Round

I saw Dr Hope again yesterday. I got kind of nervous beforehand, actually, because I haven’t been keeping my food diary, have barely paid attention to the new food rules, and have eaten “Holiday Fun Style” more days than not these past 2 weeks.

Luckily, I didn’t listen to the little voice in my head telling me to cancel, and luckily Dr Hope is really nice and understanding. Her first words, after “best wishes for a happy new year” were “well, it’s that season…”.

So it has been. The season of Overindulgence. The season of Overeating. The season of dropping some of my good food habits. The season of very little exercise. The season of the clothes getting tighter, the face looking puffier.

I decided that yesterday was back to totally normal (although Wednesday wasn’t so bad). I started with a check-in on the scale, up one pound from when I last weighed in a month ago, which isn’t so bad considering what I’ve been eating, and I’m still in Onderland (but barely!). As I mentioned recently, the scale will now be my helper, coming to check on me every 2 weeks or so. I don’t want to get into letting the scale rule my life, so it’s staying in the closet to prevent daily (and more) check-ins. But it’s not hard to take it out, and I’ll do that periodically.

I started eating a lot better Wednesday, (dinner excluded) and Thursday was downright good. I have listened to my hunger and eaten at odd times of the day, helped by my schedule which was remarkably flexible today. I made muesli again, and I am yet once again reminded how much better I do when I start with an oatmeal or muesli breakfast. Anything else seems to open too many doors to temptation, whereas the oatmeal or muesli are delicious and Satisfying.
I am away next week for work again. I discussed the challenge of next week w Dr Hope. It’s a big national meeting of my company, with about 1500 people crammed into some hotel. Almost the whole time is spoken for, from breakfast meetings at 7:30 am to “disco nights” until 2 am. Don’t worry, I need my sleep and won’t be drinking and dancing, but I’ll need to do some socializing until at least 11pm every night and just the thought of that makes me grumpy. I think we have one or two 2-hour free sessions during the week. I am not a big fan of this kind of meeting personally, although I recognize it’s importance for the teams to help them get motivated for the year, so I put on my best “team player” smile and go at it.

The food challenges will be considerable - there are not so many ways to give great and healthy food to that many people who eat at once, so the meals will probably be almost all buffets and filled with starch and oil. Alcohol is the social lubricant of choice for these events, and I’ve decided that apart from an occasional glass of champagne in my hand, I will not drink (and I never drink very much of cheap champagne, so the glass will be mainly decorative).

I also don’t know if I’ll be able to blog (there is apparently very little internet access), and I’m sure I won’t be able to read others’ blogs. I’ll at least write while I’m there, even if it’s only to post it upon my return.

Dr Hope & I discussed this coming week, and the plan is three-fold.

1) Keep the food diary every day (the document contains where I ate, hunger level, what I ate, did I leave anything left over, pleasure rating and relaxation level). I know this will help me. Some structure usually does.

2) Drink at least 2 liters of water a day. Should be do-able, and it will give me something to do at coffee breaks besides eat the snacks, since I’ll be in line for the bathrooms… I agreed to this step quickly, because I know hotel air and travel is dehydrating, and I’m a big water drinker anyway.

3) Leave something uneaten at every opportunity. Breakfast. Coffee breaks. A square of chocolate served w coffee. At meals, at the appetizer, the main dish, AND the dessert.

We talked a lot about the difficulty I was having with this ‘leaving something’ uneaten bit and this was her suggestion. Out of habit, out of comfort, without thinking, I eat what I am served. It is ENORMOUSLY hard for me not to do that. Its even harder when I serve myself. I need to be able to FORGO some of “my” food in order to be able to move to a place where I can judge which portions will satisfy me. But until I can stop myself from cleaning my plate mechanically, I can’t get to that next step.

So I’m taking a step backwards to concentrate on just this. I’m not going to worry about pausing in the middle of my meals and evaluating hunger again for now.

I will be packing my walking shoes, and a new audiobook. Not sure how much opportunity I’ll have, but certainly more than if I leave the shoes at home! I’ve been pushing myself to get back into my mild exercise, and have walked 3 times this week and hope to post a “walking to Bilbao” update soon after my trip.

In Low Stress Weight Loss you can eat anything. One of the key ideas is that Nothing is Taboo. So anything is really Anything. Cheese, butter, pastries, pizza, steak, pasta, it’s all good. French, Chinese, Mexican, Italian, no limits. 

Another key idea is that of Satisfaction. As in, the question you are supposed to ask yourself when you are hungry is “what will satisfy me?”. I am just starting to Get It that “satisfaction” does not mean “desire”. It’s not an eat-whatever-you-want thing, it’s about finding what is essentially the lowest-common-denominator between your hunger and your desire - that is Satisfaction.

