170s, I'm coming back to you! And then I'm leaving you for the 160s!

I'm determined that I am going to lose weight this week and break this seemingly endless plateau. Going through the various w.l. bloggers I read to see their progress has inspired me. I have also gone back through the VP archives to read up on my previous efforts. All of those have combined to make for a back-to-basics week for me--the obvious stuff that it's easy to have slip away from me over time:

1.) I'm eating until I am just satisfied--basically, until I first feel the food hit my stomach. If I stop then, within 15-20 minutes, I'll feel very happy with the meal I've eaten, and generally I'll have consumed a reasonable number of calories. The bonus of eating this way is having lots of leftovers when we eat out!

2.) I'm exercising on a regular basis--both the hardcore kind and the lesser. By lesser, I mean that the little bits of exercise we do here and there add up, so I'm parking farther from the store, getting up from my desk at work more often to move around, grabbing my husband to dance in the kitchen while the green beans are steaming, carrying the few groceries around the store instead of putting them in a buggy. (The bonus with the last one is that it's much more difficult to impulse buy when you have to carry your impulsive purchase along with everything else.)

3.) I'm giving myself a smaller serving at meals and then waiting 15-20 minutes to see if I want more. This is partly a home-eating corollary to #1. If it's already on my plate at home, I'm more tempted to eat it; somehow, putting aside food for later if it has been on my plate at home never occurs to me, even though it's no different than getting a to-go box at a restaurant. At home, it's easier if I just put less on my plate to start with.

4.) I'm keeping desserts as an occasional, once-or-twice-a-week treat instead of indulging regularly. Indulging regularly in desserts can be a total downfall for me. And quite honestly, since I discovered my various food allergies, this has been an area where I have really struggled. I haven't gone completely nuts like I would have 1-2 years ago, but I have eaten dessert more often than I was earlier this year . . . emotionally/mentally as some sort of, "Well, if I can't have that, I can have this" thing. Ultimately, it doesn't make me happy to indulge too often; it takes much of the pleasure out of it.

5) When I eat dessert, I'm starting with a small portion and then waiting to see if that satisfies my craving for something sweet. Often, that's all I want; the first two bites are heavenly, and the rest are just so-so. So one cookie may be the perfect treat. If I want a second or third one after that, fine. But starting with one cookie (or one very small slice of cake, or whatever) seems to be helping me out. I keep the cookies I make in the freezer now to keep me from the on-the-counter snacking syndrome. Out of sight, out of mind? Not exactly . . . but I'm back to telling myself, "It will be a real treat when I eat it--if I only eat it a couple of times a week."

6) When my first thought is that I'm hungry (like right now, for instance!), I ask myself, Do I really want food, or am I actually thirsty? It's amazing how often my body gets those two confused. I don't set any particular water goals for myself these days as I know I get plenty of water, but I definitely feel less tempted to snack if I try out water before eating.

7) I have recently officially been diagnosed as being hypoglycemic--a mild case, I think? I've guessed I was for a long time. If I start to feel that anxious hungry feeling that comes with hypoglycemia, I eat a small snack (a granola bar, or 2 T of nuts) when I first start to feel it coming on. (Also, I find avoiding corn syrup, honey, and sugar early in the day helps me to avoid the hypoglycemia in general.) If I wait until my blood sugar has dropped really low to eat something, I feel panicky in my shakiness and will gobble down way more than I need to fix the problem.

8) I'm planning my meals a week at a time--which I always do--but I'm back to including only one starch at each meal. Serving potatoes? Don't need bread then. Having burgers on buns? Grilled, herbed squash is a great side item. I grew up in what was definitely a 2-starch-per-meal household (bread and one starchy veggie or pasta), and when I eat that way, I definitely consume more calories than I would otherwise.

9) I'm trying to make our meals 2/3 vegetables. This was easier to do with vegetarian eating than it is now that I am allergic to so much vegetarian protein, but I'm keeping it in my mind as I plan meals.

10) I'm focusing on how much oil I use when I'm cooking. It's all too easy to add an extra tablespoon (or two or three) when a food really doesn't need it. With my great Calphalon nonstick pans, I only need to use a little bit of fat for flavor in most recipes.

I'm going to get back into the 170s I so briefly visited, dammit. If it doesn't happen by this coming weekend, it will happen by the next one.

Living like I have respect for myself

"I told myself I needed to eat like someone who respected himself." That's a statement that HalfMan made in a recent blog post when he was talking about his weight loss.

So true, isn't it? We don't need to eat like we're ashamed, and we don't need to eat like we have no respect for what food does in our bodies, like we have no respect for who we are and what our years of life are worth. We need to eat like we have self respect.

We also need to exercise like we have self respect.

We're hitting the time of year when it's cool enough in the mornings for those crazy fitness bootcamps to go on in the park where I run. So when I walk into the park these days, I hear fitness instructors yelling, "Come ON! Come ON! Come ON!" I see huddled groups of exercisers trying to hold themselves in push-up position, and then dropping one knee down when they can't hold it, looking around embarrassed or keeping their faces down. I see grimaces. I see bodies covered in work-out pants and long-sleeve t's, with short-sleeve t's over them. Why such coverage for a work-out? I'm out there in shorts, a sports bra, and a sports tank, and I know they have to be getting at least as steamy as I do.

Whenever I am passing one of these groups, I get this overwhelming sense of negativity. What are they thinking about my body, about this pudgy girl who's walking (if I'm warming up) or running through the park? What do the instructors think of me--that I need to have my ass worked over like these people in their boot camps?

I work on letting it go. Every single time I pass them, I doubt myself: doubt my ability to take care of myself, doubt the appeal of my appearance, doubt my methodology.

And quite frankly, I realized today, that's absurd.

I am sure there are dieters who have found bootcamps helpful. But when I see those people crouched on the ground or huffing through plyometrics while instructors blow whistles at them, I realized today that I feel it is the opposite of everything I am trying to do with my weight loss and fitness goals. I want to take care of myself. I want to nurture myself. I want to feel good in my skin and good in my life. I want to feel alive and happy and hard-working. I want to set up my life so that I am happily in my life's driver's seat, knowing I'm a competent driver.

I do not want to feel ashamed or belittled or punished. And when I'm passing the people in the bootcamp, with the instructors standing still screaming and the overweight people all in motion, I feel like that is what those overweight people are doing to themselves. They are saying that they do not have the skills, the willpower, the stamina to create a better life for themselves without being punished or controlled by someone else. They are saying, "Here, take my power, because I don't know what to do with it, and you must know better than me."

Is that really sustainable in the long run? How can we succeed at having a healthy, long life if we won't take control of our own actions within that life? If the only controls upon us are external ones of what a bootcamp instructor says during a workout or what a spouse thinks of us taking another bite? What happens is we rebel against those controls at some point. We don't show up for exercise. We sneak food. We eat a potato, and because it's not 'on the plan,' it throws us off entirely.

You have the power within you to lose this weight, to flip the magnet of your life so that instead of being repelled from what you want to be come, you stick to it. I have that power, too. It's not about making any huge sacrifices, giving up entire food groups because we can't 'manage' to eat them without going crazy or having someone force us to exercise until we are in pain. It's about a gradual approach toward taking care of ourselves, toward believing we really are smart enough and capable enough to learn to run our own lives and really, truly love ourselves. That doesn't mean we won't need guidance and inspiration from bloggers, personal trainers, friends, dietitians, or anyone else, because most of us will. But it means we need to take that information and support to empower ourselves, not give that power away.

Stepping away

I've been absent three weeks! That is a long time.

This week has been better, but the two weeks before that were pretty awful. I'm not talking about my weight, though that did pop up a pound; I'm talking about my outlook on life in general.

I started sublingual allergy drop treatments for seasonal/environmental allergies, and they made me sick at first (as happens with a minority of patients). Trying to figure out how to avoid food allergens while still feeling the full effect of allergies (while not feeling any better from the effort) was extremely frustrating. Then I got my period; it came with bad cramps and a nearly unprecedented (for me) level of sudden despair. Simultaneously, I was working full-time and then staying until late at night 2-3 days a week while learning my new job and training my new employee. Let me tell you that all of that is a bad combination.

I wanted to hide from life. I was scared--as I get when I feel really down--that I was headed into a new bout of deep depression instead of just having a mini-phase.

Instead of entirely hiding from life, I backed away from the social part of my life and only accomplished what I needed to at first. Then I focused on what I could change to make my life feel more right again. That involved some compromises with how I normally try to live.

