Round

In my experience there are three ways to eat :

• For sustenance only
• With great enjoyment
• On autopilot

Obviously, being overweight is a signal that I am not someone who eats only for sustenance. A few times in my life I have eaten like this however (when sick mainly, but for a few weeks when maniacally dieting) - where eating becomes a task like brushing your teeth - something you have to do that you don’t particularly enjoy. Like I said, this isn’t really my problem (nor is it likely to be yours if you’re reading weight-loss blogs…)

The second category of enjoying my food can claim some wonderful memories and great pleasures, but is probably responsible for very little of my excess weight — because when you are really enjoying something you experience it fully and that pleasure experience is usually not coupled with the need to “fill up” and so you can have smaller portions and be quite satisfied (as almost all gourmet restaurant experiences can attest). Unfortunately, I am much more often eating on autopilot and not really experiencing my food. I know at the end of last year when I was working with Dr Hope I had a lot of homework on this topic and it was really hard but really eye-opening. Incorporating this appreciation of what I eat on a daily basis is one of my long-term goals.

The final category, “eating on autopilot” is without a doubt responsible for 99% of my excess weight. Why do we spend so much time eating on autopilot - munching, slurping, sipping, etc without really paying attention to the tastes, textures and pleasure in our food? Fast food in the car, eating anything in front of the TV or computer, any time we eat and multitask — all signs we aren’t paying attention to what we’re eating. I’ve been known to plow through impressive quantities of food because I’m enjoying the rhythm of eating.

I recently saw a doctor comment on obesity who said “I really don’t think that obese people allow themselves to experience hunger… obese people really don’t get into the taste, texture, and sensations when eating food. Furthermore, they don’t even like the foods that they overeat, and they don’t pay attention to and are not conscious of what they are eating most of the time.”

The comment hit pretty close to home for me…

Today was a more normal day. I also got a wake-up call on my fitness (well, lack of fitness) because I had an appointment on the 8th floor of an apartment building and the elevator was out of service. In my defense 8th floor here would be 9th floor in America - a full 8 flights of stairs. I was super winded and my legs were burning. I was dying to stop to catch my breath but as I was with a colleague I didn’t want to wimp out… I felt mighty out of shape. I guess the good news is that she didn’t notice my heavy breathing because she was catching her own breath…

My appetite was more normal today… is that because the DH is home? Who knows. I did think the comment that maybe what I was hungry for was my DH’s presence was a clever one.

For Thursday 7th February

Breakfast (8:30am) :

• Ate : Muesli w yogurt
• Hunger :medium
• Environment : home, relaxed
• Appreciation : good. My standard muesli is better than the strawberry one. I was too lazy to chop up the almonds so I threw them in whole - not the best idea…
• Leave something leftover : YES! I left a bite

Lunch (1:00pm):

• Ate : croque madame (like a grilled cheese sandwich but less greasy) salad, french fries
• Hunger : high
• Environment : restaurant with colleague. What I ordered wasn’t the healthiest choice but it was the closest to what I was in the mood for. My colleague (well, she’s a direct report) gave me bad news about her health 3/4 through the meal and that killed my appetite.
• Appreciation : nothing was very good. The best was the fried egg on top of the sandwich. The fries were pretty tasty but I only ate a few - I am not normally a huge french fries person, so 2 days in a row is extremely rare for me, and I was quickly over them. The salad was terrible - some kind of cheap industrial salad dressing and too much of it - I had one bite and stopped.
• Leave something leftover : Yes, I left maybe 1/8 of the sandwich, over half the fries, most of the salad.

