat slowly) or because “we’d paid for it”. So I ordered nothing but a spoon to share w DH. The Skinnies wanted something “light”. In fact, I’m pretty sure my cousin would have ordered a creme brulee if they’d had it on the menu, and her husband would have taken nothing, but they agreed on sorbet. Everyone ate a few bites of both the baked alaska and the sorbets. If you’ve never heard of baked alaska, it’s a dessert made of ice cream (in this case passionfruit sorbet) then covered on all sides by meringue and then “baked” or sometimes flambeed with a liquor. The egg white meringue protects the ice cream from the heat. Pretty, served on a platter that was well-decorated, but honestly it was not very good nor very interesting. The meringue was sickly-sweet and the sorbet was kind of blah. I only had a few bites and left most of the meringue part on my plate. The Skinnies didn’t finish their dessert either…

This whole think-while-you-eat thing is really turning out hard to master.

Yesterday I got up late and met a friend for a while who needed my help. No time for breakfast, but that’s okay because w Low Stress Weight Loss I only eat when I’m hungry and I hadn’t been hungry. By 2pm I was starving so I thought long and hard about what I wanted for lunch. Our kitchen is still pretty bare because we were gone for X-mas (and the market isn’t until tomorrow, and I’ve become so spoiled, I don’t like buying “food” at the supermarket, only cleaning stuff, paper, and a few yogurts they carry.) So I decided to take myself out to Chinese food (in part because my DH found a great Japanese restaurant yesterday and had been telling me about it).

Before I left I actually updated my food journal pages to include “stopping mid-way” and “leave something”. It didn’t matter, I didn’t apply it. I did eat relaxed, and I did savor & enjoy my food. I did even leave a little something of the main dish (very little). I didn’t stop mid-way. I left still feeling hungry in fact, and had to talk myself out of stopping at a bakery (no no, don’t need that), and chocolate shop (it’s probably not all that good). Even in the grocery where I picked up paper goods and a few other things I saw myself eyeing all kinds of packaged rubbish (none of which came home with me). It took over an hour for me to register feeling full.

My exercise leaves a lot to be desired too. Yesterday I walked about 30 minutes, although not at a fast pace. Today just the outing for lunch - maybe 20 minutes strolling max.

My cousin & her husband are here visiting for a few days now. Hopefully I’ll have ample opportunities to get out and walk showing them around town, and hopefully we won’t have a crazy food fest. My cousin is actually something of a fitness freak and has always been thin & lovely & active, and never been very interested in food, so food is not the top of the agenda. Her husband is one of the SuperFit people, and apparently has been worrying about this trip for lack of gym time and fear that all French food is full of butter and cream (and he’s not far off).

Last night we went out for dinner and it was interesting. I chose less butter-and-cream because of all the talk at the table, and ended up taking a chance on something that could have been sublime but was actually pretty icky. I had scallops in a saffron sauce, but the scallops were overcooked and rubbery and the sauce lacked flavor and depth, on a bed of overcooked bland veggies. I ate all the veggies and about a 1/3 of the scallops. I did not finish, I did pause but mainly because I didn’t like my meal, I definitely left the table hungry. (I had a yogurt & some bread later at home). My cousin & her husband were indeed light eaters, neither finished their meal, and both said they were too full for dessert (even though my cousin wanted a creme brulee). It is interesting to eat with thin people.

I’m giving myself through the end of January to work on these new concepts from Dr Hope. These are really fundamental changes in how I eat, and I don’t want to have an attitude of “racing through” the steps to get to the next ones, as I think the lessons I am learning are really the basis for a different way of eating that will help me manage my weight forever. Part of me is tempted to just go back to traditional dieting & get some pounds off quickly, but then I remember the stress that builds into my life…and I get sane again!

I saw Dr Hope just before leaving for the holidays. I’ll sum up the holidays by saying only that I was not doing anything I should have. No food diary, and when there is no food diary it means things are BAD. I went for one very short walk, I had a few servings of fruit, but it was not a weight-loss or weight-management few days by any stretch of the imagination. I wasn’t off to a great start yesterday morning either, but luckily didn’t let a slightly exaggerated breakfast become an excuse for torching the whole day, and by the afternoon had actually pushed myself out the door for a short walk. So - all is forgiven, now back on track.

I began my discussion w Dr Hope on the Pizza Test where my lessons apparently were learned correctly - a food like any other. I then talked to her about my self-designed Dessert Test and she was very pleased, and again seemed to think I’d done quite well.