I am someone who seeks out local, whole foods whenever I can. I like to eat foods close to their natural state, knowing they are better for our bodies in the forms they take when they are closest to the earth. That's also better for the Earth because eating whole foods avoids packaging, shipment, waste from additives, etc.

But when I am adjusting to these food allergies, I can't suddenly make everything from scratch with my new restraints as easily as I could before them. I also can't eat your typical packaged food because, besides not being very tasty to me now, it almost all contains things I can't have.

What I realized I could do is find well-reviewed sources for allergen-free foods on the web and buy some mixes--cookie mixes, bread mixes, etc. A bad gluten-free, egg-free mix bakes up to be something you would only feed a significant other that you want to get rid of. But a good gluten-free, egg-free mix can make food that is tasty, sometimes very tasty. I read up on the internet to find ones that were well-rated, and then I ordered $100 worth of those mixes.

I decided that this week at work, I would leave by 5 p.m. each day--and I stuck to it.

I postponed a doctor's appt. that I was supposed to have this week that was making me feel overwhelmed with visits to doctors.

My period ended, of course, and that helped me get on a more even keel hormonally.

I cut back (just temporarily) on the amount of local foods I am buying to give me time to adjust to the allergen-free recipes I am starting to use. I am still serving 1-2 local foods per night for dinner, but I'm not, at this point, striving anymore to get as many local foods as I can. I'll pick that up again when I feel more adjusted to my food restrictions.

I made a schedule of things (only one thing per month and one other thing per season) that I want to do and try in the next sixteen months--to keep myself from trying to jump into too many things at once, but also to remind myself that the feeling like my life is in a bad place is only a temporary emotional locale that will pass. Now I'm excited about the various things I am going to try. I put them all in my Google calendar with reminders that will get emailed to me to keep me on track.

I increased how often someone is coming to clean our apartment. Having a housekeeper come for vacuuming, bathroom-cleaning, etc., is a splurge that my husband and I agreed to after our apartment got really dirty after my husband was hit by a car last year. We pay the housekeeper well (she makes more per hour than I do!), but we have the money, and it's well worth it right now for her to come in with her all-natural products and clean once a week instead of once every two weeks as we were having her do. That will continue until my husband finishes the two experiments/papers he is currently working on for his thesis at the end of next month.

I have also been trying to take the time to calm myself down emotionally, to talk myself down from the ledges that I can climb to when I begin to get worked up over how X is going in my life. It's so easy to think things are dire when really they just need a few adjustments.

I grew frustrated two weeks ago when I gained 1 1/2 pounds (at the start of my period) and then could not seem to get it off. Then I realized that I have been exercising very little (even incidental exercise, like parking far from a store) because of how hot it is outside. I also, due to the food allergy frustrating, have been eating more at a sitting than I was doing. I have been eating until I'm full, occasionally until I'm unpleasantly full, instead of stopping eating when I first feel the food hitting my stomach (which I find usually means I will be satisfied after a few minutes). That weight is gone now except for .2 pounds because I reminded myself to pay attention to how I feel when I'm eating. I am trying to remind myself, as I often say and mean when I say, that I am in this weight-loss thing for the long haul and not a short fix.

(Meanwhile, I realized two days ago that a pair of my size-16 dress pants are now certifiably too big. I saw my reflection in a mirror by chance and thought, These look horribly droopy on me! A bad realization when you can't change out of them at that moment, but a good realization overall.)

When you feel bad, it's not good to shrink away from your systems of accountability and care, and both of those are part of what this blog is to me. But I do think I needed a short break from doing anything beyond what I needed to do. I'm back to posting now, and while I am going to be taking it a bit easier, I will try to post at least once a week and get some of my new, allergen-free recipes up here. I still love reading your blogs and having you read mine.

80% of my energy is taken up with figuring out food--but not dieting

Yesterday, I hit a low. I got a phone call from my allergist that my new round of allergy tests came back . . . with low-level allergies to crab, pork, beef, lobster, lamb, avocado, peppers, pecans, grapefruit, pine nuts, walnuts, and eggplant, and slighly higher-level allergies to almonds and oysters. (Oysters?? I don’t even eat oysters.)

I hung up the phone and started crying. Adding those allergies to gluten, dairy, soy, corn, tomatoes, apples, eggs, and peanuts overwhelmed me. When those tests came back, it became apparent to me that I am one of the small minority of people with food allergies who develop allergies to nearly any food they eat regularly (and some they don’t). I called Dan and cried and cried. “I can’t eat anything,” I sobbed. I heard him zipping up his bookbag, and he told me he was coming home.

Dan found out the contact info for a doctor in Chattanooga, TN (US) who uses sublingual immunotherapy to treat food allergies. It’s Krys Alimurka with Allergycare of Chattanooga. My insurance won’t cover part of the cost, but I’m going to go see her to get on food allergy treatments. They are no panacea, but they can make allergies better over a long period of time (sometimes somewhat better over a short period of time), and having hope with food allergies is a big deal.

(Some people on message boards find these drops very controversial. I say let’s try them and see if they work. What harm comes if they don’t? The people who are completely opposed to them simply because a doctor told them to be remind me of the people on the IC chat boards who lament that nothing works to fix IC yet never stick to any of the remedies long enough to find out.)

In the meantime, I’m going to have to rotate through foods, continuing to eat ones that give me only a mild allergic reaction or no reaction. I spent 15 hours this weekend–really, no joke–planning my breakfast, lunch, and dinner for each day this week. It was frustrating. I sighed a lot. I keep feeling guilty for feeling frustrated, and then feeling frustrated for feeling guilty when this situation does suck. I’m dealing with it, but it sucks, okay? Always having a good attitude is not possible for most of us, and I’m certainly no exception. Sometimes the glass seems half empty, and sometimes it seems half full. Right now I’m torn about which way it is, but it depends on the moment you talk to me.

There have been bright spots, of course, and some big ones. I feel better. That’s huge. It would be difficult to overstate it. My skin is also clearer.

Several people–friends in my ‘real’ life and people who read my blog–have contacted me to offer suggestions on foods they have found that they think I can eat. A few of them: my friend Nikki left me a voicemail about a flour mix she saw that might work; I just bought some of it. My friend Margaret managed to make cookies with none of my allergens (well, the known ones, anyway). Another blogger sent me a link to a company that sells gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free chocolate cake mix that’s also organic and fair-trade. (I bought two boxes, and two batches of their frosting, for my birthday party next weekend, and they were nice enough to ship it to arrive more quickly than it would otherwise–and the proprietor sent me a nice email with other icing suggestions.) My friend Lesley has sent me a lot of links to allergen-free blogs and websites she has found. A professor at my husband's school who has children with allergies met with me to talk about how to handle them. I could keep listing the people who have sent me helpful suggestions for a while, and there have also been a lot of people who have emailed or commented just to offer support.

I have found local, sustainable sources for beef, lamb, pork, chicken, turkey, duck, and possibly bison now, as well as the usual organic vegetables, fruits, grains, and goat cheese I buy locally. Dan and I are planning to purchase a small (7 c.ft.), energy-efficient chest freezer so that I can put away additional allergen-free meals and always know that there are things at home I can eat; that will help keep anxiety at bay. We bought a small, very well-reviewed gas grill–a Weber BabyQ 100 grill that I got at Sears (where I got excellent customer service–props to Sears)–that has made us able to make tasty foods fairly quickly without using allergen-containing sauces. Pattypan squash and zucchini slices on the grill with salt and smoked paprika on them were delicious.

So what am I eating? I have gotten a lot of questions about that from people who realize that if you cut out all foods that have proteins in them from corn, soy, dairy, eggs, wheat, and tomatoes, you have just cut out 90% of what Americans today typically consume. Our reliance on a few foods is a bit scary, really. What I have realized is that, for the most part, I have to stick to whole foods–foods in forms that are close to how nature created them.

But to answer the question, let’s see. . . . Recently for dinner, we had grilled chicken breasts, grilled squash and zucchini, roasted garlicky potatoes, and cantaloupe. For a light lunch recently, I combined salad greens, nasturtium blossoms, feta, olives, and pistachios with a dressing of lemon, olive oil, and a variety of Italian herbs from our little porch herb garden.