Snack (5:00pm)

• Ate : small mug of Special K with milk
• Hunger : medium
• Environment : standing in the kitchen about to run out to an appointment. It was not eating for hunger, it was eating because it was there (I don’t usually buy this cereal because of that…). I maybe was afraid of getting hungry later…
• Appreciation : high
• Leave something leftover : no

Dinner (8:00pm)

• Ate : one hotdog bun with 2 hotdogs in it. Bowl of tomato soup. 3 clementines. Small yogurt w sugar on it.
• Hunger : high
• Environment : dining room, with DH and DSS
• Appreciation : moderate. I think I ate too fast to really pay attention. We eat hotdogs rarely (I’ve eaten more hotdogs since I’ve known my DH than in my whole life up until 4 years ago put together). In our defense, the hotdogs are made by the local butcher, they are not industrial ones. It’s one of my DH & DSS’s favorite meals, and my DH did the “cooking”. I added soup to have some veggies. I skipped the second hotdog bun.
• Leave something leftover : oops…

I’m also planning to have some dark chocolate later tonight. I am reasonable with chocolate portions (that’s why I buy the dark stuff & very good quality). There won’t be any of my portion leftover!

I’m considering this week a stabilization period, I’ll try to get back to focusing on losing next week.

All day I have been wanting to overeat. I controlled myself at breakfast and lunch, even at my snack when I first got home. I caught myself thinking of voluminous dinner options at several times during the day, and I finally gave in — with broccoli and cabbage, and also some Special K cereal. It’s still overeating, but it’s a better choice to overeat 2/3 a head of broccoli and 2 mugs of cereal than to eat piles of pasta or pie…

I don’t know how long I’ll keep noting this on my blog, probably about a week. I am a BIG BELIEVER in the food diary, I have kept one off and on for years and years, and was keeping one (on paper) for the past several weeks, but stopped about 2 weeks ago for no good reason & it’s always downhill from there…

For Wednesday 6th February

Breakfast (8:15am) :

• Ate : Muesli, coffee with milk
• Hunger : high
• Environment : home, relaxed
• Appreciation : fair. The coffee was good today, however the strawberries in the muesli were looking pretty sad (bought on Sunday). I tossed out the remaining & will make a new batch tonight.
• Leave something leftover : nope.

Lunch (1:30pm):

• Ate : small steak w pepper sauce, salad w dressing, 1/2 roll, french fries
• Hunger : very high
• Environment : restaurant with colleague & client. No choice on the meal except how the meat was cooked… luckily I like steak, and this way I could eat french fries without guilt, since I hadn’t chosen them, right?
• Appreciation : very good for standard bistro fare in Parisian suburbs.
• Leave something leftover : Yes, I left 2 bites of meat and about 1/4 of the french fries. I ate all the salad

Snack (6:15pm)

• Ate : 3 clementines and then some yogurt
• Hunger : high
• Environment : in front of the computer checking email for work. I was thinking about all kinds of things to eat for dinner, focusing on volume and creamy or crunchy at each idea. Should I make rice pudding? Pasta? Polenta? Popcorn w real butter? I just ate the clementines and yogurt and decided to choose dinner later…
• Appreciation : high for the clementines, high for the yogurt (one of my fave brands)
• Leave something leftover : no

Dinner (8:30pm)

• Ate : big bowl of broccoli with some parmesean sprinkled on top. 1/2 cup homemade applesauce. 2 mugs of Special K with milk (why in a mug? I was too lazy to find a bowl…)
• Hunger : good question. Was it hunger or desire to eat? All I know is from breakfast on I kept thinking of how I’d really like to eat a LOT of food. I didn’t for breakfast, lunch I couldn’t, held myself back at snack, and when at dinnertime it was still the main thing I was looking for, I was pleased to find the broccoli & cabbage in the fridge. Because I can pack away some pretty good quantities of broccoli and it won’t kill my weight loss efforts. I know it’s not eating “mindfully” and it’s still overeating, but what are you supposed to do when your body keeps calling out for VOLUME? I figured it beat the alternative. I made the broccoli and ate half of it while the cabbage cooked. I didn’t eat the cabbage. I ate my nice small serving of applesauce. I still wanted to eat, and I wanted crunchy and creamy. I gave in to the cereal, which I probably should have STARTED with, since it was on my mind since breakfast… But live and learn, right?
• Environment : dining room, alone
• Appreciation : moderate. The broccoli was good and I don’t make it enough - I should buy it more often because I really do like it. Applesauce not so much, probably because it wasn’t what I was hungry for. Cereal was very high in pleasure for me… I spent a lot of my single girl years eating cereal for dinner. Maybe that was part of it tonight? It’s my last of 4 nights alone before my DH comes home tomorrow…
• Leave something leftover : I didn’t eat the cabbage after I cooked it, does that count?

