Round

Well, I had a rough afternoon and was wanting to cry, scream, hit someone and bury myself in a tub of vanilla ice cream. And pasta, and butter, and well, everything bland and fatty and soothing.

Instead I walked around my neighborhood for 20 minutes when I got home to give myself a few minutes to calm down and then drank a glass of water. Then had a yogurt and when I realized I was both hungry and munchy I peeled & sliced a large English cucumber (one of those 2-feet suckers) and ate the whole thing.

I now feel much better. Better because I took some time to calm down, better because I didn’t sabatoge my efforts of the past few weeks, and better because turning towards healthy solutions was at least as stress-relieving as the ice cream would have been.

I didn’t do so great at dinner - at least not at first. We had a fresh baguette (French bread), my nemesis, plus our awesome butter from a small independent producer… I had a small piece, then a second was starting and a memory from Dr Hope came back and I realized I was okay diet-wise as long as this WAS dinner (not in addition to it). That realization relaxed me and slowed me down. I ate the rest of my bread and butter savoring every bite and knowing calorie wise I was fine. Added a small amount of Greek salad and a yogurt to round out the meal (well, sort of rounded out) and called it good. No guilt for eating “bad foods”, no over-eating from eating bread and butter and then a dinner too.

…but I’m still going to throw away the ice cream that’s deep in the freezer — knowing it is there is weighing on me.

Well, my daily planning sheets pulled a success story today. I knew tonight could be challenging as I’d invited a few of my employees over to coach them on a huge presentation they have next week (they are very junior, it’s their first presentation of this kind, to my boss’s boss). They were so grateful I offered them my evening that they insisted on bringing dinner - pizza. When planning my day I realized that I had better get in a decent-sized healthy snack, because a hungry girl around pizza is not usually a diet success.

I wasn’t even that hungry for a snack but had a bunch of cherry tomatoes while working on something and then ate the yogurt anyway to be stronger for later.

What I didn’t expect was to eat McDonald’s in France. I have not eaten at McDonald’s in 4 years - well, even more, because I didn’t even eat at McDonalds when I lived in the US. It’s probably been 7 or 8 years since I’ve eaten under the golden arches.

I was with a different employee today and we were looking for a place we could work in peace and quiet (we usually pick hotels or sometimes restaurants) and he said “oh, we should go to McDonald’s”. …okay. He was right - free wifi, plugs for the computers, lots of space, very few people in the morning. We worked really well there, but of course the lunch rush started and we were getting hungry but still had another 2 hours of work to do… what were we going to do, go somewhere else for lunch? No, we ate McDonald’s. He of course “supersized” it and knew the menu pretty well (he’s 25 and has no weight issues, no problem). I however took 15 minutes to decide finally choosing a burger that looked like it was a “high quality” one on a good bun etc. No sauce on the thing (although one slice of cheese) and I added some ketchup. No fries, I had the salad, and Perrier. I just looked up on the website and I was duped - the burger I chose was one of the highest calorie ones on the menu even though it looked really plain (although I wonder if the calorie count is w the sauce that I didn’t have?). I did leave 3/4 of one of the buns, and overall the calories are fine (especially since I’m not officially counting them!) but still… McDonald’s is not the best diet choice. I would have been better off w 6 pieces of McNuggets if I could have stomached the processed-particle taste. Back in my McDonald’s days I did like those things.

All in all, I did well at McDonald’s and also saw no reason to go back.

And the pizza? No problem there either - I put out a HUGE platter of raw veggies (since we were all girls) and some chips that I don’t like. I ate more than my share of the veggies but restrained myself on the pizza, having 2 plain cheese slices. I was smart enough to put the remaining pizza directly in the outside trash bin, because half an hour after they left I found myself opening cupboards and the fridge looking around. I just brushed my teeth and went to bed, but if that leftover pizza had been lurking I might not have resisted.

So, two challenging situations handled with flying colors!

My diet coach, Sandra Ahten (also see links on the side) sent this in the daily email the other day - and I loved it!