She did, however, ask me if I’d cut back at other parts of the meal, knowing I was having dessert. And there the answer is no. I’ve been enjoying this “I can eat anything” diet too much. I like paying attention to the pleasure aspect of my food - that I’m pretty good at. But the truth is I am eating “anything” and not paying much attention to the fact that I want to lose weight.

Enter Dr Hope…. The aspects of the Dr Hope approach are basically as follows :

• You can eat anything. No food is off limits. You can have cake for breakfast and bacon for dessert if thats what you really want.
• Enjoy what you eat
• Eat when hungry
• Eat to the point of satisfaction (not FULLNESS)

Probably there will be more, but for now it’s pretty much that. Dessert tests & Pizza tests teach you in fact you can really eat anything. There are no “bad” foods, no “good” foods.

Enjoying your food is a question of paying attention. Slowing down. Concentrating. Being able to separate “so-so” from “spectacular”. Eventually, being demanding about what you eat - only eating the very good things, and leaving the rest behind. I’m making some progress on this, but there is still a good ways to go - more often than not I eat out of habit, not taking the mental energy to focus on the pleasure.

The last 2 items, paying attention to my hunger, and eating to satisfaction, I am VERY BAD at. Again, I’ve made some progress, but we’re coming from 0% on this one, so occasional semi-attention isn’t much progress.

Dr Hope gave me some more structure for these, which will help (especially if I start to put them to use, which I haven’t done since I’d seen her, as we left for the holidays just after my appointment).

What I’m supposed to do now :

• Stop for a pause in the middle of each meal. Set down the silverware. Don’t eat for a minute or two. Evaluate your hunger that remains. Then continue.
• Try to not finish everything on your plate.
• Pay attention to being relaxed while eating.
• Pay attention to portions.

Ok, I’m admitting here that I’m not even going to try to deal w the portion issue right away. The relaxation thing I can handle, it seems to come pretty naturally when I focus on evaluating the pleasure I’m getting from the foods, so that’s do-able.

The others will be HARD, however.

Stop in the middle of a meal. Yikes.

Evaluate how much hunger remains. Double yikes.

Try to leave something on the plate. I’ve worked on this from time to time since September (when I read “Mindless Eating”). Even with effort I find this hard, but it is do-able, and it is a great feeling for me to see something left over.

There you have it, my next set of challenges. I’m going to change my journal document to incorporate this already, that should help keep me focused.

I have been doing a program called “Best Year Yet” (BYY) since around 2001. It’s a book written by Jenny Ditzler, which walks you through a series of exercises in which you end up identifying your biggest priorities and objectives for the year. You don’t need to do it in January (I think the first one I did I started mid year) but with all the talk of New Year’s Resolutions I usually just do it then.

I think the BYY program was the big factor for me finally getting myself to really lose weight about 6 years ago. I had identified that the biggest thing affecting various elements of my unhappiness in life were tied to my weight, then it was easy to make it the priority. (It was hard, of course, to put the changes into action, but easier in the context of clear goals).

I also think BYY was a major factor in me meeting my husband. My lack of social life had come up as priority #1 that year, and I forced myself to do social things I didn’t feel like doing, and go on dates I would have liked to turn down. I decided to force myself to go out with a certain number of men that year to feel like I’d made enough of an effort. I think my goal was 10 different guys. My DH came into the picture somewhere in the middle of that number, and I never finished that particular goal…I was on to new ones!

Over the next few days I’m going to be working on my plan for 2008. I don’t know where my weight will come in this year. I’ll probably update a bit on my 2008 goals, at least as they relate to my weight.

For those who are interested, I just googled it, and found this article which explains a lot, and found that there is now a free online workshop too. I’ve never done it online, I always do it on paper and don’t think I’ll change, but maybe it interests someone else.

I’m starting to think staying in this for the the long haul IS the end goal…

Even a year or two ago I had this image in my head of one day being “there” - at goal, done with the hard part.  I’m now realizing it’ll never be done.  Hanging in there day after day after day IS the hard part.

But I’m not someone with a specific pound goal in mind.  I see on others’ blogs that I’m in the minority.

It’s not that I don’t envision success, but maybe I define it differently.  I suppose partly because I’ve never been thin, so I don’t know what that means, I don’t have a weight I’m trying to go back to.  For a long time I wanted to weigh 135, because that’s what my sister weighs and we’re about the same height.