Overall, I’m hoping I won’t have this urge to overeat very often. Since I’m just getting back into the food journal, I’m going to mainly stick to that for the coming days, but I suspect I need to work on asking myself what I’m really hungry for and what will Satisfy me. I’d have saved myself a lot of hassle if I’d just eaten the cereal for dinner first thing…

I saw Dr Hope again yesterday. We re-hashed a lot of the past few weeks. She believes the UTI etc are my body reacting to stress. I talked a lot about the job opportunity and it’s true it has been bothering me more than I wanted to admit. My first real clue came when I mentioned it a few days back in a blog post here… I was pretty surprised to have so much pour out of me so fast.

In any event, the Dr Hope advice is to find time to take care of myself - a few minutes of stretching or yoga or meditation or breathing. Ideally a few times a day, but we’ll start with once.

We also talked a lot about the past week or so - my eating has been getting worse and worse - although nothing terrible, certainly not the “eat with intention to lose weight” approach, and the scale must be creeping upwards again, my pants are tighter. So I’m to keep a proper food diary, and bring it to her at my next appointment. Yeah, accountability!

I’ve actually decided to share my food diary here on my blog for the next few days - comments welcome!

For Tuesday 5th February

Breakfast (7:45am) :

• Ate : Muesli, coffee with milk
• Hunger : high
• Environment : home, relaxed
• Appreciation : muesli was good after a week of other stuff. It’s better when I make it with rice milk, however… Coffee I drank too fast as I was running late.
• Leave something leftover : nope.

Lunch (2pm):

• Ate : Spaghetti bolognese
• Hunger : very high
• Environment : restaurant with colleague, pressed for time
• Appreciation : sauce was very good, noodles were greasy and a bit dried out. I ate too fast, and menu choices were limited to a few things they could do fast.
• Leave something leftover : I left a few bites of my spaghetti and I didn’t touch the bread.

Snack (6pm)

• Ate : 3 clementines and then a small “faiselle” (sort of like yogurt)
• Hunger : medium
• Environment : in front of the computer checking email for work. As I left my co-worker she had just bought a chocolate bar thinking she’d share half with me… I don’t think I was hungry before she offered me that.
• Appreciation : high for the clementines, lower for the faiselle - I don’t regularly buy this and probably won’t again… yogurt is bettter
• Leave something leftover : no

Dinner (10:30pm)

• Ate : small bowl of Grape Nuts with milk (the end of my box from the American imports store…)
• Hunger : low but present (and I didn’t want to try to sleep hungry)
• Environment : web surfing to see about the elections after working all evening
• Appreciation : pretty high. I love the texture and plain-ness of Grape Nuts
• Leave something leftover : a spoonful left just because I decided I would blog about this and thought I better have something decent to say…

I saw Dr Hope again late last week.

I continue to be awed by the way the universe sometimes provides what you need when you need it. I wouldn’t have been able to appreciate Dr Hope a year ago, but right now she’s exactly what I need.

I have never, NEVER felt so peaceful and eaten so well while trying to actively lose weight.

Did you see that? I said I am “actively trying to lose weight” — BUT I AM NOT DIETING.

Oh no, dieting certainly not. I ate pasta carbonara for lunch yesterday. And I had 3 chocolate truffles too. In the past few days I’ve eaten waffles, french fries, fried eggs, bread and so much more. Not to mention that I use real sugar, real butter, full-fat milk on a near-daily basis.

And yet, I am losing weight - slowly, slowly - but surely.

I am starting to get the hang of some more of the Dr Hope guidelines.

I now pretty systematically evaluate my level of hunger before eating. I’ve even skipped a few meals in the past week because I wasn’t hungry, or eaten “too soon” because I was. I’m not at 100% on this yet, but it’s definitely in the majority zone.

