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Jul 9

Food Isn’t An Event

by Mary Stella

I received a long, wonderful, “catch up” email from a dear friend today.  She had weight loss surgery last fall and both knees replaced last month.  We’ve known each other for almost 20 years.  Of all of my friends, she most understands my food issues and struggles with the eating disease.

It was great to hear from her and learn how she’s doing with her recovery and rehab.  I’m so proud of her and excited for her future.  In her email she said something that really got me thinking.  In a nutshell she said that food cannot be her friend and it can’t be an event.   That has stayed with me ever since I read it.  I realize how often I made food an event even though I didn’t realize it.  It wasn’t enough for food to be part of a celebration or holiday.  It often became my focal point.  Sort of like, “Oh, great.  It’s Christmas.  Mom’s making Beef Wellington” or that the whole point of the birthday was the license it gave to eat cake and ice cream.

Those were just the big things.  There have been countless other times when food took on much greater relevance, when it surpassed the event to become the event itself.

It’s sort of a thin tightrope to walk.  Whether it’s a date, or a celebration, we’re big on the practice of marking such things with a fine meal. Whether we prepare it ourselves at home, or go for the entire ritual of dinner out, we give food this powerful quality.   It’s really difficult to sort it out emotionally.  How can I relish the reason for the celebration and make celebrating at all the reward without elevating food and eating to star status for the occasion?

So much of my focus is still on food these days.  In order to successfully proceed with my journey, I honestly need to think a lot about my food, what and how I’m going to eat.  Again, there’s a tightrope — to balance between not making food and eating an event, but giving enough thought and consideration to my planning and the way that I consume.

The pre-planning helps.  I’ve done well with putting together lunch and my snacks the night before.  It’s like once I’m prepared, I can forget about the food.  I don’t have to think about it anymore once everything’s packed up and ready to go.

For the rest of it, I think I need to work even more on the awareness factor.  I love the social aspects of going out with friends or family to eat.  I think it’s okay to roll in enjoyment of a tasty meal that someone else created, as long as that’s not the priority.  So, before I go out, I guess I’ll need to remind myself that the point of the evening is the socializing and company.   Food is the accessory.  An important one, for nutrition’s sake, but an accessory just the same.

There’s more here for me to delve into.  I’m not quite at the root, but it’s a start.  I need to think, consider, and process this some more.

 

Uncategorized

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Jul 8

Layers to Happiness

by Mary Stella

Over on Reinventing Fabulous, the Sunday post always asks us to share examples of things or experiences when we were happy in the prior week.  I think it’s good to get in touch with our feelings on a regular basis.  Lots of times we can get numb to what’s really going on.  I used vast quantities of food to numb me out a lot of the time when I was upset, angry, lonely, frustrated, sad — you name it.

But that’s not really the point of this post.  I’m experiencing a strangely wonderful feeling today and, by contrast, realizing just how not wonderful I’ve been feeling below the surface for a couple of weeks.  To pull out the onion analogy, we’re like onions and sometimes you have to peel down layer by layer to get a true sense of what’s going on.   On the top layer, I’ve felt like I’ve been chugging along, looking at my positive changes, happy with the big picture progress of the last year and a half.  All the good stuff that I share here on the blog.  Honestly, my life and health are so greatly improved that I can’t help but be happy.  It almost seems small-minded, or shrunken-hearted, of me to be any other way, right?

Yes, and no.  Today I realized that while overall I’ve been super happy, the slower progress and frequent stalls where I haven’t lost as much at all, have upset me on a deeper level.  I haven’t been as much in touch with the frustration, the concern, the “what am I doing wrong or not doing right enough” feelings.  Those not so bright and cheerful emotions have weighed on me and I haven’t allowed myself to really admit they were there and then dig through them.  It’s sort of like if I didn’t acknowledge them, they didn’t exist.  In retrospect, this was a form of denial.