For lunch, I tend to be eating leftovers, though I am going to have to be careful about eating leftovers of the same foods multiple days in a row. For the simplicity meeting (another great meeting!) on Sunday night, I made slow-cooker mojito pork with Cuban beans and rice, and other people supplied side dishes, drinks, and desserts. The directions for grilling pork chops here made for absolutely incredible pork that was not at all leathery; we ate the pork chops with mashed sweet potatoes and Indian spiced butterbeans.

For breakfast, I’m having gluten-free muffins I made, or granola (have to careful about what kind), or amaranth flake cereal, or other random things.

It’s still a juggling act. And when I get home and am hungry and want a snack, I have been struggling with what to eat. At restaurants, I have found that unless I order things completely plain, there will be an allergen snuck in there somewhere (not intentionally, just because one of them is in something). I’m determined to figure this out because my health is incredibly important. But it is taking an enormous amount of energy to avoid lots of foods and to try to strictly rotate others.

This really sucks

I just got a phone call from my new otolaryngologist’s office. (Wendy Smith in Blairsville, GA, is the doctor, and she is GREAT–which I rarely say that about any doctors.) It turns out I have regular and/or latent food allergies to eggs, dairy, tomatoes, soy, corn, and wheat . . . among other foods. If I remember correctly, she (the nurse) said my egg, wheat, and soy allergies were the worst food ones. She told me that I was very unusual in that I tested positive for everything she tested.

I know I’ll figure this out, but the question right now is . . . what the hell am I going to eat? And yes, I do realize, practically speaking, that I have options like rice, oats, etc. I think Dan and I are going to have to start eating meat at home again– meat from well-treated, no-hormones-added animals from sustainably practicing local organic farms, but meat nonetheless–because I don’t see a way around it. I have a tendency toward anemia as it is, so I don’t know what else to do for adequate protein if dairy, soy, and eggs are out.

Doing It the Bob Greene Way

You know, it's funny. I was getting pretty frustrated with myself about this whole weight-loss thing lately. Then I realized a few things:

1. Despite a pretty large stress load lately, the way I have been eating, I have been maintaining my weight loss, which is about 20 pounds lower than I was in December and about 40 pounds lower than my highest weight.

2. I tell everyone else that sometimes you have so much going on in your life that you can't expect yourself to exert a large amount of energy on weight loss as well as handle the other stuff--and I need to accept that I get into that same place sometimes (not long-term, just for now!).

3. Although running has been great for my body in terms of how I feel and how I look (even Dan's Ph.D. advisor, who is normally rather oblivious to me, recently commented, "Your training is really looking great on you"), when I started training for running a 5k, I went from exercising 30-45 minutes daily to exercising 30-45 minutes every other day. If you look at people who keep weight off long-term (according to the National Weight Loss Registry), over 80 percent of them exercise about an hour a day. I'm definitely not there at this point. Moreover, that's okay! Running has been moving me into a better appreciation of my body and its abilities. It's also done a lot for my self-esteem. But if I'm going to gear up for long-term weight loss and weight-loss maintenance, I will have to keep moving forwards into being more active in the long term.

I'm the kind of person who likes to act quickly. Sometimes I jump head-long into things just to realize they aren't right for me or won't work with me/for me. When I realized that I need to be exercising more to jump-start my weight loss, my first idea was to figure out something RIGHT NOW and start on it RIGHT AWAY.

Then I checked myself. The reason this post is entitled "Doing It the Bob Greene Way" is that in The Best Life Diet (the last diet book I read--in January--and the last one I intend to read for a long time unless I'm researching exercise), Bob says that one problem with many diets is that they have us jump into dieting in exactly the way I often respond to things (the way I have tried not to do it this time). We get really gung-ho, we go at the diet and/or exercise passionately for a short while, and then we start slipping up. We start slipping up because the diet/exercise we are doing isn't really sustainable in our lives; it's too restrictive, or too hard-core. When we slip up, we feel like we are failing, and when we feel like we are failing, we give up--either gradually or quickly. For us to create sustainable weight loss, he says, we need to ease into the process of losing weight instead of trying to jump-start it. Make a few changes, he says, and watch the weight start to come off slowly. Once you are used to those changes, make a few more. Work your way into being someone who exercises regularly. Work your way into being someone who eats meals that are high in veggies, fruits, and whole grains. Treat yourself gently and lovingly, not as someone who needs to be beaten or whipped into shape at a frenzied pace.

It works--it's just not a quick fix, and that's hard for people. But think about it: would you rather be 20 pounds lighter at the end of this year, or would you rather stay where you are now? Would you rather lose 15 pounds in three weeks, but then gain it back six months later? Would you rather be reliant on a diet or exercise plan that makes you miserable?

I sometimes think to myself that if I had lost something like 5 pounds a year from the time I was originally overweight, I would have hit my goal weight by now. Even now, I'm like, But 5 pounds?? That's tiny! And I am not suggesting that it's a huge loss. But a slow loss of 5 or 20 or 40 pounds in a year is a much better situation to be in than sitting somewhere, miserably thinking how you have failed at yet another extreme or odd diet (or how you have gained back that weight yet again).

I remember when one of my close friends was 185 pounds and trying to lose weight. I was somewhere like 215 and trying to lose weight. 185 seemed like a distant, nearly impossible dream. Now I'm the girl at 185! That is NOT a bad feeling.

My life right now is like this: I was promoted recently and am learning that job as well as taking on the stress and responsibility of being the head of my department. There are people who clearly think I should not have the position I have at 26 years of age--I don't let them stress me out, but I know they are there waiting to see what happens. I am working two jobs until I find the replacement for my previous job, which means I am juggling the paperwork, the office visits, the phone calls, the questions from homeowners, etc., that two people normally handle. I am interviewing for that previous job I held. I have worked a pretty decent number of late nights lately, and even when I get home from work at a normal time, I am completely exhausted--completely exhausted. I, who normally enjoy cooking, have come home too tired to cook or do anything day after day. I have gone to bed at 8 p.m. several nights, 9 p.m. on others--and still have felt too tired to get up to run some days, choosing instead to sleep 10 or 11 hours a night.

So is now the time to try to push myself to a new level of exercising to make sure my weight loss shoots up? No, it's not. I can--and have been trying to--be aware of what I eat on a regular basis, continuing to keep sweets in check as an occasional treat, not using enormous levels of fat in foods, not eating fried foods too often, focusing on having at least 5 fruit and veggie servings a day. In other words, I can and have been trying to maintain my current level of commitment to my health. But that's the limit of my energy when it comes to weight loss right now. I'd still like to lose weight by my birthday (a month from today), so I have changed my ticker from 10 pounds (which ain't happenin', honey) to 5 pounds. If it happens, great. If not, but I maintain or lose a bit before my birthday, I will certainly consider that a success. Sometimes maintaining your pace is an enormous success; I know that all too well from the times I've dieted and given up! . . . I know all too well that feeling of anxiety and sadness when the weight starts creeping back up and you go, "Oh, here it goes" and don't feel the energy to stop the upward change. If I maintain or lose just a bit now, I'll be doing very well. It's going against my personality to think that way, but it's true.

In a few weeks, I will have hired my replacement for my previous position. I will train her (all the final candidates are women), she will start to attend some of the evening/weekend meetings I currently attend, and my stress will ease. Some of the stress will ease in the coming month, and the rest of it should ease up some in 2-3 months. If I have to wait a month or two to gear up my exercise to a higher level and start seeing a regular drop on the scales, that is okay.

Crazy Days

These times, they have been a'crazy.

I decided to launch my wedding planning blog. Great! So much hard work, but so much fun.

Then my boss put in her notice within the week.

So I've been learning my boss's job--as well as doing mine--and trying to juggle normal life and still commit enough time to my wedding blog. Then I realized my wedding blog can be cut back for a few days where the other two cannot. I tend to be a go-hard-or-don't-go person, but I can post every 2 or 3 days for a couple of weeks--it's not the end of the world.

Then our internet went out at home for a few days--a router problem--so I wasn't writing anywhere at all.

I told the director of my organization last week that I want my boss's job. I was very proud of myself. I made a list of the things I have accomplished at my job that are above and beyond the requirements. It was quite a list. I sat him down, gave him the list, and told him honestly that I wanted the job, that I was told that I would move into that position when I was hired (should it be vacated), and that if I did not get the promotion, it would 'put me in an awkward position here.' Clear enough, right?

He told me he would get back to me today but did not. I asked him about it again this afternoon, and he told me that he would get back to me by the end of the week and that he hadn't had time to think through it yet.