The thing I am probably best at of all the Dr Hope tricks is evaluating my food for pleasure. Everything I eat, from a breadstick to an elaborately prepared gastronomic treat, I try to think about the taste, texture and how much I like (or dislike) it. What is that subtle spice? How do they make it both crispy and creamy? It’s a lot of thinking, but it makes the eating much more enjoyable. And, as I learned at my weeklong work meeting in early January, if it’s not good, I don’t eat much of it anymore. I would say I now evaluate my food for pleasure about 90% of the time.

And to respond to a few comments on the blog in the past few weeks - I RARELY thought about the pleasure from my food before November of last year. Only at Special Events where food was a featured item (fancy restaurants, someone making me dinner, etc).

The latest challenge Dr Hope added has been to leave something on my plate uneaten. This has been really hard for me, but finally this week I started to see some real progress. The idea of this one is to actually build up to being able to stop eating when you have had enough. If you are like I was, “enough” meant when the plate is empty. I still have a long ways to go for this to be routine for me, but I’m now more and more consistent, leaving something over more meals than not. Sometimes if something is particularly good I set the “leftover” bit aside early, and finish the rest, which isn’t quite the same thing, but it’s helping me to get over the “mine! all mine!” mentality, and work on giving up some of what is on my plate. In the past week I’ve had 2 times when I stopped much earlier than one bite uneaten - really able to sense my hunger and leave a good amount untouched. It feels really good, and I can see how in the future this will really help.

I’m much less stressed about food in general. Yesterday afternoon one of my employees wanted to stop at a local bakery because “they have the best chausson aux pommes (apple croissants) in Paris.” Mind you, this is AFTER we’d had pasta carbonara (loaded w cream, egg yolk, bacon and cheese) for lunch. Did I sweat it? No. I was glad to have an expert showing me something, glad to find a good address for this flaky treat. I was not hungry at the time so I took it home. Knowing that I’ll eat it when I’m hungry. And I know I’ll enjoy it, or I’ll stop eating it. I haven’t eaten enough chaussons aux pommes to know which is the best in Paris, but I’ll be able to tell if it’s really good or just ok. And I won’t eat it all, either.

My discussion w Dr Hope also centered around emotional eating. I’ve stated this before, but for the record I wouldn’t categorize myself as a binge eater or an emotional eater. I’m just an eater. I eat with or without emotion, but apparently a bit more with emotion.

The same day I saw Dr Hope I got a call about a job opportunity that is moving into the next phase. It’s flattering and a big move, and I’m very conflicted because while it’s a great job, it would also be a big change in lifestyle (lots more travel and pressure) and I really like my life right now. So after a few email and phone exchanges to set up the meetings, I found myself wandering around the house looking for stuff to eat. I wasn’t hungry. I was conscious that I wasn’t hungry. But still I was looking for stuff to eat. Specifically, I wanted Crunch. Apples. Popcorn. If I wasn’t actively trying to lose weight it would probably be something else. But I wanted, really wanted, to crunch my way through the stress. I didn’t. But knowing that this issue would keep bugging me for the next several days or weeks I discussed it w Dr Hope.

She said she found it interesting that I was looking to eat because of it, and a great sign that I was aware of the emotional pull and not giving in to it. She then told me to have a fun weekend and to spend Tuesday - Friday when I was back at home paying attention to think-as-you-eat principles. And to enjoy my weekend vacation.

A diet doctor who tells you to enjoy life…. not bad at all!

By the way, just identifying this stress-induced desire to eat was enough to keep it from coming to pass. I haven’t had the crunch-fest nor any other food-fest that I could easily justify from the stress.

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 got home around 10pm last night and am very happy to be back in my own bed, and happy to have more control over my schedule again.  I’m also happy to no longer be eating in that hotel, but I must say I am grateful for the experience.

I spent the whole week “thinking-while-I-ate” and had pretty good results.  I left something on my plate almost all the time (I forgot to during one lunch).  I did a pretty good job of listening to my hunger and drank all the water.  Except for champagne the last “gala dinner” night, I didn’t drink.  Where I saw the biggest impact was in paying attention to the pleasure from my food - which in this case was more the LACK of real pleasure in the giant buffet.