So how come I’m realizing this all today?  No, the dam didn’t suddenly break, leaving all of the negative thoughts and feelings to freely flood until I was drowning in the emotional morass.  Far from it.  At some point over the weekend, I reconnected, or made a stronger connection, back to the big picture but broken down to the day by day.  My energy and commitment rekindled.  I feel stronger and more capable, ready to plow through the remaining pounds that stand in the way.

I’ve been almost goofy inside all day long.  It’s a great feeling.  I’m happier, not only on the top layer, but several levels deep.  Each meal and snack, planned for and eaten on target, reinforces the happiness.  The contrast illustrated to me that while I was happy, I wasn’t happy.  As soon as I got the big “Aha!” moment, I knew that I had to blog it and lock it down in my conscious and on the virtual page.  This is something on which to build and keep me powering through to the end.

General Musings My Progress

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Jul 7

Planning to Succeed

by Mary Stella

We’ve all heard the saying that if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.  So it is with food and me.  This doesn’t mean that I automatically mess up with my eating if I don’t plan in advance, but the percentage of likelihood definitely increases.   Definitely when I plan my meals and prepare ahead of time, I do better at staying on track.

I’ve been sort of la-la-laing my way the last few weeks and progress is slow.  Pardon the pun, but I’m fed up with this stage of my recovery and definitely want to lose the remainder of my weight and meet my goal a.s.a.p.  I know I’m not going to wake up tomorrow 60 pounds lighter.

Wait.  I have to pause here and marvel at the wonder of it all.  Sometimes a terrific realization hits out of the blue, like just happened.  I used to wallow in the heart-numbing despair of thinking, “It will take me forever to lose more than 200 pounds.  I’ll never, ever be successful.”  Now I can look at the journey and know that, holy wow.  I only have 60 more pounds to go!  Woohoo!

Okay, pause over.  As I was saying, I’m not going to wake up 60 pounds lighter tomorrow, but it’s a reachable goal in the months ahead.  Ideally, without fail, I want to have the rest of this weight off of my body before the two year anniversary of my surgery in January.  I’ve said it before and I’ll keep on saying it because I am determined to make that goal a reality.

Without going crazy, I’m stepping up my exercise with a little additional something-something every day, whether it’s an extra 15 minutes of walking, a session on my Pilates machine at night, the opportunity to jog in the pool, some Zumba dancing during television commercials, practicing Tai Chi, whatever.  As long as I do something.

I’m back to logging my food and activity on MyFitnessPal every day too, even creating recipes or finding out the calorie/nutrition numbers for dishes I make from a recipe.  There are programs online that will calculate these numbers for me if I plug in the ingredients.  Pretty cool.

Sometimes the planning isn’t just what I eat or what exercise I do, but organizing my life so that I can fit this all in.  I usually pack my lunch in the mornings while sipping my morning protein drink.  That’s good planning, but it takes a little time.  Some mornings I’m rushed and doing the lunch prep cuts into the period when I would otherwise take the dogs, and myself, for a morning walk.  So, tonight I put together my lunch bag and stuck it into the fridge.  Without that task needing to be done tomorrow, the dogs and I will both get our extra exercise first thing.

The amount of preparation also figures into success.   I’ve learned that if I give myself an inch, I’ll take a mile.   For example, it is not wise for me to take a jar of peanut butter into the office and leave it in my desk drawer for when I want to use it as a snack.   For some reason, I can control myself better at home, but when I’m busy at work, that is just too tempting.  Same thing with hummus or carrots, nuts, or (fill in the blank).  Last year at some point, I visited one of those places that sells in bulk and also supplies restaurants but is also open to the public.  I bought the little containers and lids that are used for take-out salad dressing and the like.  These are perfect for holding a tablespoon of peanut butter or hummus.  (I clean them out and recycle them, I promise.)  I added green apple slices and carrot sticks to reuseable containers.  I measured out some Greek yogurt and fresh fruit in another glass container for lunch.  There you have it.  Two snacks and lunch all ready to go in them morning.

