100 Days toward a healthier life - Day 4

Day 4.  Wow, four whole days without any of the usual suspects in my usual dietary universe.

Breakfast:  Plain yogurt over blackberries.
Lunch:  More greens, medium tomato, the other half of that avocado, some vinaigrette.  Half an apple.  A chicken thigh, no skin.  Five or six of those green pea cracker things. 
Dinner:  Stir fry, with lots of celery (love, love, love celery), white onions, mushrooms, jalapeno peppers (like two whole ones), about a quarter cup each of pork and shrimp.  Steamed/fried in the pan, no sauce, only a little freshly ground pepper and some chili paste.  Diet cola, I am so weak.  About a cup of pineapple.  Three maraschino cherries (they are almost gone and will soon stop tempting me).

Alrighty, then.  Breakfast was nice and filling and absolutely delicious.  Packages of blackberries were a buck at the market the other day.  They are now all gone, but they were lovely whilst they lasted.  So yummy.  However, I was really, really hungry by 10:30 a.m., and it was all I could do to not eat my pencil before lunch.  I might have to add a bit of steel cut oats, steamed in almond milk or something.  I mean, I was really hungry.  Distressingly so.  It kind of makes me laugh right now because I am such a baby.  Yep.

Also, by the time 7:00 p.m. rolled around, I felt tired and hungry.  I cooked only what I wanted to eat, volume-wise, so was not tempted to finish any leftovers.  Now, I am thinking that doing that, cooking just the amount of food that I should properly be eating might help me to rein in my portion sizes, even though I am not paying attention to those, or calories, or the freaking scale.  Although, I have to admit that I am going to quickly become disenchanted with cooking or preparing every single meal with just the ingredients appropriate for each meal.  There is a compromise between preparing just enough for a single meal and making recipes or whatever that can feed me for days and days without all that freaking preparation.

I brushed my teeth right after dinner, in the pathetic hope that it will prevent me from eating any more of anything before bed.  I am not hungry, but I do experience hunger after I settle in for the night, as I read for an hour or so before falling asleep.  I go to sleep hungry and it has not killed me or anything, but my growling stomach is not the tiniest bit placated by my assurances that none of us is going to starve overnight.  My flab has assured my gut that it will keep the energy going until breakfast, but, honestly, no one is very happy about this.  I know that time, probably not more than a week or so, will take care of the extreme hunger pangs, but try to tell that to your tummy.  Really.   See how far you get. 

Besides, if you do not eat dinner until somewhere around 7-8 p.m., there is absolutely no reason to feel any measure of hunger before you go to sleep.  I suspect that the disconnect is in my brain, or my recent habits.  It is a stretch, even I admit that, but perhaps there is a way to blame this on one of the political parties.  You know, like they and their messages are poluting the energy on the planet and that is what is making it so hard for people to lose weight; like our flab is the only thing left on to which we can cling for comfort in an unsettled and wonky world.

Work today was as amazing as always.  I think that my clients are wonderful to trust me and go through the process the way that they do.  I am asking them to think of their lives in a way they have never before considered.  Many of them have few resources, which makes their willingness to take this journey with me all the more remarkable.  They, as a whole, totally, freaking rock. 

The ones who do not rock, well, they will continue to walk their darker paths for as long as it serves them to do so.  There is some quality of or need for suffering that is essential to how they are living.  From my outsiders perspective, it seems to be some kind of martyr complex, as though their suffering makes them better or holier or more sensitive or some damn thing, as opposed to us lesser mortals.  It is a very snobbish, superior self-view; they seem to relish sharing the details of how miserable they are, especially if it is in response to someone else in their lives who is not supportive of them.

Now, please do not misunderstand.  I have been where they are.  It is how I recognize it in them.  And, even with my experiences in moving beyond that ego-driven state, I cannot, do not discuss these aspects with them.  Frankly, it is not any of my business, but even if it were, they have to keep doing that stuff until the payoff in suffering reaches some limit beyond which they can move on to being more productive in their relationships.  And, you know, there is another quality to doing that.  It is that you become addicted or sensitized to the drama.  It is like a feel-good drug to be suffering so.  Pshaw all you like.  If you have been there you know exactly what I am talking about. 

So, tomorrow will be some cooking for the freezer.  Maybe a soup in the slow-cooker.  I have lots of frozen vegetables and a whole chicken that would take beautifully to that.  All those delicious containers of soupy goodness will be perfect for work lunches.  I have to begin making bread again, too.  Got to have healthy carbs to sop up the broth, you know.

A new book, fresh from the publisher, to read tonight.  Fiction.  It looks like a mystery, but with creepy stuff in it, as well.  It also looks like it may take only a week of bedtime reading to finish it.  Oh, and I got that Stephen Somebody's Rodale book about the new American diet.  Something about how we are missing micronutrients in some of the food we eat, ummmm, and bad stuff that gets in the food supply from poluted runoff or some damn thing.  I think he calls that stuff obesogens.  Huh.  Anyway, I tried to read it at lunchtime, but one of the security guards wanted to wax philosophic and it was difficult to read and murmur back at him. 

Off to bed, to read, to sleep, to dream of a body that moves through the world with more grace, more confidence and less stress on my joints.

My new guilty pleasure.