The truth is I am like you - I usually wolf down whatever is around, good or not good, out of habit.  I fully credit my nearly miraculous ability to eat reasonably this week on the several weeks of training I’ve had in paying attention to the pleasure in my food.

In my food diary is a column where I mark how much pleasure a particular food has given me.  I choose to rate it on a scale of (-) for negative, (=) for neutral, and then (+) or (++) or (+++).  I am not 100% on keeping the food diary, but do it more days than not, and so that’s lots of foods rated and evaluated over the past 2 months or so.

The ratings force an awareness, an evaluation, and a realization that some foods taste better than others, some things satisfy more in certain conditions.

I am still in my infancy in this approach, but for the first time in my life, this week I was able to face a buffet table of pasta in sauces and a huge dessert spread without the slightest hesitation or panic.  I overate nothing.  I often put stuff on my plate that only made ONE trip into my mouth, quickly deciding that it wasn’t GOOD ENOUGH TO EAT.

Nothing was BAD, mind you.  Everyone else was happy with the food, and they’re all French and as such, relatively demanding in terms of quality.  But big buffet meals served out of warming trays can only reach a certain level of refinement (and this place didn’t even hit that standard).  By the end of the week I’d learned which foods the resort did best, and I’d learned to eat a pretty hearty breakfast knowing that lunch for me was always a light affair.

I’m extremely pleased with myself for having shown an ability to have a markedly different relationship w food in two situations that are usually very difficult for me (buffets and work meetings).

I’m hoping this is really the beginning of the new eating habits I’m working on in Low Stress Weight Loss becoming deeply ingrained and my overall, daily, new “NORMAL”.

I am at a big company meeting and our group is over 1000 people. We’re at a European resort location that can handle such a group (although we have little free time to sightsee, it’s nice to eat lunch sitting outdoors in sunshine in January).

I have been pretty good about my eating goals (drinking lots of water & leaving food leftover).

It helps that the food is not good. It’s apparently pretty typical for big vacation resorts with all-inclusive food plans (like Club Med etc) but from the several meals I’ve had basically the bottom line is that everything is edible but nothing is Good.

One of the first lessons I really followed from Dr Hope was paying attention to the pleasure while eating, I’ve found that after several weeks of really paying attention to pleasure while you eat you can find it — whether the pleasure be from a 5-star gourmet restaurant, or an apple, or a quick snack on the road. But I’ve been pretty surprised to see that once you’re used to finding pleasure in food, that when you eat something that is DEVOID of pleasure, you don’t want to eat as much.

So tasteless salad veggies, fish in yucky sauces, bad bread, sweet and gross lasagne, mealy melon and lots of other things have sat barely touched on my plate in the past few days. Even the fruit is a crapshoot, never great, sometimes okay, frequently yucky. So I don’t worry so much about taking an extra sliver of cheese (the fat! the calories!) because I know I won’t be overeating anything.

I did find myself back in stress eating for half an hour yesterday, when some organizational problems in the meeting occured at the same time as the coffee break. The cookies (a bit stale, too sweet, chemically-enhanced mass produced pseudo-shortbread) were on platters all around as we tried to work out a problem. I ate half of one early on and ditched the second half because it wasn’t good. But I ate 3 more just because they were there and I was distracted and stressed. Today : no more bad cookies. And I grabbed an extra apple at breakfast to eat during the coffee break - it will be much more satisfying.

My DH and I try to plan our business travel at the same time, so it worked out that he left for a trip one night before me, leaving me alone for dinner.

I had an interesting day, eating-wise. From the start of it, I would have thought it would have been a terrible day, but I just listened to my hunger and it turned out that trusting myself and that famous “take time to think” can really pay off.

We had the in-laws over for brunch, which meant bread, butter, eggs, a pannetone (an Italian huge sweetened breakfast bread), chocolate croissants, and they even brought a galette (yes, the same cake I ate last week - yesterday it was Epiphany, and hence the “official” day for that cake, although honestly they sell them like hotcakes from Dec 26 - end of January).