“When I buy cookies I eat just four and throw the rest away.  But first I spray them with Raid so I won’t dig them out of the garbage later.  Be careful, though,because that Raid really doesn’t taste that bad.”   — Janette Barber

I actually did this months ago - although I used mustard, and called the entry “cookies in mustard sauce” - still, it’s a great strategy!

Luckily for me this week it’s been fairly easy to stick to healthy eating, the overeating I’ve done has been mainly around roasted vegetables or the fruit bowl at a meeting yesterday - a big improvement from a few weeks ago!

Yesterday evening I came home from work to find my stepson (DSS) ready for a snack — and I was too. I wanted to make myself my new Tabasco-fired air popcorn, but thought that I’d offer him a treat and finally make the microwave popcorn my DH bought a few months back - Jolly Time Mallow Pop which is supposed to be a marshmallow flavor like Rice Krispie Treats.

I thought I was safe as I had a plan for myself and I don’t like sweet popcorn (although - warning - I do like Rice Krispie Treats, I just never eat them). I made his popcorn first and was kind of fascinated / grossed out by the slimy white goo that is the “flavoring pouch”. We eat mainly whole foods around here - packaged foods are rare for us, and its been a long time since I’ve seen a slime pouch like that. My DSS was pretty excited by the whole process. He had rarely seen me make microwave popcorn, so even that was exciting to him, and the sugar-slime mix was a perfect treat for an 8 year old…

Well, it was pretty tasty. Terribly sweet and more than a little chemically, but creamy and greasy and sticky. He loved it. And I tasted more than I should have. And then kept grabbing another few bites. I never made my own air-popped hot-sauced version, and I think I ate about 1 1/2 “servings” of his - which I have just dutifully looked up on the box and figured out to be around 300 calories. Which doesn’t blow me out of the water (although the trans fats could blow up my arteries…) but did make dinner automatically a “light” one.

Lessons learned :

• Do not let this packaged garbage food into the house. My DSS was happy with this treat but would have been just as happy with air-popped corn with butter and sugar, all of which are REAL ingredients.
• Do not eat the stuff just because its around (if only…)
• Make my own snack first. Had I done this I doubt I’d have touched his, except maybe a bite out of curiosity. I kept munching because I was hungry and wanted to crunch…

I was able to have a veggie-only dinner so the day was fine overall.

There are so many lessons to learn on this path!

We left Friday for the airport, heading to take a flight to Naples only to get stuck in a monster traffic jam near the airport. We ended up missing our flight and when I started to tell my DH of all the household projects we could get done with an unscheduled weekend at home he became bound and determined to get out of town anyway. That man will do ANYTHING to avoid Ikea…

There was no reasonable way to re-book our travel to Naples, so we looked at the monitor of flights leaving soon and selected Amsterdam. I don’t even want to know what the plane tickets cost us - he was the one who insisted on leaving anyway, and he whipped out his credit card and sent me away - I’d have calculated how many other trips we could take for the same fare, etc… A few phone calls to hotels and we were booked into Amsterdam and canceled in Italy.

It was rainy but not terribly cold, and we walked around a ton. We visited the Anne Frank house, the Van Gogh museum and just had a nice, relaxing time. We had a few great meals - one really nice “modern Dutch” restaurant, and one really good Indonesian restaurant. Most of the other stuff was the standard garbage you find in any modern city with a lot of tourists - overpriced cafes offering greasy and not very good dishes.

I did really well with my think-as-you-eat efforts. It helped that I didn’t LOVE what I ordered at the ‘modern Dutch’ restaurant, and that Indonesian food comes in lots of small servings of a bunch of different dishes, so chowing down on a big pile is not at all an option. I think I left something uneaten at every meal all weekend - it’s becoming easier with practice.

On Saturday, I stayed longer than my DH at the Van Gogh museum (I love art; he can only handle one hour of any museum at a time). While walking to meet up with him I stopped and bought a waffle. I threw a few bites away. Then I had this weird desire to go and buy another one, or find some ice cream, simply because I was alone and no one would know. It’s true I was hungry - we’d had eggs for brunch at 11 and it was 5:30, and dinner wasn’t until 8:30. But still, it was strange to have that compulsion to stuff my face like I was “cheating” on a diet. I did look into a few more food stores, but bought nothing except another bottle of water. A few minutes later I was back w my DH and it was in the past.