Dinner is also planned for tomorrow so I don’t have to do the whole “shop when I’m hungry” gauntlet.  That rarely turns out well.  I’m also good to go for all day on Tuesday.  A couple of days of planning usually carry me through.  Tuesday evening I have a meeting at night, after dinner.  When that’s done I can hit the supermarket and pick up what I need for meals the rest of the week.

Reading all of this over, it sure sounds like I have it all together.  Trust me, I really don’t.  Every day is still fraught with potential pitfalls, and possible slips.  That’s the reality of life as a compulsive eater.  I could grab and eat for no other reason than food is in my immediate vicinity.  If I lived in a bubble and never encountered any other food possibilities other than the things on my plan, I’d be fine.  That’s not a practical reality.

Instead, I simply try to do the best that I can.  When I’m working a strong recovery, I keep the appropriate foods close and available so I don’t need to make decisions on the fly.  I organize my life as best I can so that I can keep up with my fitness activities.  I plan what I can in order to succeed.

General Musings My Progress

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Jul 6

Curbing Cravings

by Mary Stella

I ran across an article online today at ABC News entitled 9 Ways to Curb Food Cravings.  It has some useful tips, I think, and I particularly like these two:  Plan on Giving In and Go Gourmet.

According to fitness trainer Jillian Michaels (Best known for Biggest Loser), if you completely deprive your sweet tooth, you set yourself up for a binge later.  She suggests allotting up to a fifth of your daily calorie allowance to your chosen sweet.  Her choice is Paul Newman’s Organic Peanut Butter Cups at 180 calories a pack.

That means that on my 1000 calories a day food plan I could have 200 calories a day in chocolate.

Under Go Gourmet, Janis Jibrin, MS, RD, the lead nutritionist at TheBestLife.com suggests that ordinary, run of the mill treats leave us unsatisfied so we should opt instead for really good stuff — a terrific cookie, high quality chocolate, a premium potato chip.  I honestly believe there’s a lot to this particular idea.  A few years ago, friends sent me a package of Bissinger’s Chocolates from St. Louis.  Hand to God, this is the best chocolate I have ever eaten.  There were 30 pieces of dark chocolate with either 60% or 70% cacao.  They were so good that I actually savored each one and limited myself to a single piece a day for the next month.

If you’d ever seen how I previously plowed through a bag of M&Ms, which I love, you would scoff at the thought that I had any chance of stretching out those Bissinger’s treats for 30 hours, let alone 30 days, but I did.  I think I’ll order myself some and revisit that success.

I know my mindset.  There have been many days when I’ve been on my way home from work and started to crave some sort of sweet treat.  If getting the treat would require me stopping in at a store, I often can successfully divert myself if I remember that I have some sort of thing that I like at home, whether it’s fat free pudding, no sugar added Italian ice, or even really good fresh fruit.

I have never dealt well with the thought of eternal deprivation.  In my years in OA, I knew without a doubt that I would never make as one of the people who completely abstained from sugar and/or white flour.  The mere thought of saying, “Never” makes me want something more.  The trick is to find my balance.  I think if I know that I have really excellent chocolate waiting for me at home, I can withstand any other carb, sugar or chocolate temptation.  Remembering that first Bissinger’s experience gives me hope that I can actually adjust my relationship with chocolate into something that doesn’t damage my recovery but actually helps strengthen it long term.  We shall see!

There were several other suggestions on that list from saving our candy wrappers to faux frying to picturing ourselves at our goal.  Excellent suggestions on all counts and ones that I want to keep front of mind as I go through the days.  I really, really want to hit my goal weight before my two year surgiversary.  I’m rallying my internal forces and techniques and reminding myself every day that I want my recovery more than I want to eat off plan.   That said, I’m human.  I get cravings.  Anything that I can do to curb them and set myself up for success will be a very good thing indeed.