I ate rather a lot this morning, 2 fried eggs, and a ton of baguette with butter. The butter that we buy from the cheese shop is seriously some of the best butter in the world, and even French food snobs (we know MANY!) admit that it’s one of the best butters they’ve ever had. We went through a lot of butter today. We had 2 baguettes for 8 people and they were gone in 15 minutes so I zipped across the street for 2 more.

I didn’t drink any juice, didn’t eat the chocolate croissants. Those are easy things for me to pass up as long as there is good tea and other stuff for breakfast. I also had no trouble turning down the galette - I had tasted one that I knew was great about a week ago, and today’s looked not as good, and I just didn’t want it.

Unfortunately, I didn’t follow my “think while you eat” stuff. No thinking was done really, just eating. I did NOT leave anything uneaten, and I did not pay particular attention, although I suppose I certainly did have pleasure.

These carb-fest brunches are not uncommon for us, but what made today different is that it didn’t spark a day-long feeding frenzy. I accepted that I had overeaten and went about my day, and didn’t get the least bit hungry until 6pm when I had one clementine. I never got it together to go for a walk, but I got a fair amount of stuff done.

The real victory was dinner - again, eating when hungry - which put me at 10pm. (I was hungry before that but working on something, so…). We had leftover roast beef, leftover celery root puree, leftover pear cobbler and A WHOLE LOAF OF FRENCH BREAD. And of course, the butter. I made myself a small plate of roast beef and celery root, and sat and ate Mindfully. Chewing, tasting, enjoying. I kept thinking about the bread and butter, and decided after eating about 1/3 of the meat to eat some bread and butter. I took the best-looking part of the bread, right from the middle (because I’ll have to throw it out regardless, I figured I should have the part I really wanted).

I sat down w my 3-inch piece of French baguette and the butter. I broke off a morsel, buttered it, ate it. Yum. In my mind, I’m calculating the calories in the uneaten roast beef, and the calories in the bread and butter, and deciding it’s a fair trade. I continue eating — no, savoring, the bread and butter and then all of a sudden, it didn’t taste as good. I’d saturated my mouth with the flavor, crunch, chewiness, salty, creamy goodness, and somehow I found that point where the next bite just didn’t taste as good.

I took one more bite, just to see… yep, confirmed, not as good. So I stopped. Half of the “reasonable” bread and butter just not eaten. Most of the meat not eaten. A very satisfied and well-fed Round.

On to dessert - I did want my pear cobbler, I was so proud to have made it. I opened a plain yogurt to go with it, and after a few bites decided I preferred the yogurt, so I abandoned the cobbler after only about 3 bites. Another few bites of the yogurt and I was done with that too.

I was SO PROUD of myself!

Maybe it’s the fact that I was all alone, no radio, no internet, no distractions. Whatever it was, I know it’s a step in the right direction. I am really hoping that with practice meals like this will become more frequent, and start to become the rule rather than the exception.

It’s a great thing to bear in mind as I head out for my week away.

I’m off today for another work meeting with very little or no internet access.

I’ll be keeping my food journals, working on leaving something uneaten every time I eat, trying to get in a bit of walking, and watching the skinnies to see what I can learn from them.

If I’m able to get net access from my hotel room (apparently not, but hope springs eternal) I might be able to blog. If not, I’ll write on my computer and post upon my return.

Hope everyone has a good week!

I was inspired by seeing Fl0wer’s post the other day that contained her food for the day. As a daily blog subject it’s not the most exciting, but as weight-loss bloggers it is our, um.. ‘bread and butter’ and it adds a note of reality to what we’re doing.

I obviously have biased the selection by choosing to report on a day where I did well (had you seen LAST Friday it wouldn’t be so great).

I also had spent some time this week looking up recipes and playing w menu planning (thanks DonnaLynn!) so I was very excited to cook dinner. I should give you some background in that I usually cook NOTHING, and when I do, it’s one dish, not a whole dinner. That whole thing of thinking of different things to go together and getting the timings down has always seemed out of my reach, but today I did it anyway.