If you’re dying for a cheeseburger then a salad probably won’t cut it. But maybe a small steak would Satisfy without going the full-hog approach of the burger. And sometimes, the only thing that will Satisfy is in fact the cheeseburger. In which case, go ahead, and absolutely 100% guilt free. …But you said it was the cheeseburger you were desiring - so will ordering it without the fries Satisfy?

I am learning and re-learning every day. For the past 6 weeks I’ve been thinking satisfaction = desire, but that’s not the right way to think about it. Only in recent days have I come to think of this concept of Satisfaction in a way that makes sense in the context of weight management. Basically I’m looking for that point minimal Satifaction to eat with pleasure and still lose weight.

The light bulbs keep coming on, but there’s a lot of path in the darkness between the lights still!

I have come to realize a great truth. I overeat. I eat too much, and too often. I don’t always make good food choices. Duh, I weigh almost 200 pounds, so if you saw me on the street you’d already guess that. But it’s still a surprise to me.

Why?

Because I know how to eat well too. Or I would have sworn I did 3 months ago, even if I wasn’t doing it. But in fact I knew how to select low-calorie food. I knew that if I ate low calorie foods I would lose weight, especially if I also exercised.
But eating well is not about having bad eating behaviors and just using them on low-cal foods. This is my great awakening these past few months, working with Dr Hope, reading on my own, and my search for Low Stress Weight Loss.

I suspect one of the keys to permanent weight loss is being able to manage to eat anything in small portions.

For years I dieted rigorously and filled up constantly with low-calorie fare. And I lost weight. I lost a little weight when it was low-fat fare, and I lost a lot of weight when it was low-calorie fare. But for the most part I replaced eating too much junk and high-calorie fare with eating too much low-calorie fare. I didn’ really learned a new way to eat, to approach food, and therefore when low-calorie fare was scarce, or hidden among high-calorie options, or too much trouble, or simply boring me, I would go back to overeating the high-calorie stuff. And regain weight.

In short, for years now, when I lost weight I replaced overeating w high-cal foods with overeating low-cal ones. It’s still overeating.

My own type of overeating isn’t bingeing, and I’m not into the OA thing or other overeaters types of things, it’s really so basic as eating a bit too much and a bit too often. Except those might be BIG ‘bits’.

I think the fundamental behaviors around foods - when to eat (when hungry) , when to stop (when not too full), how to eat (slowly, savoring your food) are critical things for me to master.

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.

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.

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.

Dessert Test 5 :

The Situation : Another buffet lunch at the hotel, again new desserts present.

The Dessert : I spent a lot of time looking over the choices before noticing a half a peice of some powdered-sugar dusted cake with a cream and raspberry filling. I took that small piece (about 2 inches square) and some of the fromage blanc and a big apple.

The Analysis : I ate the fromage blanc first, it was really good. Next the sugar-dusted cake, which was sugar-loaded. Way too sweet when I ate a bit as it came, I picked off the top and the bottom and ate just the filing. On the last bite I realized it was too sweet too. Very disappointing. The apple, however was great. Crunchy, crisp, sweet. On a normal day (not a Dessert Test day) I’d have taken a whole peice of the sugar cake and eaten it too, probably never stopping to think about if it was good or not. And I’d have missed the apple.

Dessert Test 6 :

The Situation : Dinner at hotel, buffet style but festive. Seated next to the division head, but he’s a nice guy and I’m not easily spooked by management, so I was relaxed and ok. I’m really sick of the business meals, however. I dislike the forced fake socializing, and while I can do it once in a while without a problem, 8 meals in a row, plus coffee breaks and cocktail hours it’s grating on my last nerve now…

The Dessert : Another buffet choice, but I wasn’t very hungry at the end. I was really hoping there would be fresh fruit, because even w a Dessert Test in place that’s what I wanted. No dice. I selected a “chocolat miroir” which was a half-sphere chocolate thing, dusted in cocoa and topped w a tiny square of dark chocolate. It turned out to be a type of chocolate mousse and in the very center there were some strips of candied orange.

Analysis : It was quite rich, good creamy texture, light and airy mousse although a bit too sweet. The orange was a nice contrast. I ate about 25% of it, then I’d had enough and left it. My colleagues had taken other things and were not very happy w them, and I passed the rest of my dessert around the table and everyone thought it was better than what they’d taken. Bonus - it was also out of my reach while we sat at the table listening to a boring speech - so no ability to keep eating it just because it was there!

I wasn’t expecting to say this already at dessert 6, but I’m glad the Dessert Test is almost over. I’m not finding them such a treat, more like a normal part of a meal, and thus, less magical, less forbidden, less special, and most importantly, less attractive.

Dessert Test 3 :

The Situation : buffet lunch again.  Our team was very late to the lunch, again, and I was overly hungry (having had breakfast at 7:30, just tea at the break, and lunch at 1:30).  There were no tables left so we had to jump on one that was abandoned, where my former boss (whom I dislike) was sitting.  