But tomorrow afternoon, we'll be driving to Pensacola, FL, for a wedding I'm in. So I asked him if he can talk to me about it before the workday ends tomorrow. He told me he didn't know because he's been so busy. So we'll see.

I deserve that job. I wasn't even nervous about it until today when he put me off again.

Last weekend I hosted a Pampered Chef party. I served a cheesecake that I bought at the weekend farmer's market down the street. This week, I proceeded to eat two more pieces of cheesecake after the party. Cheesecake=lots of calories. Oh, I also ate two of the chocolate raspberry 'muffins' (icing-less cupcakes) I made. Other than that, this past week I have been eating too much cheese; eating past when I am just comfortable into when I am really full; snacking at times I haven't been terribly hungry; and having wine or beer almost every evening.

I haven't been sleeping well. I wake up thrashing my arms as if I'm fighting through cobwebs. My allergies are terrible, despite our best efforts to fix offending elements in our apartment. (I found out how bad they could be when we went somewhere that was not clean last night, though. I couldn't breathe at all, and my eyes kept tearing up.)

I think I have been trying to feed away my overwhelmed feeling that I have right now. Yesterday I thought, What am I doing? I'm not paying attention to myself even though that's what I preach. I mean, I haven't gone completely nuts, but three pieces of cheesecake in one week (with caramel and nuts and marshmallow cream added twice, too) is too much--it's a sign of either avoiding something or taking on too much. I also think that eating dessert daily on my vacation threw me off, reminded my body what that was like (sugarsugarsugar), and I'm still recovering from that.

So this morning, I took the leftover cheesecake to work, along with the leftover chocolate muffins. No alcohol tonight. I ate a big salad with a very small portion of mac'n'cheese for lunch We had a healthy dinner. I am going to eat dessert once this weekend, or have 2 bites of dessert twice--not eat dessert after several meals.

Small diversions from the path don't kill you if you correct yourself. They only throw you off long-term if you let them. And I'm not going to let that happen this time, because this has been the most sensible, gentle, exciting, empowering weight loss I've ever experienced.

Enjoying Food on a Diet

I remember standing in line in Subway soon after the Jared craze. Two of the three women in line in front of me had come in from their office together for lunch. They had run into the third woman, whom they both knew. All were overweight, though not obese by much, if at all; they were about the same size as me. One of the two women who were together was explaining how their lunches worked.

"We eat a 6" on white or wheat every day for lunch--no cheese or mayonnaise or oil. On Fridays we celebrate by adding a bag of baked chips." They proceeded to discuss how many WW points the meals were.

I was in Weight Watchers, too. I was struck by how depressing I found their meal plan. Can that really be what it takes? I wondered. Boring sandwiches on only wheat or white, meat and vegetables and vinegar--nothing else? And a bag of cardboard-tasting chips to celebrate once a week?

I was thinking about those women's conversation this morning as I walked home from my run. The answer is clear in my mind these days. No, that is not what it takes. It might work, but it's not the only way or, in my mind, the best way to do this weight loss thing.

I don't eat sweets incredibly often anymore. If I do, it's usually just 2-3 bites. I've realized that when I eat sweets, I'm usually nearly full from a meal beforehand. And I hate feeling stuffed these days, so I eat enough to get a taste and stop there. But if I go somewhere and get a really incredible dessert--like the banana-hazelnut-chocolate tart I had recently from Chocolate Pink--if I want the whole thing and am not full by the time I eat a couple of bites, I eat the whole thing. (With the pastry from Chocolate Pink, it actually happened to take me two sittings to eat it all.) When I eat it, I feel no guilt or remorse, just genuine pleasure and appreciation.

I used to not understand that concept at all. I thought people who talked about enjoyment in moderation were crazy. If someone lets me have a go at ice cream, I'll eat the whole tub, I thought. My days were filled with the diet substitutions that I thought would provide external controls to keep me from expanding. Baked chips, low-calorie bread, non-fat ice cream, Cool Whip, diet soda--you get the idea. After I had cancer and started researching what I could do to change my chance of getting it again and/or dying from it, I realized I was ingesting a whole lot of really messed-up chemicals. Later, I realized that the artificial ingredients in, and the acidity of, most of those foods made me feel ill with stomach aches and bladder pains anyway.

Then I realized, too, that eating those foods often drew me in to eating twice as many of each kind in my desperate attempt to get some satisfaction from the crap I was ingesting.

Do you not find 1 tablespoon of real whipped cream far more satisfying than a quarter cup of fat-free Cool Whip? I do. (And what is Cool Whip made of, anyway?)

I changed my life.

I don't drink sodas anymore--period. I've had maybe two in two years, and both of those were special kinds (no corn syrup!) on special occasions where I really wanted them. Do you realize how irrational it is for people to drink such sweet drinks as a staple of our diets? It's crazy. I was as 'addicted' as anyone, and I just quit. Feeling ill, feeling like you're on a constant sugar feed, isn't worth it. I cut out almost all corn syrup. I cut out all artificial sweeteners. I started eating only sugar/honey/molasses as sweetener . . . eating sugar in delicious forms like real maple syrup on homemade waffles, petit fors from a local bakery, a small scoop of chocolate-java-chip icream, etc. Not crappy Little Debbie cakes--even the full-fat kind of that dessert is not fulfilling. If I want dessert, I want something incredible. Something I make myself, or something that comes from a store or restaurant that specializes in good desserts.

At first I just went nuts, really. I ate lots of sugar, and I gained weight. But over time, I've gotten my cravings under control, as I've discussed previously, and these days, I eat real food (homemade food) that is good for me 80-90 percent of the time, and the other 10-20 percent of the time, I revel in what I am eating instead of feeling any guilt about it.

Even that 80-90 percent of the time isn't about deprivation, either--I think that's important to note. My healthy meals are about balancing things out--lots of vegetables, some healthy fats, some healthy proteins, some great grains, and always (always always always) wonderful seasonings and sauces. If I eat a higher calorie lunch, I have a lower calorie dinner. Breakfast stays pretty much standard to keep me from accidentally sneaking in calories I don't mean to eat. I try not to let myself get ravenous, which is when I make bad food decisions.

Do I spend more on food than some people do? Yes, absolutely. And I know that I'm 100% worth it. I don't believe in living in debt, so my husband and I make sacrifices elsewhere, but we eat well. What will happen in your life is what you make a priority, and a long, healthy, satisfying life is a huge priority for me.

If I think I want dessert, I remind myself of everywhere in Atlanta (and in my house) I can find all sorts of amazing desserts, and I ask myself if what I have in mind is actually what I want, or whether I am feeling something else emotionally that I'm putting off on food. I craved a cupcake intermittently for two weeks a couple of months ago and finally went and got one. I got a cupcake from the top-rated cupcake spot in Atlanta, and it was perfect. It was incredible and just hit the spot--partly because I knew I could thoroughly enjoy it with the knowledge it was exactly what I wanted.

I'm all for people realizing that we can do this, we can all do this--really, we can. We don't actually need diet gurus to restrict our lives in painful ways. We just need to get back in touch with what it feels like to make healthy foods that also taste good, to eat reasonable portions, to let ourselves enjoy things in moderation. You, too, do have the ability to enjoy things in moderation, just as I do even though I once didn't realize I could.

Of course, we also have to deal with the psychological and biological issues related to cravings, weight gain, etc. I have definitely learned a great deal from reading articles and books that go into the psychology and biology of dieting, eating, etc. Bob Greene's recent Best Life Diet and the book Mindless Eating, along with many O Magazine articles, come to mind first. My husband and I eat off of salad plates for every meal; there are no wide open spaces on our plates that we will feel we need to fill with food. We serve ourselves out of the kitchen instead of off the table, and we don't go back for seconds until we have finished our plates. (Usually, we don't go back for seconds at all. Having a plate that's usually 2/3 of veggies helps keep us full from early on in the meal.) When I see a high-fat food, I know that my body will kick in the desire to eat it because of humans' ingrained biological tendency to think that we must eat high-fat foods whenever we can to fend off the seasons of famine that have been so common throughout human biological history. I can deal with these things much more calmly when I understand what's going on behind the curtains of my mind when I'm faced with food issues.