So what is a food day for Round in Low Stress Weight Loss ?

• 8:00 am : home alone in office
  • double espresso w 1/4 c of milk
• 9:30 am : home alone at dining room table
  • one bowl full of : 1/2 cup muesli, 1/4 grated apple, 125 grams whole milk plain yogurt
• 11:00 am : office w my MIL
  • green tea w mint (unsweetened)\
• 1:00 pm : lunch - at restaurant w colleagues - fixed menu
  • French bread roll. Left 1/2 uneaten.
  • appetizer of sauteed mushrooms in a light crepe. Left 1/4 uneaten.
  • main dish of pan fried fish in an garlic-lemon-oil sauce. Left 1/4 uneaten.
  • dessert of fruit salad. Left about 3 bites uneaten.
  • chocolate that came w the coffee. I meant to leave a bit uneaten, but I didn’t… I didn’t drink the coffee, does that count?
• 7:00 pm : come home and begin COOKING DINNER. Yes me, cooking! From scratch! Here’s what I made
  • Fava beans which I soaked last night. I had never HAD a fava bean, and saw them dried in the store so decided to buy them & found a recipe that looked interesting. The recipe had me bake them in the oven w onion and tomato, but I had to cook the suckers first and even in a pressure cooker that took over an hour and then they needed to be taken out of their outer skins. A lot of work, frankly. I still have half the package left but don’t know that I’d buy them again, because I could do the same recipe with easier beans. The taste was interesting, however.
  • Roasted pork tenderloin. I ran out of time this morning and didn’t get the marinade done, so it was the first thing I did coming home tonight (the meat marinated an hour, but all day would have been much better). My DH (which means Dear Husband, for the person who asked that recently in the comments) had recently bought this weird pomegranate sauce which apparently is to be used in place of balsamic vinegar, and it’s taking up space in our small European refrigerator, so I did my recipe search based on balsamic vinegar to find this recipe (which also had maple syrup and tomato juice and spices). Whipping up the marinade was pretty easy - gotta love those hand blenders!
  • I had bought these great pears about a week ago, but had 3 starting to get too old on the table that I threw in the fridge & also looked up recipes for light pear desserts - I made a pear crumble but forgot to put the sugar in the topping so ended up serving it drizzled with honey.
  • That’s right, THREE recipes for ONE meal from the woman who never cooks. There was also one convenience food, a packet of whole-wheat organic bulgur as a side dish.
• 8:30 pm : dinner is served! At home, w my DH & DSS (7 years old)
  • The pork tenderloin was good, sauce a bit spicy and only mildly sweet, probably too much rosemary. I had about 4 ounces and left about 2 bites.
  • The fava beans were much better in the recipe than they had been on their own when I tasted them for done-ness. If I ever make the recipe again, I’d cover it in foil before putting it in the oven. I took about half a cup and I left a bite uneaten.
  • The bulgur was bulgur - plain, unseasoned, slightly nutty tasting, not terribly interesting. I didn’t take much and it was no problem to leave some uneaten.
  • My pear crisp was quite good, and because I forgot the sugar very healthy (topping had 1/4 cup flour and 2 T butter, plus oatmeal & some spices, so not very bad when divided in 6). I had a large half cup. I tried to leave one bite uneaten, but threw it in my mouth when clearing the table
• 11:00 While watching a movie w my DH I decided I wanted chocolate. I had 3 pieces of dark chocolate w fillings of some kind (we had received a small box as a gift). I stopped at 3 and really would have preferred a few squares of a really good dark chocolate bar (but I’m out at the moment).

No exercise for the day - a pretty busy work day, plus my MIL stopping by before I had to run to a meeting (which got out late) and come home to relieve her in babysitting.

I was pretty happy to do so well in the “think-while-you-eat” department, it gives me a lot of confidence going into next week.

And the cooking was fun and very appreciated by my DH. We were left with a few extra servings which I immediately froze for lunches or dinners on the run.