Breakfast: Eggs, steak, fruit, freaking bran muffin
Lunch: Lobster, cauliflower, yogurt dip
Dinner: Cauliflower, yogurt dip
So, anyway, Saturday is coffee and breakfast with my friends. It used to be just coffee, but we ran out of just plain coffee shops and started going to places where they serve more than muffins and bagels and stuff like that. I think that I am quitting the group because two of them are so rude to the wait staff and all complainy and generally being pains in the ass. It is uncomfortable all of the time, and downright embarrassing some of the time. No one will say anything to either of them, and I am no exception, mostly because I do not want anyone else to call me out on any of my crap. One of them is late for everything. Really, everything. Yet, each week she complains to us and sometimes to a waiter about how long it takes for her to get her food. This one makes me laugh...a lot...because she groused about how it took ten minutes for her to get her pot of tea, even after the waiter shared with her that it was taking a little longer to be prepared. Yeah, she is mostly amusing; so is the other woman. I like them so much, but really, the Universe does not revolve around any of us, particularly in a busy restaurant. Yes? Aw, more likely I am being too critical, to judgmental, to much of a bitch. Either way, staying home will be better for everyone.
I guess that will eliminate the muffin issue I faced today. The place they chose does not have any à la carte items. You have to order a whole, pre-designed meal. You can try to ask to not have some of the items, like fried or hashed potatoes, toast, English muffins and regular muffins, but they sometime bring them to the table anyway. I am guessing that bringing everything eliminates any fuss from their customers about paying for a whole meal and not ordering all of it's components. So, they give you everything and you get to decide if you want to eat it.
Yeah, great solution to bartering customers, but there is that toast or some kind of muffin sitting there, a little glossy on top, raisins poking out from the branny and delicious smelling goodness. My goodness. I offered the muffin to the table, but because all of them got their whole meal, there were no takers, not even to take it home for later.
I ate my eggs and the tiny, rare, tender steak. I nibbled at the sliced and diced fruit, then ate most of it. I drank cup after cup of coffee (easy to do as they leave pots of it at the table), hoping to fill myself up so that there would be no room for muffins. Man. There was room for muffins. I ate nearly half of it. It was wonderful, nice and crumbly because of all the bran, just enough raisins. But, it also had sugar in it, and some regular flour to hold it all together. No bliss there.
Even worse than eating half is that I brought the other half home and ate it mid-afternoon, although I am counting it as breakfast.
Why, after three weeks of this do I have such a ridiculously low amount of self control? I suck. Really.
Alrighty, then, the lobster. I have been tossing out too much food that has gone bad waiting for me to cook it. I could pack those things away in the freezer, but I have only a small, bottom of the fridge freezer and it is already full of food that I never cooked and have socked away in there so that I would not have to throw it in the garbage. Now, if I would actually thaw some of that crap and cook it, there would be room for more potential garbage, but I do not thaw and cook for the very same reason that all of that stuff ended up in the freezer in the first place.
I run out of energy to do much actual cooking. For a while, I was buying frozen meals when they were on sale and eating those. It was great. They start off in the freezer and they eventually get eaten and there is no waste. But, then I decided to eat more healthy food and that is why the freezer is at full capacity.
My solution is to shop for just a couple of days at a time. So far it is working fine. I have thrown away only some leftovers and some greens that went all wonky. It means more stops on the way home from work and stuff, but that is not a problem, except when my energy fails and it is too difficult to stop, shop and haul my sorry behind in and out of the store. For those days, I have filled a small shelf with canned soup, microwave popcorn and crackers. There is iceberg lettuce, apples and some kind of hardy vegetable in the refrigerator almost all of the time, just to give the healthy food thing some credibility.
Got all my bases covered.
The larder here was pretty empty. Condiments, sugar-free syrups (for making plain water more appealing), pre-cooked bacon, and some cilantro is what was in there. So, I stopped at a market on the way home from coffee this morning. They were having a sale on lobster. You paid $10 for one, about a pound each I guess, they cooked it for you in these huge cauldrons in front of the store, chilled them in ice water and you were set to go.