If you’d like to read the entire article, click here for the ABC News site.  It also originally appeared on Health.com.

What foods do you crave?  Are you into chocolate and sugar?  Carbs?  Salty snacks?  Fats?   When you get a craving, do you have any great suggestions for constructively dealing with it?  Please share!

Body Matters General Musings

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Jul 5

Weight Loss Shows

by Mary Stella

Mary note:  I wrote this post last Tuesday but only now discovered that it stayed in Draft format and didn’t post.  Sorry!

I watched my first episode of Extreme Weight Loss tonight.  I’ve seen several episodes each season of Biggest Loser.  Maybe it’s because I don’t watch these series week after week after week, but it generally appears to me that the coaches/mentors/trainers put the main emphasis on exercise.  Particularly in Biggest Loser, the workout routines are extreme as they strive to knock off as much weight as possible in the shortest period of time.

As you know, I’ve really embraced exercise along this journey, so I would never devalue its importance.  I’m just left feeling that these programs don’t show enough of the healthy eating aspects of losing weight and then maintaining the loss.

While watching EWL tonight, toward the end I found myself getting really annoyed. They kept pounding home the crucial need to “step up the intensity” of the workouts in order to make up for a less than expected weight loss at the previous weigh-in.  Run harder, lift more, do more sit ups and pull ups, run some more.  Go, go, go, go.

The really sick thing is that while watching I jumped totally into the frame.  I caught myself thinking, “Hey, maybe I need to step up my intensity.”  I started to wonder if I should join a gym or sign up for sessions with a personal trainer.  I reminded myself that I hate going to the gym and already am short on time in my daily schedule.  No matter.  I could go full out with exercise at home with my DVDs and pilates machine.  (A machine I’m still learning to correctly use.)  Nah, I should rethink that gym membership idea.

The thoughts ran around in my head like a hepped up hamster on a wheel.  That kind of frenetic mental process does not make for clear analysis.  I gave myself a figurative head smack to stop the cycle.  I still exercise a good amount.  Do I need to get obsessive and take on additional routines at a gym?  Honestly, I don’t think so.  Have I slacked off a little from what I was doing a couple of months ago?  Probably.  It’s significantly hotter out so the walks are a little shorter.  Normally, I’d compensate by getting in the pool and jogging/dancing for an hour after work.  Time-wise, that’s been hard.  Still, if I embrace the “don’t let the little you can do keep you from doing the little you can do” approach, I know that I can make some time somewhere to add more minutes of activity each week. So, that’s a goal for the rest of the week.  Seize workout opportunities.  An extra ten minutes a day adds up to a whole extra hour plus in a week.

Back to tonight’s show.  In the last half hour or so, I started to get really annoyed.  Not only did I not feel like they showed enough about the participants learning and practicing better eating habits, but it seemed like all they talked about was the skin removal surgery.  When anticipating the next weigh-in, the trainer/host actually said that if the couple hadn’t stepped up their weight loss, he didn’t feel comfortable taking them in for the consultation with the skin removal surgeon.  The couple, a husband and wife, expressed stress and anxiety over whether they’d lost enough to get approved for their operations.  The wife was practically in tears about whether she’d qualify or what would happen if she qualified and her husband didn’t.  She finally said that if he didn’t qualify, she wouldn’t have it either.

Hello!  What about being delighted because you were on target to lose well over 100 pounds and your husband more than 160 pounds?

Look, I dream of the day when I’ll have my skin removal surgery.  That’s at least a year away, perhaps more.  I need to lose the rest of my excess weight and then maintain the loss for an as-yet-unknown period of time.  (I haven’t asked, but I’m guessing I probably will be told to wait a year after hitting my goal.)  However much I want to have it, that is not the priority.