Additionally, it's been helpful to learn--starting with my anti-cancer research--that there is an imperative for our bodies and for this planet for us to take better care of ourselves and refuse to eat food that has been produced in really awful, wasteful, polluting manners. I had a professor who also owned a cattle farm tell me that I would, like she, no longer eat fast food burgers if I went to a cattle auction and saw the diseased cattle fast food restaurants chose to use for their meat. Reading Fast Food Nation was a great nudge in that direction for me as well, and I recently finished and highly recommend The Omnivore's Dilemma, which was a very in-depth look at our various eating habits in the US. (Did you know that, indirectly, we eat more corn than Latin American countries that rely on corn for 60-80 percent of their diets? That's crazy!) These books are fascinating, very engaging--not dry at all--and they take you behind the scenes of America's food production to make you think about what you really should and should not be supporting with your consumption.

I was thinking about those women at Subway because I was thinking about WW no-point soup versus the soup I made a couple of nights ago. That's a different post for later, though.

Crazy week

My 100th post! How nice.

I have to tell you that this week has not gone the way I anticipated for this week to go. Tuesday, after work, my car broke down. It's now fixed; I just have to go pick it up . . . and pay $850. Thank God for our emergency fund, but it's still irritating, of course.

One of my friends was in town for a medical appointment, which turned into a longer, bigger ordeal than we had realized it would be.

All of that leads to . . . I had long days the past two days and ate out the last two nights instead of eating at home.

Then I got sick. Food poison? Or a stomach bug? I'm not sure. But ick.

Feeling mostly better by 11 today, I decided to go try my 20-minute run. What was I thinking? The longest run I've done with the sun beating down straight overhead and the temperature climbing into the 80's? I felt ill a few minutes into it and realized my lunacy. I felt bad enough to just quit and walk home . . . and it appeared to reinvigorate how bad I had felt. Ick. Back to the bathroom and bed.

Now I'm pondering dinner. I've been at home all day in the silence. I've read Bel Canto in the last two days. . . . Great novel. I read very quickly and even more so when I am home alone. I've read three novels in the last week. Even though I've spent time with wonderful friends, I'm lonely. I'm ready for my husband to return from his conference.

I just went into the kitchen a few minutes ago and put on my apron to make myself dinner tonight. But I left my book with my list of meals I was going to make at work yesterday, and the only one I can remember is . . . oh wait, I just remembered another one that will be easy. Well, good. I'll have a meal for one to post tonight and I will keep myself from going out for dinner.

I'll go make it now before I have time to reconsider.

Oh, but I forgot to mention that after I got off the plane from our trip, the scale said I had gained six pounds on our trip. SIX POUNDS. That's truly insane--I mean, I figured two maybe--I ate well mostly but ate delicious gourmet breakfasts each day--but gaining six pounds in a week would take something like 3000 extra calories a day, and I sure didn't do that. I told myself that it was probably a water-weight issue from flying, and sure enough, four days later, I'm down 4.5 of those pounds.

A hard day's week

I am so worn out. Besides having my mega-cold this week, I worked 13-hour days on Tuesday and Wednesday--on top of my normal 40-hour workweek, I mean.

I haven't been sleeping well because of my cold. I'm either stuffed-up or dehydrated at any time.

Thursday, I took half of a day off to go to a neurologist with one of my friends; due to my extensive experiences with medical crap, I'm the go-to person with my friends when they need someone to go with them and make sure they're heard. Unfortunately, the doctor did not hear her or me, really, though he did at least agree to run tests that he thinks are unnecessary. Why is dealing with medical crap so hard to do? I absorb the emotions of people around me--something I have to be careful about--and my friend was so, so incredibly upset. Today she got worse news: basically, her job wants her to go on disability or get fired. But it's difficult for her to do disability unless she gets a diagnosis (all she has is short-term d., anyway), so again I talked to her while she sobbed and sobbed. We feel certain she has MS, but she doesn't have clear enough brain markers yet, I guess. She and her husband cannot afford for her not to have any income, so this is a bad situation.

Last night, we had crazy bad weather, and I was worried about my mother, who was having worse weather where she lives.

Then this morning, I was in traffic on the other side of the interstate from the accident in Atlanta where a bus of college students went over a bridge and killed six people. I'm sure you've heard about it today if you look at national news. Something like that is always horrifying and terribly sad, but anything related to car accidents gets me worse since my husband's accident (he was hit by a car) in November. This afternoon, I drove over where the bus landed--it created grooves in the road--and I literally got chills down my spine.

While I was at work, I had to deal with a very rude person who doesn't understand the purpose of my organization. Nothing major, just irritating on top of everything else.

A major ex-boyfriend--my first love--dropped by to drop off something I need to plan our high-school reunion. That wasn't a bad thing, just strange. "See you in four more years," he joked as he left. He says he never sees me even though we live in the same city--which is true, pretty much. And we were friends for years before we dated. But it's a bit strange for your husband if you're terribly close to the first guy you slept with and whom you dated for longer than you've known your husband.

I drove home with a collective tension headache pounding in my temples.

So I got home and cancelled our evening plans to attend a party. I laced up my new running shoes . . . but my husband wanted to go with me (and he can't run with his injuries) . . . so we went on a walk. But it was a good, fast walk, and I feel somewhat better now.

Tomorrow I will feel more rested and more able to take on the world.

Non-scale victories . . . 'cause they're the ones that really matter

Yesterday: "Are those new sweatpants?" I think I may detect a note of anxiety in his voice. I did just buy a pair of expensive running shoes, and my husband is the more frugal of the two of us. But we live on a budget, and, outside of emergencies, I don't buy things we haven't budgeted for. (And actually, our budget is set up to catch most emergencies as well.)

"No, they're not new. I used to wear them when we went to the gym."

"Oh." He's forgotten because they haven't fit me in a long while. And they are both bright red and cut slimly through the hips and thighs, so if they don't fit well, I'm not wearing them! But they do fit me now. Yay for recovering wardrobe pieces.

~~~~

"FEEL ME!" I'm standing in the kitchen, and he's two rooms over in his office. "FEEL ME FEEL ME FEEL ME!" Then I laugh, wondering what our neighbor must think we're doing. I'm standing in the kitchen with my hands on my waist, feeling how much differentiation I'm developing between my waist and my hips. My waist is one of the places I lose weight first; above a certain weight, my weight thickens closer to the size of my hips, but normally . . . well, in high school, I had the waist of a size 6 and the hips and breasts of a size 10. J. Lo had nothing on me. I'm not anywhere close to that size set or differentiation now, but I feel sexier when I can feel a greater distinction in my curves. I like being curvy--the curvier the better.

He finally comes into the kitchen and rubs my waist and hips. "Wow," he says, and his eyes widen. "I can feel a big difference."

My hips and breasts used to be perfectly balanced. Then I had surgery twice for ovarian cancer, and it left a ridge of scar tissue in my lower abdomen. Now my hips are always a little bigger than they would have been before. But that's okay--it used to frustrate me, but I'm alive, right? That's a lot more important than having hips and breasts that are the same size.

~~~~~

I'm still sick. I was worse today, so I stayed home from work to rest. Tomorrow and the next day, I'll have days that are about 14 hours each at work. Ick. And there's no one to run that stuff but me, so I have to be there, awful cold-ish thing or not.

I had my husband bring me home a pint of B&J's for my sore throat, but I've only eaten about a fourth of it. I do want something cold, but I don't want something so fattening. And I'm not a big popsicle fan.

I think by tomorrow night my nose will be as red as one belonging to someone in a cold meds ad. Ick.

It's a good sign that I feel like I'm missing out when I'm too sick to go exercise. But I know missing a couple of days can throw me back into old routines if I let it. So by Thursday (once my crazy workdays this week are done), ask me whether I've been out to exercise, okay? (Assuming I'm not this sick still, anyway.)

How I Know It Can Be Done

Of course we all know it can be done--at least theoretically--but how many people do we know who haven't taken unrealistic, drastic, even obsessive steps to lose weight . . . many of them just to gain back whatever they do manage to lose? How many people do we know who have a happy relationship with food that has taken some adjustment but left them at a reasonable, healthy weight?

But really, there's more to this story. Where should I start?

Around September of 2004, my best friend convinced me to join match.com to look at photos of guys she was talking to on there. (She did finally meet the right guy on Match--they will be getting married next October!) I had to join because Match wouldn't let me look at more than three or four profiles without joining. So I joined . . . and because I'd been through a bad break-up with my first fiance a couple of months earlier, I was excited about at least having some long-distance flirtations with random guys.