On Sunday we had a great breakfast at the hotel. One of those huge buffet things with lots of fresh and hot dishes. The kind where I typically either eat my standard hotel breakfast of fruit, yogurt and cereal (thereby bypassing most temptations) or I go hog-wild. I decided to have what I wanted. I had a small amount of eggs, some bacon, a small waffle. I took what I thought was a yogurt but turned out to be panna cotta. I ate a slice of bread. I had a large but not unreasonable breakfast - nothing hog-wild. I was pleased to be able to eat what I wanted without going crazy and leaving stuffed to the gills.

We flew back to Paris and I was not hungry on the flight, nor afterwards. I took the next flight on to Zurich - still not hungry. I didn’t get hungry again until dinnertime, where I had 2 apples in my hotel room & that was fine. It was really nice to see myself able to eat to my hunger and able to recognize when I felt the need for more copious food (breakfast) and lighter fare (dinner). I’m really hoping this becomes standard for me.

I was only in Switzerland overnight for a very early meeting on Monday morning, and by Monday noon I was back in the airport heading home. I’d had a roll with jam very early for breakfast at the hotel, at the airport I found a cafeteria where I got soup and muesli at the airport which was the perfect fix for me. Later at home I ate some leftover carrots and cheese for a snack, then a light dinner and I’d had another great eating day.

I had a really nice weekend, and the detour to Zurich was a bit tiring but otherwise fine. I managed my stress without eating, which I’m very proud of. I’m very glad to be home, and glad that this weekend is a homebody one…

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.

After writing my proud blog entry about my good weekend, those damn cookies started calling to me, and 4 of the 6 little buggers got eaten by yours truly.

The other 2? Well, the other two cookies were also sending out their sugar-butter-flour-chocolate seduction vibes, all the way from the kitchen, mind you. So I went right up to them and… poured mustard all over the little buggers, before tossing them in the trash.

Hopefully my DH won’t remember we had them (he likes the leftover cakes much better). They are so much better off in my trash can than in (and on) my belly! And I just ate an apple to top up any sugar needs and give me a bit o’ fiber & wholesome goodness after the mini cookie binge.

Today I again fell into the not-the-best choice breakfast, which is a relatively frequent weekend occurrence.  Living in France (land-of-heaven for sugar & flour concoctions), I am often surrounded by great bakery products.  As long as these stay out of the house, I am fine.  But it can be difficult to have a simple bowl of cereal on the days when we have fresh croissants, brioches & fresh bread laid out on the table, surrounded by their friends Butter & all the cute boutique jellies we’ve accumulated.  Add an element of “family celebration” and a girl can go seriously overboard.

Today I wasn’t terrible - I had about 3/4 of a croissant  plus 2 slices of bread, but a bowl of fiber cereal (my weekday routine) is a far better choice.  In writing this entry, I can see that this weekend breakfast thing has become one of my Challenges, and I am often wracked by guilt after the carb-o-rama of Sunday mornings.

I need to figure out how to stop this weekly bad habit.   I will make a real effort to do better for the next weekends (our last before vacation).  I have two reasons to focus -

1)  I really need to have good breakfast habits in place to make it through the US trip without ballooning in weight.  If I allow myself to have whatever I want for breakfasts, I won’t have the same bakery temptations, but there are still pancakes, waffles, sausages, bagels, omlettes, cream cheese, etc for 3 weeks.  Better to say : fruit, cereal or whole wheat bread, yogurt and that’s it.  Still hungry? Have more fruit.

2) I can see the regularity of this situation means I need to deal w it differently.  A birthday meal is not such a big deal, as it comes only once a year.  But breakfasts like this are a weekly occurrence, and therefore something I need to manage routinely to manage my weight.

I am living in France.

I started watching my weight again at 194 pounds, about 4 months ago.

I am recovering from back surgery (lumbar discectomy for sciatica).

I am not allowed to exercise until September, except walking 30 minutes at a time.

I am trying to maintain my weight around 183 during this injury & recovery period.

I am considering those 11 pounds PERMANENTLY gone.