I can’t believe it was actually the priority of the couple on the show either.  Sure after losing so much weight, they wanted the surgery so they could look their best, but I’m sure that improved health and overall quality of life had to be the prime motivating factors.  Don’t you think?  I’m willing to bet it just seemed like the priority because of the way the producers/directors edited the program.  They probably cut out a lot of other things in order to build the drama.  Will they or won’t they qualify to have their skin removed??  (Cue tense organ music.)

I’m not really sure why this show set me off tonight.  I’m trying not to come off like I’ve learned it all and know it all.  That’s not the case, believe me.  I’m still figuring this out.  I learn more as I go along.  All I know is that the presentations seem wildly out of balance.  I’m concerned for the message.  I’d feel the same way if anyone did a show about dieting that only discussed the eating plan and didn’t discuss the importance of increasing physical activity.  I know I’d howl with anguish if a show about weight loss surgery didn’t delve into both eating and exercise.

Whatever the case, I was annoyed and not inspired by the program.  I think next Tuesday I’ll put the time to better use and exercise instead of watching.

Body Matters General Musings

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Jul 4

An Independent Life

by Mary Stella

Happy 4th of July, here in the U.S. I have the day off from work and am celebrating with an extra Zumba class at 9 a.m. After that, I’m walking a dog from our local animal shelter in the city parade. Tonight my porch provides a wonderful spot for friends to join me to watch our town’s truly wonderful fireworks display and we don’t need to fight the crowds at the beach.

In honor of the day, I’m thinking of all of the things I’m free of today because of my weight loss and fitter lifestyle. Today I’m celebrating my independence in a myriad of ways.

I’m free of chronic pain in my knee. Free of shortness of breath from merely walking. Free of always feeling bad about myself because of my super obesity. I’m free of the constant, nagging stress of worrying about whether I’d fit in a seat, break a chair, be able to buckle a seat belt, have enough room to maneuver in a bathroom stall.

I don’t project about other people’s reactions to me because of my size, or project my own concerns. I used to spend a lot of time assessing situations and spaces and relating them to my body shape and heft.

I’m free of medical conditions including high blood pressure, Type II diabetes and high cholesterol which means I’m no longer taking medications to help those conditions.

There are so fewer regrets in my life these days. Mostly I rued the things that I wasn’t doing and the experiences that I wouldn’t try because of my weight. Now I have the freedom to explore, to try, to do virtually everything I can think of that appeals to my sense of adventure and fun.

When I was at my top weight, I felt like I was living my life in lock down. It’s so much better to have thrown off the chains and given myself permission to move however and wherever I want to go — and to enjoy moving, dancing, and going with the energy flow.

Mind, body, and spirit are unfettered. I’m incredibly grateful and so happy for my personal independence.

 

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General Musings My Progress NSVs

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Jul 1

It’s Not How You Fall, It’s How You Bounce Back

by Mary Stella

The title of this post is a still-slightly-new-to-me attitude that I’m trying to ingrain in my head so that I can reinforce good recovery behavior.

I have a history of yo-yo dieting.  I could go great guns for months on some diet or another and lose a good chunk of my chunkiness right until the day I fell off of the proverbial dieting wagon.  At first I didn’t understand that this was my compulsive overeater’s version of a relapse.  I only knew that once I went off track of the diet plan, I couldn’t seem to steer myself back on course.  I didn’t bounce back.  When I fell, splat, that was it.  Diet over and the lost weight was regained in short order.  To add insult to injury, those pounds usually brought along friends and I ended up weighing more than I did before I started the diet.

Emotionally, that pattern “dissed” me — as in dismayed, discouraged, disappointed, and, eventually, dissolved my motivation to try again.

There’s a lot of emotional and physical suckitude inherent in that lose/gain/succeed/fail pattern.   If I’ve had any lingering fear during this whole journey, it’s that my history would repeat.  Even after weight loss surgery, it’s possible to screw up the process and regain all of the lost poundage.  How’s that for a horrifying thought?