I was not excited about dating with how heavy I was, however. I had peaked out somewhere in the 220's while my first fiance and I were still together. I'm not sure how high my weight got, because I quit getting on a scale after 223 popped up there. But shortly after he and I broke up, I was magically down to about 215. I say magically because I didn't do anything in particular; the relief of stress seemed to impact me in a way to let me lose weight. (Funny that breaking up was stress relief, huh? But it was.)

I put up photos of me on Match that were not dishonest--and were at my current weight--but that showed me in the best light. I got a lot of hits on my profile from guys who clicked to read it after looking at my picture, and that was an ego boost for me.

Having been left with two car payments, the full rent, and a variety of other bills in my break-up, I was completely broke, so I didn't pay for a Match membership. I had my email address hidden in my profile in such a way that Match didn't catch it to delete it. Unfortunately, many of the guys who were interested in me didn't catch it, either. So I could read what they wrote me on Match, but I could not reply. I discovered that many of the guys who wrote me thought I was cute but didn't bother to read my profile to see who I was or what I wanted out of dating. Completely inappropriate men wrote me completely inappropriate messages. It got a bit old receiving them.

A month or so later, I decided I was tired of just messing around on Match and that I might actually want to find a guy or guys to date--just casually, I thought. I was planning to move across the country as soon as I had my finances worked out. I did a search for guys who fit what I wanted: politically liberal Christian men between the ages of 25 and 30 with college degrees or higher who were within 60 miles of me. I think there were 8 guys who popped up total. I winked at maybe three of them. A couple of days later, I got an email from one of them, a cute grad student at Georgia Tech. I got not just an email, but an email that was about three pages long that responded to everything I had written on my extensive profile. I wrote him back a long email, and things took off from there.

From email we moved to talking on the phone. The grad student happened to have a conference in DC soon after we started talking on the phone. He continued to call me--we would talk late into the night--but we didn't have a chance to meet.

The night before he was coming home, he told me that his face was hurting from how much he was grinning every day from talking to me and thinking about me. I knew he was pretty smitten, and I was too--but we'd never met.

This grad student looked, from his pictures on Match, to be a fairly thin size. He was very handsome. I was so overweight and so miserable about my weight. I was very anxious about meeting him and seeing whether my weight would keep him from being attracted to me.

The next day, I devised a plan to happen to pop up in Atlanta on an errand and ask whether he wanted to meet me. If he was busy, fine, but if not, I would get our first meeting over with and see whether he was still interested in me once he took in my size.

So I put my plan into practice, completely surprising him. Sure, he wanted to meet up--did I want to get dinner? We set a time and place. I was full of butterflies.

Upon meeting me, he said, "Wow, you are even cuter than your photos." My weight--my size-- was a total non-issue for him. I would kill any of my friends if they pulled a similar move, but I stayed with him that night--a guy I had never met before. There was nothing more than kissing involved, but we stayed up talking and flirting and snuggling. I slept on his bed; he slept on the floor.

It turned out that this guy--who was to become my husband, who was to become the first person (outside of WW, which I had tried earlier) who ever knew my true weight--understood weight issues. He'd been a chunky guy himself, and miserably so: a guy who'd been the friend of many girls but the boyfriend to none. A guy who kept thinking "When I reach ___ pounds, I'll do something about it." (But who never did . . . and his weight crept ever higher.) Then he graduated from college, lost a little weight from the drop in stress, and realized he didn't want to be the type of person who is a picky eater anymore. He started eating a broad number of vegetables, fruits, grains, and meats. He eventually got on a path to intuitive eating that would take him down--no counting points, no calculatingcalories--85 pounds, to 175 pounds, before working back up to around 200 and stabilizing there. (For this 6' tall guy, 175 was so thin the photos from that time are a little creepy.) He lost weight without ever learning about all of the calories in different foods, without learning about fat grams and proper amounts of protein, without obsessing over food the way most of us do with weight loss. His path involved living for a while in Switzerland, living for a while in Japan, working out some, walking a lot, and learning that he really did not need to eat the entire portion of almost any meal he was ever served outside of his home. He had found a general purpose for his work and enrolled in graduate school to study it, and that made him much happier, which helped him lose weight more easily as well. His weight loss journey still took a couple of years. Then he emerged: he was a handsome, trim guy, but he didn't really know that--still struggles with the idea now, actually. He had a girlfriend for the first time, dated her a pretty long time, realized it wasn't working out, and broke up with her. He pined after his best female friend. Then he went on a few Match dates. Then he met me. And while I joke about all the changes I strongly encouraged him to make (new haircut, regular haircuts, no black and brown together, no more pleats, no more tapered jeans!), he was already a wonderful person in every way (well, except fashion) when I met him. And he saw that in me, as well, despite my weight--or maybe I should say including my weight.

I can't find any photos of my husband when he was at his highest weight (how many of us keep those?), but this is one of him I found that was taken not too long after he started losing weight.


And here's another copy of the photo of him that I posted a few days ago. I find it so hard to believe he has no idea how hot he is, but he really doesn't. Partly, it's just that his looks were never terribly important to him, I think, and partly, it's that his self-image (despite all my comments) has never caught up to the changes he's made. (Fat passing for thin, I've heard it called.)

But back to my original point: well, I guess there actually are two. The first is that you shouldn't put off dating or trying out online dating until you're thin, because someone who is perfect for you could be waiting to accept you just as you are. And when you find him, he will love you for you, all of you, through thick and thin, for better or worse. Until I met my husband, I didn't realize how compatible a person you could find, but I found my match, and you can find yours. Don't let your weight stop you from looking.

The other point, the starting point, of this post is this: when my husband and I entered into this relationship, I possessed 95% of the knowledge about food, exercise, nutrition, weight loss, whatever you want to say. But my husband was the one who had managed to learn to listen to his body and reach a reasonable weight--with no obsession and no unreasonable compromises. So I know it can be done, because I live my life every day with a perfect example of intuitive eating accomplished.

Getting back on track

My peeps, I have not been doing too hot. Something about visiting my husband's parents this weekend threw me off. Perhaps it was partly the prevalence of the type of sweets I would never keep in the house now--a frozen grocery-store mudslide pie, for example: the type of sweets we always had at home when I was a kid, which I would wolf down. (There were four kids--"eat it NOW or it will be gone later" was the slogan of our house.) I know it was partly that I didn't have control over every meal or even almost every meal while I was there. Partly it was that my routine was just generally off. I have not been eating horribly, but I haven't been doing as well as I should have at taking care of myself by feeding my body mostly nurturing food.

For lunch today, after we met with our financial planner, we went to Bahama Breeze. (I don't frequent many chain restaurants, finding many local restaurants far better than most chains, but I love me some occasional Bahama Breeze.) I got a mojito (normally LOVE them) but only drank a third of it. It wasn't a great one and made me sleepy. I ordered five fried butterflied coconut shrimp with broccoli and mashed sweet potatoes. I left most of the sweet potatoes; they were really good, but I was full. The broccoli was very buttery. I love good steamed broccoli with some garlic and a touch of fat--it really doesn't have to be drowned in fat to be tasty! The shrimp were fantastic. Yet I've had too many meals like this (the "ooh, that's too unhealthy, but it tastes good" ones) in the past few days, and I couldn't fully enjoy it. It's easier to enjoy a rich meal if you know you are on a good kick and taking a break from that kick than when you feel you are backsliding into habits you don't want to revisit. This would have been a great meal to have in the middle of a very healthy week; it was not a great meal to have at the end of four days of not eating too well.

But as my husband reminded me this evening, "It's only a little slip-up. Everyone has them, and you can get back on track easily." He's right. I can. I can get back on track tomorrow paying careful attention to what my body wants and needs instead of just eating something because it will taste good. And I'm going to take a long, brisk walk tomorrow for stress relief and to think through some things. I am adoring my long walks. I am not usually having to force myself to do them, because they are helping calm my body and clear my mind. It's total "me" time. Plus, I've gone back to the habit of only listening to my mp3 player when I'm exercising, and I LOVE my mp3 player. It's got mostly bad, great 80's songs on there right now.

Some good news today was that it's been my first time at the doctor in over half a year when they didn't need to swing the weight bar to 200 pounds. I've been under 200 since early January, but this was my first time being weighed by a doctor since then. "This is 11 pounds under what my weight was two months ago," I considered saying to the nurse. Instead I just grinned. Grinning at 190-something pounds on a scale is a good sign when you are losing weight. It's much better to celebrate victories than to feel negative about, well, any of it.