The Dessert : The buffet looked pretty much like Monday’s, but with new choices.  Choice is so dangerous.  I took a small serving (maybe 2 tablespoons) of creme caramel and snagged a very pretty red berry spongecake tart because the berries were fresh and yummy looking.  I also grabbed a clementine because I consider fruit free. 

The Analysis :  The creme caramel turned out to have coconut in it, which ruined the smooth creamy texture that I like, and was too sweet. Still, having taken so little, I finished it.  The tart I had the sense to taste the sponge cake, and it wasn’t so great, so I ate the inside which turned out to be some type of sweetened whipped cream topped w fruit puree and then the berries.  Very yummy.  The best of all, however, was the clementine.  Sometimes citrus fruit is just so-so, and sometimes it’s a sweet juicy explosion in your mouth.  I got lucky and this one was super.

I know that being at the table w my ex-boss increased my anxiety a bit, and I found I ate the whole meal faster than usual and not paying much attention to my food (which I’ve done a pretty good job on lately).  Maybe the lesson is never to eat near my former boss again?  Or  more reasonably, to try not to let social anxiety dictate how I eat. 

Dessert Test 4 :

The Situation : Another seated served dinner at another hotel.  At the table with colleagues,  half I like, another half I don’t know very well.

The Dessert :  A rich almond cake topped with a vanilla cream and raspberries. 

The Analysis :  Took one bite of the total cake to taste it, then ate just the cream and raspberries.  The cake just wasn’t that good.  The whole dessert didn’t appeal to me, but the berries looked good (and the cream was stuck to them when I picked them off).

I’ve gotten some great comments recently & I’ll incorporate a response to some of them into the Dessert Test wrap-up post.  If you’ve got questions to ask me, here’s your chance!

Thanks for all the comments encouraging me to go ahead w the Dessert Test.  No pics this time - I don’t want to explain to 200 colleagues that I’m taking pics of my plate for my weight loss blog…

Dessert Test 1 :

The Situation : buffet lunch - our team arrived late, there was very little left of lunch, I ate fast but healthy, filling up on the turkey & salad. 

The Dessert : Headed to the dessert buffet where there were lemon tarts, apple tart, clafoutis (a type of flan), fruit, chocolate mousse and a few other pretty pastries.  There was also “fromage blanc” which is a kind of yogurt-like thing (less tangy & sour) and a raspberry coulis.  I took the fromage blanc and put some raspberry coulis on it, and took a slice of the apple tart. 

The Analysis : One bite of the apple tart was all I needed - very industrial tasting, with a creamy filling under the apples that tasted like chemicals or plastic.  I did eat the fromage blanc (which is healthy and something I eat routinely anyway).  I think knowing I’m going to have dessert each time made me say to myself there is nothing magic in this - and if it’s not great I won’t eat it.  If I was in my usual thing of “only dessert this once” I probably would have loaded up my plate w the most sugary stuff (not the fromage blanc) and eaten all of it even if it wasn’t good.

Dessert Test 2 :

The Situation : Served dinner at hotel, which lasted 2 1/2 hours.  Starter, main dish, cheese, dessert, coffee.  Seated at a table w people I know and like, decent conversation. 

The Dessert : Three parts on one plate, and not a small dessert plate either, probably 9 inches.  On it was a 2 1/2 inch diameter 3-layer chocolate mousse (dark, milk and white chocolates) topped with a few chopped pecans.  This was sitting on a vanilla cream sauce, and next to it was a medium-sized scoop of deep dark chocolate ice cream.

The Analysis :  I was expecting more icky industrial fare, but this was actually good.  The mousse was very sweet and the novelty of tasting the 3 different chocolates in one bite soon ran out, and I stopped eating after about 1/3.  I didn’t touch the vanilla cream, as it didn’t look homemade, and also didn’t seem to add anything to the rest of the desserts.  The ice cream, however, was excellent.  Really rich dark chocolate flavor, and dark chocolate chips throughout.  I love ice cream and almost never have it at home (because I’d eat it all very fast).  Because it was so rich it was very satisfying, and I took small bites and let them melt in my mouth to really savor it.  I managed to leave one spoonful on my plate which I am pretty proud of.

I’d judge this effort so far a success.  At dinner, knowing I’d at least taste the dessert, I only ate what I liked, which turned out not to be much.  I didn’t care for the veal, nor the sauce, and even the green beans had that odd freezer taste to them.  There was too much pepper on the tomato, so I ended up mainly eating the side of potatoes.  One nice thing about France for dinners like this is that there is almost always cheese, so you will find protein later if you don’t eat your meat.  Only one of the 3 cheeses was to my liking (about an ounce of a goat’s cheese) and so even with the dessert included it wasn’t a calorie-killer meal.

Tomorrow lunch should be the same basic thing as today, and dinner will be another sit-down affair, only this time at a table w people I’m not crazy about and don’t know well.  Will I hide my social anxiety in my plate?  Tune in tomorrow to find out…