Trust me, I have pondered a lot about how to counteract such an established behavior cycle.  Looking at myself with complete, no bullshit honesty, I knew that I would not be “perfect” on my food plan for the rest of my life.  Falls were going to happen.  If I truly wanted long term success, I needed to take on the challenge of developing a new pattern.

That’s when I began to consider more than how I could prevent falls.  Not falling would not be enough to succeed in my new lifestyle.  I needed to learn how to bounce back after it happened.   But how?  The first step, I came to understand, was to believe that I could bounce back.  Being imperfect was okay and didn’t mean that every effort put forth before the fall was ruined or doomed.   I could and would get back on my feet, on my plan.

Secondly, I couldn’t fool myself.  Just because I accepted that I would be imperfect, and even that there would be times when I consciously decided to veer from the plan, I had to maintain awareness and rigorous honesty.  I have an eating disorder.  There is a world of difference between making the choice to eat off of my plan, and doing so compulsively without thought.  If I don’t support my own awareness, then compulsive eating takes over and sets up a pattern of thoughtless eating bite after bite after bite.  I don’t bounce back from that my friends.  I crawl and try to pull myself up off of the ground.

There’s more to consider and ponder, but for right now, these steps are a good start.  For the last 17 months, I’ve had long periods of great success with steady, rapid weight loss, times of stalled weight loss, and a couple of vacations where I put back on a few pounds.  I have not, however, experienced crashing to the ground and not being able to get back on track at all.  I’m not yo-yoing.  This is good for my confidence.  It helps to ease my underlying fear that I will eventually regain all of my weight.  I’m learning, by experiencing positive actions, that it’s possible to bounce back onto the wagon and return to the recovery road.

General Musings The Past is the Past

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Jun 30

Driving a Dream

by Mary Stella

I crossed another item off of my Promise List this weekend by purchasing what amounts to being a dream car.  Ever since I was quite young, I’ve wanted a luxury convertible.  When I first got my license, I dreamed of a Mercedes 450 convertible.  My income did not keep up with that particular dream, let me tell you.   Back in 91 I at least got a convertible — a much more affordable LeBaron.  I loved that top-down freedom.

I haven’t pursued the dream in recent years because I knew that my great size would not make for a comfortable fit in one of these cars.  Honestly, if I ever rented a car that was less than a full size, I even ran the risk of not being able to buckle the seat belt.  After my weight loss surgery I started dreaming again and put it on my promise list.   I no longer wanted a Mercedes but a few years ago, my eye was caught by a Lexus I saw in town.  Every time I saw one on the road, I thought, “Maybe someday.”

Someday rolled around yesterday.  I blogged a few weeks back about going in and test driving a vehicle (a 2010 model with low mileage)and the improved confidence I’d felt in dealing with the sales tactics.  I walked away without buying back then because they wouldn’t come down to a price I wanted to pay.  I kept an eye on the dealer’s website.  Knowing that dealerships really don’t want to keep a car on their inventory when one month rolls into a new one, I sent an email to the sales guy earlier this week to say that I saw the car was still available and to contact me if they wanted to deal.

We exchanged several email with negotiations.  They came down a lot.  I came up a little and we made a deal!

I talked about this on the previous blog and I’m happy to say that everything went according to plan.  I got back home in time to assemble and cook the baked ziti and prepare the Caesar salad.  My co-hosts came over and prepared wonderful antipasto and bruschetta and punch and decorated.  We had a great baby shower.

I have to tell you that when all of the paper work was done and I first slid into the car when it was mine, this incredible happy feeling came over me.  Investing in this car was more than a dream come true.  It was a reward for the hard work I’ve put into losing weight and getting healthy.  I earned this dream with more than the money.  I made the promise to myself and kept it — and that is a wonderful feeling.

Gotta say, I also think I look pretty good in that driver’s seat.  What do you think?