And one interesting thing I noted this weekend is that since I have cut back (wayyy back) on how much dessert I am eating with my various mental tricks and general awareness of the state of my stomach, I can now notice the impact that intense sugar has on me very quickly. I feel a bit jittery a few minutes after more than two bites of dessert . . . can feel the sugar and usually caffeine hitting me. I feel my pulse pick up slightly. I feel slightly buzzed and slightly ill. It's not a very pleasant feeling, if I am self-aware enough to realize what's happening. If I can remind myself that it's the first two bites of dessert I love--and still only have that dessert when I truly want it (not just because it's there)--I'm doing well.

I told my husband on the plane last night how disappointed in myself I know I'll be if I can't make eating intuitively work. "I need to prove to myself that I don't need someone else or something else structuring my calories so strictly for me. I need to prove that I can trust myself." The trust I've been feeling about food is carrying into other parts of my life; I am feeling generally more confident. It's great to be losing weight and feel happily more confident and in control, not restricted. I don't want to lose that. So tomorrow, I am proving I can trust me by being trustworthy with my body without any counting.

Mind games

I, who consider myself a very authentic person, am discovering that some mind games are worth playing. That's because there are parts of my brain that like to play tricks on the other parts, and in order to combat that, you've gotta use one part of the brain to trick or calm the crazy part.

As I've discussed in previous posts, one of my games, when I have a craving, is to remind myself of all the various places I can get whatever I am craving, and remind myself I can find a high-quality version of whatever I am craving whenever I want. Somehow, it helps calm the craving.

Also, as I have mentioned before, I am learning to be very empathetic to the part of me that gets crazy-hormonal or gets anxious with desire when I develop a craving. I remind myself, with great understanding, that part of my body is very confused. Then I ask myself what I am really wanting: sleep? a good talk with a friend? snuggles with my husband? sex? a bubble bath? a tall glass of tasty bottled water?

Those are games I've mentioned before. Here's a new one I've been finding effective for about the last week or so. It's a game called "What if I just . . . ?" I started playing this game last week when my husband had made these delicious butter cookies that are filled with jam. They are out of this world. I had 2 1/2 cookies . . . but then I wanted more. And sympathy wasn't helping. And a reminder that I could have them any time really wasn't true; these are some labor-intensive cookies. But the thing is, for the health and well-being of my body, I really didn't need to keep indulging in these super-rich, super-buttery, super-sugary cookies. And I was going to bed soon; if I eat too close to bedtime, I sleep worse than usual. So even though some part of me said, "EAT THE COOKIES," and even though I am telling people to try to eat intuitively, I also want people to eat smartly--myself included: to recognize when a craving is not a need but just an emotional or physical reaction to a particular substance that doesn't promote well-being.

I stood in the kitchen; I was so torn. The cookies were calling to me; my primitive brain was answering. Then I thought, "What happens if I just walk away? What happens if I just ignore the craving?" Nothing, I realized. Nothing. I'm fine without those cookies. I flipped off the kitchen light and walked away. And I felt pretty good about myself, too, because I knew I was making the right decision.

I've applied that way of thinking several times since then. The most recent time was yesterday afternoon. For about the past week, I have been feeling unwell at times--a stuffy nose here, a headache there. It felt like it was getting worse yesterday. I didn't feel awful, just not too great. I was scheduled to go on a walk with one of my friends, and I kept considering cancelling. I've read a study recently that says that exercise can boost the immune system in people who are fighting off colds, so intellectually, I really didn't have a reason to go. And I wasn't really sick enough to cancel; if I didn't exercise every time something aches or feels off, I'd nearly never go. Then I thought, "What happens if I just do it?" Well, my walk could be fine, or I could start feeling worse. "If I feel worse, can I just cut my walk short? Will my friend understand?" Yes.

I went on the walk, and it actually energized me; I came home with enough energy to make dinner. And it was a delicious dinner, so I'm going to give it a post of its own.

Getting back in the zone

As I posted earlier, I am up (or should I say down?) to a 7-pound loss for the month of January, which is wonderful. For the first time in my life, I am using a sense of nurturing myself to be very conscientious about the number of fruits and vegetables I put into my body; the amount of dessert, fats, meat, and added sugar I eat; and the level of exercise that I undertake. I have lost 7 pounds without once calculating my daily calories, fat grams, carbs, or anything else. Instead, I have tried to be conscientious about what I put into my mouth when I actually am hungry; what might lead me to think I'm hungry when I'm not; and what, other than food, might make me feel better when I am stressed out. Instead of being angry or frustrated with myself when I have a craving, I try to utilize the sympathetic but logical part of me--a part of me that is outside of my cravings that can be sympathetic to the confusion causing the craving without giving in to the craving. I am waking up with more energy in the mornings. I am, for once, looking forward to my daily walks and the stress relief they provide. I'm crying less often. (I'm not depressed, but I am emotional, so I cry pretty often.) I'm feeling generally peppier during the day. Overall, I am feeling like I am taking care of myself instead of feeling like I am punishing myself like I usually feel when I am dieting. Instead of feeling like I am someone who is out of control and needs strict controls on her life when it comes to food, I am trusting myself as if I am someone who has good intentions and capabilities when it comes to her own body--and then I am living out that trust.

So what happened this weekend? Well, things are going really well, so I started to feel anxious. Creeping into my mind were thoughts and emotions that were not this clearly formed, but went something like this: "Seven pounds is a lot for you to have lost--maybe you need to start counting calories to keep it off?" "You don't actually know what you're doing! You're going to regain it all and then some!" "What if you really can't trust yourself without some stricter guidelines?" "What if, this week, you've GAINED weight instead of losing it?" "Something's wrong, because this isn't as hard as it should be!"

I spent the weekend feeling this somewhat vague doubt of myself. I told myself that it was normal to feel this way, because I'm trying something new and it's working, and my brain doesn't know how to handle dieting that works without punishing me. Part of my brain is still catching up. I tried to be sympathetic to the part of me that is anxious, and to remind myself that after this many years of reading about diets and nutrition, being an intelligent person, I certainly know how to eat and how not to eat.

I put myself on auto-pilot, thinking these thoughts and feeling these emotions but trying to continue my new habits. Due to circumstances partly outside my control, we ate at restaurants three times this weekend, and while I made better choices than I could have (low-fat buffalo instead of beef), I didn't make the best choices I could have, calorie-wise (vegetable soup). I also walked the bottoms of my feet off, though. I was wondering if I was using walking to justify higher calorie consumption or if I was just being wise to exercise more if I ate more. I told my husband I wasn't sure I could trust myself to go with him to a drinks-and-apps function tonight after work--I thought I might eat way too many calories.

Yesterday, I decided to go back and reread all of my posts to this blog as a way of reminding myself how competent I've been so far. As I was re-reading, I had these thoughts: "Wow, see, it is okay to treat myself occasionally in moderate amounts. I did it on X day and still lost weight that week." "I do know what I'm doing." "This is a hazier way to do things overall, but it does feel pretty clear-cut on a day-to-day basis." And you know what? That's how we lose weight, firm up our muscles, and get healthier: by making good decisions on a day-to-day, moment-to-moment basis.

When I woke up yesterday morning, with doubts still in my head, I ate the breakfast I eat daily now: 1 T of natural almond butter on toasted whole-grain bread with sliced apples on top and about a teaspoon of honey drizzled on top of that. I ate that despite being in a rush; my health is worth more than a little rush.

I took one of my friends to a doctor's appointment (we think she may have MS), and then I drove her to a point where one of her other friends were picking her up to take her home. (She lives 2.5 hours a way and does not feel safe driving now due to her symptoms.) We went into the mall at that exit to find somewhere to eat lunch, but--I am proud to say--nowhere in the mall sounded good to either one of us. (I sat this friend down last spring--when she was eating horribly and miserably gaining weight--and explained the reasoning behind cutting the consumption of meat and processed food and increasing vegetable intake, and she has really taken to all of it!) We left and eventually found our way to a Panera Bread Co. (St. Louis Bread Co. to some), where she ordered a veggie half-sandwich and tomato soup and I ordered a turkey pesto half-sandwich and French onion soup. Despite the fact that Panera is a better "fast food" choice than many places, the foods there are still high in calories. I ate my soup and a couple of bites of my sandwich, and then I stepped outside to call and change an appointment time. As I stood up, I realized my pants are looser around the waist--always my first sign of losing weight--and when I got outside, I realized I was pleasantly full. So I quit eating: I left half of my tasty sandwich sitting on my plate untouched.