I know what size I want to be (second to the top or smaller in regular stores here in France, so about a US size 10), and I know how I’m willing to live my life (it does not involve hours in the gym or meticulous dieting).  I’m hoping I can  end up at the size I want with the effort I want.  I’m willing for it to take a while to get there, too.  No overnight miracles needed here…

I’ve had several questions and comments recently that I wanted to reply to, and I’m doing so in no particular order :

On being in France & food temptations. This is a typical comment : “If I was faced with your food temptations I hate to see how fat I would be.” The first thing I did 4 years ago upon arriving in France was gain 20 pounds which I haven’t been able to lose. The culture here is very different, and my life is very different, and the food temptations are multiple, varied, and almost always GOOD. That said, there are food temptations everywhere. From Peoria to Paris, you can’t avoid them (and I’ve actually been to Peoria IL, so I swear that’s true!).

Food is a bigger preoccupation w the French. I can get anyone talking for hours by moving the conversation to food - always a sure bet when making chit-chat. The French spend 50% more on food than the Americans. Food in the US is incredibly cheap by world standards, and France is particularly expensive. But even people of very modest means spend real $ on food.

As time has progressed the temptations become more manageable. I’ve tasted a lot of things by now, and the fact that I’m now committed to living my life here permanently means that I’ll always have another opportunity to eat a _____(fill in the blank)______. I now have that “taste it now or never” thing when back in the States for a visit, with cheesecake, Mexican, etc.

Fundamentally it comes down to managing the food choices in your environment. No matter where you live, you have temptations. Here maybe it’s mille feuilles and fancy tarts, in your town maybe it’s donuts and muffins. It’s the same challenge. When I finally got serious and lost the big chunk of my weight (from 250+) it was because I just gave up the excuses. I needed to lose weight, period. And I realized it would never be easy, that there would never be a “good” time. I just did it. In baby steps, but constantly improving, lots of slip ups, and real progress over time.

On how I eat. The comment : “I’m one who hates to waste food, so I am in awe of your resolve!” This comment stopped me dead in my tracks, because I have always, always, been someone who cleaned her plate and never wasted food. I was floored that I was considered to be ‘on the other side’ by this person. I’m not, I’m right there with you.

These Food Tests are a way to help me change one of the behaviors that is at the core of my being overweight and a key to successfully managing my weight in the future. At every meal in fact I try to leave at least one bite uneaten. It is really hard and my success rate is not even 40% right now. But it’s higher than it was a few months ago. Eventually I want to be able to stop eating automatically - either because I realize something is not-so-good so I decide to use my calories elsewhere, or I realize I’m no longer hungry. I have a LOOOONNNNGGGG way to go. My first step is just stopping to eat the last bite of one thing on my plate.

On business travel, meetings, and restaurants The comment : “After weeks like this, do you start craving your own fridge and kitchen. Something you make?” YES. Growing up, my stepdad was an airline pilot, and when he was at home he insisted on eating at home. I never understood it until I started traveling for work. Now I do. It’s really hard to get much plain food on the road, and fruits and simple veggies are even harder. You start to crave cereal and plain steamed broccoli, even when not dieting. When dieting it’s even harder.

On the Food Tests The Comment : “This sounds interesting…why pizza?” The idea of the Pizza Test is to put a food I myself considered to be off-limits (on my Taboo foods list) and make me realize it’s just a food like any other. Eating it every day takes away some of the magical properties - nothing is as good 4 days running as it is when you only have it once in a while. And realizing that ‘it’s just dinner’ makes you start to pay attention to how much you WANT to eat, not how much of this super-mega-delicious rare treat is served to you. I used the same approach w the Dessert Test, because I often struggle at business meetings like that when faced w dessert every meal for days on end. I either feel very deprived by not having them, or I just say ‘the hell with it’ and eat eat eat. This is the first time I’ve done this, but I would say it’s a success, and I’ll probably be repeating it, or a variant, in the future.

Time for one of my favorites The Comment : “They have Pizza Hut in Paris???” Sadly, yes they do. And Domino’s. And KFC, and McDonald’s and Starbucks (actually, I’m happy about Starbucks). There are also French or European copies of all of the above. Speed Rabbit pizza, Quick fast food, Columbus Coffee… and more. I had a friend when I first moved here who worked for KFC in marketing who told me “the dirty little secret of the French is they are the number 2 consumers of fast food after the Americans”. In a grocery store you’ll find an entire row of Kellogg’s cereals and cereal bars (bye-bye traditional French breakfast of bread, butter & jam). The other aisles are packed with the same convenience foods as in the US.

The big difference is the fast-food, chain-restaurant, convenience-foods lifestyle of the French exists alongside a robust traditional mindset. We have a local butcher who does a very good business. There is a local market (like a farmers market but they are not farmers) in front of my house 3 days a week, where I can buy fresh fruits, veggies, cheese, bread, cakes, spices etc. There is a “boulangerie” (bakery) just about every block or two in the whole city. People still cook, and when they cook, they do so from scratch, not just from boxes.