Newcar

General Musings NSVs

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Jun 27

Cooking for a Crowd

by Mary Stella

Most of the time when I cook, I’m preparing food for one person — me.   I don’t do anything elaborate during the week. Grilling something and fixing some veggies sort of does it for me a lot of nights.  On weekends I sometimes do a little more like cook up a soup or prepare something that takes a little longer to cook and end up with good leftovers for other evenings.

I’ve mentioned before that I enjoy cooking.  This weekend friends and I are putting on a baby shower for another friend at my house.  I volunteered for the main dish and decided to put together a baked ziti that I do well and a Caesar salad with a really great dressing recipe.  We aren’t quite sure how many people to expect.  Our family of co-workers aren’t always the quickest to remember to RSVP.  So, I knew I’d be safe if I doubled the recipe.  More work but more fun.

I had everything planned and then something good came up that requires me to make a quick overnight trip out of town tomorrow after work.  I bought a car from a dealer four hours away and need to pick it up first thing Saturday morning and then get my butt back here in time to put the final touches on the meal.

Points in my favor — my house is clean.  Three other people are co-hosting and they’re taking care of decorations, appetizers, drinks and dessert.  Once I knew yesterday that I needed to do some of my prep work ahead of time, because I wouldn’t have time to put together ziti for 20 or more people on Saturday, I planned and organized.

One of the many wonderful things about Italian food is that any good red sauce readily takes to being prepared a day or two ahead.  This will actually develop the flavors.  The salad dressing will be fine, too.

I am still spinning so many plates and have so much on my mind that I’ve been getting out of bed far earlier than normal.  Something has woken up my dogs at 4:30 a.m. the last two mornings.  After satisfying their curiosity by letting them out for a quick run in the yard, I’ve been unable to fall back asleep.  It’s amazing how a slight bout of insomnia can open up the opportunity for daybreak productivity.  By seven o’clock this morning I’d showered, dressed, fed the dogs, left two business voice mails, checked email and Facebook, and chopped six red peppers and two giant onions.

Tonight after enjoying dinner out with a friend I came home, finished the tomato-meat sauce and mixed up the salad dressing.  I’m as ready as I can be now for the shower.  Barring any highway-closing trouble, I should be home with plenty of hours to spare and will easily be able to assemble the ziti for baking.

One of the things I’ve noticed about my cooking style is how often I stop to taste and adjust the seasonings.  I’ve had to make some adjustments, particularly if I’m cooking a meal on the same evening I’m going to eat it.  I’ve teaching myself to lightly taste without taking full bites or spoons full of the dish.  Otherwise I’ll fill up just in the cooking.

I think I’ve shown myself that I can cook for myself, for a few friends, or cook for a crowd and not use it as another excuse to overeat.  Tonight I was able to sample so that I could balance or adjust the flavors but I never felt like I was eating too much on top of my great meal at dinner.  Tasting really was different from eating.

Now I only have to hope that the crowd enjoys the meal as much as I’ve enjoying making it for them!

General Musings

1 Comment »
Jun 26

Sugar Non-Abstinence

by Mary Stella

I know people who abstain as much as possible from sugars.  They don’t eat any candy or sweet baked goods.  They don’t cook with white or brown sugar or add it to any drinks.  I’ve seen them pick up a product at the supermarket, read the label and then put it back on the shelf if sugar is in the first five ingredients.  According to an article I read today on the website of the Harvard School of Public Health (Click here to read), sugar lurks in our foods under many names so when reading a label it’s good to look for the phrase “added sugars”.  Nutritionists differentiate between the sugars that exist naturally in foods such as milk or fruit, and others including:

  • Agave nectar
  • Brown sugar
  • Cane crystals
  • Cane sugar
  • Corn sweetener
  • Corn syrup
  • Crystalline fructose
  • Dextrose
  • Evaporated cane juice
  • Fructose
  • Fruit juice concentrates
  • Glucose
  • High-fructose corn syrup
  • Honey
  • Invert sugar
  • Lactose
  • Maltose
  • Malt syrup
  • Molasses
  • Raw sugar
  • Sucrose
  • Sugar
  • Syrup

That’s a hell of a list!