When I got back to work, I realized that I might struggle to feel motivated about going for a walk on this below-freezing day, so I emailed several of my girlfriends in Atlanta to see if any of them were interested in joining me for a walk through the large park in Midtown. One wrote back to say she was, so I was then set for exercise.

I got home rather ravenous, and we had no extra fruit in our apartment, so I ate about six gingercrisps (60 calories), and I headed out the door to meet my exercise partner. We had a good walk and talk--walking quickly enough through the brisk air to keep me a bit winded after a while, but not so quickly that we couldn't manage a slightly breathless conversation most of the way. I got home feeling good from stretching my muscles; we had walked for about 45 minutes.

My husband was off at a class, so I turned on the living room radio to a new country station--I listen to a huge variety of music, and country's one of them--and I started chopping and peeling as I sang along.

First I sliced an African (similar to butternut) squash, and I used a grapefruit spoon and a pumpkin tool to scrape the seeds and pulp from the inside. I sprayed a pan with sides with non-stick spray for good measure, and I put the squash interior-up in the pan. I preheated the oven to 400 degrees F and mixed together some walnut oil, maple syrup, whole-wheat flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger, and I spread that over the interior of the squash pieces. I put it in the oven to roast for about 40 minutes.

I took a package of extra-firm tofu out of the freezer and defrosted it for about 4 minutes in the microwave. (Freezing tofu before using it gives it a firmer texture.) I drained off the fluid and took the block of tofu out of its package. I put the tofu on the plate with a high rim, put a piece of plastic wrap on the tofu, and put my heaviest cutting board, topped with several books, on top of the tofu and plastic wrap. Then I left it to press the tofu. Within 20 minutes, a good bit more water was extracted from the tofu, making it much more firm.

I washed and half-way peeled some fingerling sweet potatoes and sliced them into long, skinny pieces like French fries. I tossed them with olive oil, Mrs. Dash garlic-and-herbs seasoning, and two dashes of Lawry's seasoning salt. I sprayed a cookie sheet with a dash of non-stick spray and spread the sweet potatoes on it. I then baked them, as well, for 20 minutes at 400, flipping the fries after 10 minutes. I timed them to go into the oven to be ready at the same time as the squash. (For a crisper texture, I might try a higher temperature if they were the only thing in the oven.)

I put water in a steamer pot on to boil, and I got out a bunch of asparagus. I rinsed them and sliced off the bottom third of each stalk--the tough part of the stalk that some people eat but that I prefer not to use. I set the asparagus aside. (As I was waiting for my husband to be on his way home, I occasionally tossed more water into the steamer pot to keep it from boiling away.)

I put two teaspoons of peanut oil in a non-stick pan and heated it to medium-high. When it was good and hot, I pan-fried the tofu in the oil for about ten minutes, tossing regularly. Then I added some Whole Foods peanut sauce to the tofu, stirred it around, and turn the heat on that eye to low.

When the squash and sweet potatoes were done, I turned the oven to 200 degrees and left them in. (Unfortunately, my squash seasoning all slid off the squash and caramelized to the point of burning in the bottom of the pan.)

I called my husband to find out he was a couple of miles from home. I waited a couple of minutes and then put the asparagus into the steamer pot to steam for about 4 minutes.

I grated two tablespoons of strong Parmesan Reggiano and mixed the cheese with a bit of salt and pepper. I pulled the squash and sweet potatoes out of the oven. My husband arrived just as the asparagus was done. I tossed the asparagus with the cheese, salt, and pepper mixture, and we served ourselves dinner with big glasses of tasty alkaline water. It was all delicious--the sweet squash, the sweet-and-savory combination of sweet potatoes with garlic, the slightly sour asparagus with the salty cheese on it, and the comforting flavor of peanut sauce on crispy tofu.


And I thought, "You know--I can do this; I really can."

Working through emotions

I had the strangest thing happen yesterday (Sunday) morning. I woke up about 8 a.m. and thought, a bit excitedly, "I should get up and go for a walk!" So I did. I was amazed. I have never woken up and thought about exercising with happy anticipation.

You know how some people get a runner's high after a lot of exertion? I am a very emotional person, and I think I get an endorphin rush from exercise even if it's not a huge amount of exertion. I mean, I walk a decent length, at a quick pace, but this isn't like I'm running 5 miles. I get a real emotional boost from a walk as long as it's for 15 minutes or more; my hour-long walks leave me pretty ecstatic.

When I got home, I was being silly with my husband, and he said, "I think you should take a walk every morning. It seems to put you in a good mood." He was right that it helped boost my mood. Unfortunately, due to a medicine I take, it's very difficult for me to wake up in the mornings in time to make it work, much less get a walk in beforehand.

My solitary walk turned out to be a good thing in more than one way. As I walked, I thought about a situation with one of my sisters, a sister with whom I do not have a close relationship. Though she only lives a couple of hours from me, my sister and I don't see each other often; she and I are very different personality-wise, and we, to a pretty great extent, value different things in life--or maybe look at the things we value with different perspectives.

A few weeks ago, this sister and I got into an argument over the fact that she has refused to come to holidays with our family for a couple of years. Whether she comes to holidays with our family is her choice, but she had chosen to bad-mouth our family on her blog--saying things about us that weren't true--and that really irritated me. In the course of our argument about it, she ended up saying, basically, that she thinks I don't deserve someone as wonderful as my husband--that I mistreat him. You might be able to imagine how hurtful that was, and her statement was basically out of left field; it was completely random and outside the argument we were having. Also, my sister has met my husband only a few times (four?), and I have never done anything but joke around with him and be loving to him in front of her, so I don't even know what she is talking about. My husband, knowing how her statement would upset and worry me, was completely horrified she had said that and assured me it wasn't true. He reminded me that my sister has been in bad shape emotionally for a couple of years and that I shouldn't let her depression/anxiety/social issues get me down. While I understood what he was saying, my feelings were still horribly hurt by what she had said. My sister chooses to see many people around her in as negative a light as possible, but I hadn't fully realized I was one of those people she viewed through her black lenses. Since the argument, whenever I have thought about her, I have felt a dark place in my heart--a place of pain and anger over her statement.

During my walk, I was trying to understand why she would have said what she said to me. Then I thought about what it would have been like if the situation were reversed. Around the time I met my husband, my sister (who had married at a very young age) was recently divorced. I was recently out of a relationship where I had been engaged. Both of us were, to an extent, floundering, though I had the advantage of a good college degree, so I did not experience the same level of financial stress my sister did/does. Then I met my husband, and I'm sure to my sister, from her distant perspective, it looked like my life instantly changed into a sparkling one. The fact is that my husband has always been wonderful at assisting me in my quest to be the best person I can--but the only change that happened in a short period of time was that I felt unconditional love from a wonderful man. The rest of the changes in my life (getting my finances straight, moving to a new city, getting a job I loved) happened in relation to him but not just through him, if that makes sense. But in any case, here I was, a few months out of a bad relationship, in a new relationship that allowed me to grow as a person, and with a boyfriend who was very attractive, extremely intelligent, funny, and madly in love with me . . . and who, when he finished his Ph.D., would be able (if he so desires at that time) to make a lot of money. Then he proposed after we had been dating 9 months, and we married after knowing each other about a year and a half. Had the situation been reversed, if it had been my sister meeting my husband, how would I have felt?

Envious. Very envious. I would have been happy for her, but I would have wondered why my life couldn't take the turn that hers had. I would have wondered if I was bound to end up alone while she had this great guy. I would not have extrapolated that into "and I wouldn't treat him like she is--I wouldn't mess that up!" But I guess that has been her reaction to the envy I now see she has probably been feeling. I am certainly imperfect in my relationship with my husband, but I think nearly anyone I love or have loved would tell you I will go out of my way to make the people in my life feel cared for. My husband is, of course, no exception to that . . . as he would tell her, if she had ever asked him.

My understanding of my sister's potential reaction may be accurate or not, but if it is her reaction, understanding how she might have gotten to the place to say such a hurtful thing to me makes me feel better about the situation. Of course, I can't call her and say, "Oh, I realized you're probably just deeply envious, and I would be too," but I can think about the situation now with compassion for her instead of anger.

Once I realized that on my walk, I decided it was time to head for home.