It was really good, that poor dead creature. It was perfectly cooked and I ate everything edible, including the coral, which I really like. It was a late lunch, after 3:00, but so filling and satisfying, juicy and, like, perfect. So, not hungry much at dinner, and more cauliflower and some yogurt with ranch dressing powder was fine.
I have to take one of my ss women to lunch tomorrow, but for the next few days I am all set. I have individually portioned, frozen beef patties, a couple of smoked port chops, green beans, the rest of the cauliflower (a bit more than half), peaches for breakfast or dinner tomorrow, 2 dozen eggs (some of which I will hard cook), celery, a tomato, asparagus, lemon juice for making rosewater lemonade, plenty of yogurt, blueberries, and the iceberg lettuce.
You know, I do not want to eliminate all sweets and other pleasurable foods from what I eat. I do not want to make this about sacrifice so severe that I am afraid to enjoy myself and what I eat. I have several trips scheduled for next month, August and October, and I want to eat the meals they provide and not get all angsty about what I am eating or not eating.
What I am doing now has to be a way of eating that I can comfortably follow for the rest of my life. That is supposed to be the path to healthful eating that can last a lifetime. Anything else will not work, and I have decades of proof that drastically changing to only certain foods is an exercise in failure on a grand scale. I have already lost enough weight to notice it. My clothes feel slightly looser and there is a reduction in the bulge-age in a certain area. My bra is too big and some of my big girl panties are in danger of dropping when I least expect or desire them to do so.
So, this is working, and I would like to keep it that way. I do not want to deprive myself of yummy and delicious alternatives to the junk and carbs that have been the mainstay of my diet for so long. I am spending more money on groceries, but the quality of food has dramatically increased. So, it is all good. No one knows how much longer they will live, I am no exception to that, and I would very much like to spend the remaining time that I have not being fat. I would like that very, very much.
Maybe every incidence of slippage in the whole will-power failures has been an opportunity to examine what food means to me beyond something that keeps you alive. Maybe I need to pay closer attention to those incidents. Not let them discourage or define me.
There are moments when this seems too difficult. A month ago I would have sworn that I was not a person who ate in response to emotions. An emotional eater? Not me. Now I know that I eat according to how I feel, particularly when I am feeling frightened, threatened and lonely. That is such a difficult thing to accept. Yet, if this is going to work this time, I have to find a way to deal with this, understand and resolve it and then get rid of it, once and for all. Oh, maybe not completely, I know myself fairly well, but I would dearly love to leave most of that baggage behind me, along with the flab.
That would be so lovely. Finding a way to care about myself enough to make choices that are truly in my own, best self interest. I help my clients manifest that in their lives, perhaps I can do it for myself, too. I had no intention to get all serious about this process. I wanted it to be easier than that, more like, well, just easier. I am avoiding the scale, which has never been my friend. I am not measuring and weighing portions, allowing my tummy to alert me when it is full, or at least satisfied. I am still walking without my cane. I lost count of how many days, but is is more than a week. I did too much last Tuesday and took it in to work with me, concerned that a twelve-hour day at two locations might prove more than my knees and hip could handle on their own. I will admit that I am taking more pain medication, but I think that cane made it possible for me to walk with less energy and certainly much less assurance. By the end of the day my knees are not too bad, but my hips are, only sometimes, an agony. This, too, will pass, yes?
All of this, the entire process, just seems right. I am not stressed about it, well, except for my problems with the damn sweets. I always believed that I was not a fan of sweet stuff. Given a choice, I would always choose something salty, crunchy, and if you could put sour cream on it, that was even better. I am simply going to trust that this works out the way it is supposed to and that this weakness for sweet stuff will pass.
I have three new GPs. This is one of them. It is named,
Karma-O-Whirl:
) and I was ready to meet the challenge of driving amongst the people who do this drive every day and who know exactly how to do it and were zipping around me like knights seeking the grail. The sandwich went quickly, and it was perfect, probably because I was hungry and they truly are yummy. The soft drink did not last the drive, but it did perk me up a bit.