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I’m a sugar addict, but I like sweets.  Hand to God, I accepted a long time ago that I would never be abstinent if I had to give up sugar.  Even if I’d eventually developed full blown, Type I diabetes, I don’t know if I could have been strong and resolved enough to never have sugar.  Hell, maybe I am addicted.  Maybe this is my version of being a dry drunk – saying I’m on plan but still having sugar here and there.

Honestly, I get in bouts where I want chocolate or crave a cupcake, but I honestly am much better about these and other sugary foods than I used to be.  Really dissecting this, I don’t think that I’m in denial.  I’ve come to believe that, like with many other things, awareness and moderation are key.  I’m trying to develop an action plan.  It’s still in rough draft form, but here are some thoughts.

1) I accept that I do not have the resolve and fortitude or the desire to completely give up cake, cookies, brownies, ice cream, etc.  However, I eat them rarely and do not overdo the portions.

2) I can be more aware of the added sugars that are included in many of the foods that I eat and make cut backs.  If an added sugar is listed in the first four ingredients, I will look for an alternative to that product.

3) Read labels, read labels, read labels.  I could do a blog post just on this topic.  Pre-surgery, when I read a label I was usually looking for products that I don’t like such as mushrooms.  Now I look at labels much more frequently than ever before.  Last time at the supermarket, my attention was drawn to a frozen food product marketed under the name and image of the Barefoot Contessa, Ina Garten.  I love her show and thought, “Wow, this might be good”.  I picked up the product and the label info didn’t render the product automatically horrific, i.e. it was about in nutritional quality middle of that sort of “gourmet” frozen prepared choices.  Then I picked up another bag by a different manufacturer, glanced at the label and immediately put it back on the frozen shelf.  It had about 50% more calories, fat, and sodium.

Sadly, it’s a product that I’ve purchased and consumed in the past.  Even more sadly, I believe I ate the whole kit and caboodle in one meal even though it held a couple of servings.  But that was then (pre-wls), this is now.  I walked away from the section without buying anything, even the Contessa’s product.  I’m sure hers would taste good but, well, it had mushrooms and I’d really rather make my meals fresh these days as often as possible.

Back to the plan draft.

4) Think before I buy.  Think again before I eat.  After I’ve looked at an item and read the label, if it doesn’t meet the guidelines I’ve set for products with added sugar, but I still think I want it, I will really think about it.  How badly do I want it?  Is it a strong want, an emotional want, or a flashback to compulsive behavior where I only want it because I just then happened to see it?  Yes, I really do have these kinds of conversations with myself in my head while I work through the process.  If it makes it into my basket at that point, I still have until I check out to change my mind about buying it.  If it makes it all of the way home, I can still think before I actually eat it.

One thing that is really working for me when I hit these challenges is to think of alternatives.  I used that technique the other day when I was battling the urge to buy a package of brownie mini-bites.  In that instant of decision making, I really, really, really wanted the chocolate brownies, but I asked myself, “What could you eat instead that would be a better choice?”  I remembered that I had low calorie, fat-free chocolate pudding at home.  I made a deal with myself to eat pudding instead of brownies and that got me past the urge.

So, that’s the draft plan at the moment.  I can probably add to it as I think on this some more.  The bottom line for me is that I am aware that don’t want to completely give up sugar.  I am equally aware that I want to achieve peaceful, co-existence with it, i.e. have it occasionally in ways that I truly enjoy but not eat it to the point that it compromises my program, my weight-loss journey and my health.  Sometimes it helps to think about my brother.  He is one of the healthiest, if not the healthiest, eaters that I know.  Even he sometimes eats ice cream and other foods with sugar.

It can be done, even if one is a recovering compulsive binge-eater.

Body Matters General Musings The Past is the Past

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