I was going through your comments on my blog to respond to some questions I’d been asked over the past week or so, and suddenly was able to see things much more positively, thanks to looking over so many kind and encouraging remarks.

By nature and nurture, I am a perfectionist. I am extremely hard on myself, and very demanding. (As a boss professionally I try to be a bit less demanding, but it’s an effort…). As you can imagine, my self-talk is predominantly negative - what I didn’t do, what I did that I shouldn’t have, how I can improve, etc. Its very VERY rare that I say to myself “not bad” let alone “good job”.

I am so much more encouraging and understanding and forgiving to all of you than I am to myself. I try to leave comments to others to help push them on, no matter where they are. I think of it a bit like the concept of “Pay it Forward” - sending out into the universe what you want the universe to send to you. It still puzzles me that I have such a hard time having the same positive attitude towards myself.

So I’m forcing myself to copy all of your positive feedback here so I can see my accomplishments reflected through your comments.

• You are my hero right now.
• I do believe sweetie, you have figured out what Dr Hope wanted you to learn!
• I find your journey very inspiring. The dessert test was a resounding success! Well done.
• Wow! The dessert test seems to have turned out so well
• You’re doin’ fantastic - love that you’re really appreciating your food and being selective about your palate. Wonderful.
• I am enjoying reading about your food tests. Great insight.
• This is a great learning experience just reading about it!
• Well done on continuing to do so well with the dessert test!
• Proud of you!
• Your blog is really fun to read, thanks
• I love your blog. It so educational
• I am in awe of your resolve!
• Aced the dessert test! way to go
• your journey is one that will benefit us all
• you are definitely having an impact on my thoughtfulness when it comes to eating things I don’t need/like
• Your current approach to weight loss is inspiring.
• You’re journey is such an encouraging one!
• Thank you so much for sharing your journey. It’s funny how much of it is ringing true with me.
• You are a very bright and interesting person, you know… just wanted to tell you that!
• Wow, this is inspiring stuff, it really made me think.
• It is not only me, you are making so many of us think and grow and learn.

Okay, that was actually just all from the first page of comments - there are many more (and I thank you for every one!) but I think the point is made.
This was actually a hard exercise to do. I had the idea, and then as soon as I started typing I wanted to abandon it, but have forced myself to do it anyway, because I think it’s really an important thing to do.

I highly suggest you do this exercise on your own blog - look in the “comments” section of your management screen, read through, and copy a list of the things other people have said to you on your journey.

Dessert Test 7 :

The Situation : Same buffet lunch again. Now on the 4th day I think we’d finally seen all the dessert choices. Sat w colleagues I like again.

The Dessert : I really didn’t feel like dessert, so I decided to take two clementines and call it good, but there was a really pretty apple tart that had been there the first day, and it was cut into quarters, from about a 6 inch diameter so one quarter was pretty small… So I grabbed that too.

The Analysis : I started w the apple tart, and ate one bite of the whole thing - way too sweet, one bite of the apple part only - way too sweet, and left the rest. The clemetines were delicious - very sweet and juicy. I could have eaten more than two in fact, but didn’t want to get up for ’seconds’ on dessert in front of my colleagues, and after a few minutes I didn’t want more anyway. At home I’d have had at least one more…

I am very glad the Dessert Test is over, and I’m glad I did it. Giving myself a REQUIREMENT to have dessert at every meal helped to demystify sweets for me. I also found that I ate small portions, and stopped when I didn’t like something most of the time, leaving some part of the dessert on my plate almost every time I ate. That alone is a HUGE ACCOMPLISHMENT for me, as I normally clean my plate completely out of habit.

It’s clear that all of the desserts probably added calories to the days, but I was eating much less than I would if I was “off” a diet in freestyle eating. I approached the dessert buffet with the mindset of choosing what ONE I really wanted (whereas when not dieting I’d probably have taken a little bit of several).

Most importantly, I didn’t have any stress around it. It was controlled eating without any feeling of deprivation. How could I feel deprived? Not only was I eating some dessert, I knew I would have dessert again, so no need to “take my share” of something I didn’t like thinking it was a “rare treat”.

I had a strange and rare constant grazing thing in the late afternoon and evening upon returning home from my meeting. I don’t know if it’s tied to stress around my job, holidays or what, but I ate and ate in an unsatisfied but continuous way for about an hour. Definitely not aligned with either hunger nor a weight loss objective. Nothing catastrophic, and I’m hesitant to call it a ‘binge’ but clearly overeating and I felt badly about it both when I was doing it, and afterwards. It’s done now. Behind me, over. I forgive myself, and I’m moving on.