100 Days toward a healthier life - Day 33

Breakfast:  Nothing
Lunch:  Tater Tots, chocolate
Dinner:  Bag of salad, kind of large tomato, salad dressing

The Tots were eaten over several hours, a whole plate, as in an actual plate, of them.  They are just as good cold as when piping hot from the oven, or at least pretty close.  When I finished them, I had some 86% cocoa mass chocolate, and some lemonade that I made from frozen lemon juice and Splenda.

I am trying to keep a decent perspective about this eating thing, but I really should be ashamed of how badly I eat some days.  Even I know that I have to create and follow a more balanced and reasonable way of eating, you know, like a decent diet, for crying out loud. 

You know, I go to the store and I look at all the food and try to buy stuff that I will actually eat and that will not, ultimately, get tossed into the garbage because I am too tired and tired out to cook the damn stuff.  There is still too much waste going on around here.  It is not like I have a ton of money and a complete lack of conscience that would facilitate not feeling so freaking guilty about all of this.

I need to buy food.  I need to eat it.  It is as simple as that.  And, yet, it is not.  It is supremely difficult and complicated to do.  I think that is why, heck, I know that it is why I am eating out several times each week.  I know that there is not any reasonably easy to cook food at home and so I go to a restaurant and have a nice, healthy meal and it satisfies me because I know that there will not be any waste.  If I stop at the market, there is an excellent chance that I will be too exhausted to actually cook what I have just bought by the time I get home and drag myself and everything else into the house.  This totally sucks.

I tried buying just frozen stuff, like meals and parts of meals, things that are already cooked and just need heating in the microwave.  I guess that is how the Tater Tots got into the freezer.

Unfortunately, there is not all that much in the realm of frozen foods that are as healthy as anyone, especially old and diabetic me, would prefer.  More than a month ago I bought a package of pre-formed beef patties.  All you have to do is to take one of the things out of the bag and cook it in a frying pan.  You do not even have to thaw them, just grab them frozen.  Seriously, that is all you have to do.  I think that you can also broil them or bake them in the oven, but those things are more steps than I can handle most days.

I have a pound of asparagus in the refrigerator right now.  I have, probably, two more days before I will have to trash it and all I have to do to eat them is to wash, snap the end, pop into a roasting pan, sprinkle and roll them around in a bit of olive oil, sprinkle with salt and bake them for a half hour.  As simple as that is, they are still likely to be tossed.  That is how little energy I have.  I can sit here and type.  I can rest and read.  But, that is all that I can manage most days here at home.  I am busy enough on my out-of-the-house days that I need the opportunity to rest and gather my strength.  Man, even to me that sounds so pathetic and excuse-laden.

I have to fix this.  I have to figure out a way to eat properly, not waste food and to spend as little as possible.  I just have to figure this out.  Even today was supposed to be a day of catching up and that seemed like it might happen after a neighbor cancelled our lunch plans.  But, it was just another day of feeling crappy, so I did very little and tried very hard to not take a nap.  Which, I did not.  Maybe I should go back to my doctor and throw myself on her mercy and ask for happy drugs or, hell, I do not know how to properly explain how tired I am all the time, much less figure out how to ask for help.

So, there is nothing left except Guilty Pleasure.  Shell Game.  I like the colors.

100 Days toward a healthier life - Day 30

Breakfast:  Nothing
Lunch:  A frozen low-calorie dinner thing, chicken (I think it was chicken, hard to tell), rice, carrot shreds, peas and some lemony or lemon-like sauce
Dinner:  Two hot dogs, buns, brown mustard, jalapeno, dill pickle slices, cherries

I was surprised to not be hungry this morning, given the single glass of wine that I had for dinner.  I guess the bacchanalia that was lunch kept me going.  Granted, lunch yesterday was all pretty healthy, and not huge portions, but there was a stunning variety of smaller bits of this and that.  Still, skipping breakfast is not a good idea.   The frozen thing for lunch was a left-over from when I was buying only frozen things because I was so disgusted about wasting so much food.

Speaking of which, I bought only two smoked pork chops last week and still tossed one of them, along with some cauliflower, iceberg, and a half each of onion and zucchini.  Man.

So, now that a month has passed, I am wondering what healthy eating, as in life-long food is going to be.

I am thinking about adding a couple of foods to my regular schedule.  Well, it is not exactly a schedule, but I am trying so very hard to not use the word diet, you know?

Anyway, I am thinking about the following foods.

Hard cooked eggs - You can eat them on the run, they travel well, they are cheap and, most importantly, I like them.  It may be that I like them too much, which is why I have started to cook them several times and just stopped myself.  Since this is partly about learning new portion control stuff, I should at least give them a try.  If it turns out that I eat all six at a single sitting  (And, that could really happen), then this is probably not such a good idea.  But, I should at least try it.  It would be great for the long days at work when I have not given any advance thought to what to take for lunch.

Nuts - I like nuts, all nuts, especially those that are high in fat, like macadamia and pine.  If I stick to walnuts, almonds and peanuts, I should be fine.  They are also good travelers and keep well.  Not cheap, though.  I always take them along on trips, but never really thought about daily or occasional use here at home.


Nut butters - I have been looking for those individual portion size packs of peanut butter, but despite assurances that they are on the next truck, they never seem to be on the shelf at the two markets where I usually shop.  I have a 35 year old Salton peanut butter machine around here, somewhere.  It is a stunningly simple machine.  Just a plastic housing for an electric powered grinder.  Easy to use, easy to clean, just need to find it and buy nuts and grind them and find tiny containers in which to put the butters and then remember to make some whole grain crackers and then actually take them along with me.  Should be a snap.

Chickpeas - Now, you cannot eat the dried ones, nor can you eat them right out of the can (shudder), but you can drain the canned ones, toss them with spices like turmeric, chili powder, garlic powder, spicy paprika, salt, pepper, or any combination, spread out on a pan and roast them until they get dry and a little crispy on the outsides.  They do not keep long, about a week in the refrigerator, but they are cheap and easy to tote around. 

Looking at that list, it is all about the protein, which is good, because protein-rich foods are excellent for the whole diabetes thing.  I am digressing, but I just ordered refills on the three meds I take, and the diabetes med is the only one that did not triple in price.  One of them is now more than $150 per refill.  Yikes!

So, anyway, I still almost always have crispy apples in the house for taking along.  Sometimes a bell pepper or two.  I just planted two tomato plants last night.  A Roma and a Black Krim.  The rhubarb is doing very well, especially since it has not yet been trampled this year.  I am going to try to sneak in some bell pepper and chili plants in between the bushes at the front of the house and maybe some green beans where the magic iris grow.  Those things will help with easy to grab and eat foods, as well.  

I will have to use Google to find more to help diversify what I am eating.  I am kind of wondering if my recent fails have something to do with not enough variety.  The only problem with variety is waste.  Just trading one issue for another.

I have pretty much given up on Weight Watchers.  By the time I figured out what I was going to do, I had lost interest.  I suspect that I might still give it a try, but not likely until this project is over.  I know that I could benefit from some kind of structure and guidance.  It is just that they are so disorganized over there, no one person seems to know about all of the financial stuff and I have had to cobble the stuff together for myself.  That said, I still think that I would find something helpful within a group dynamic of some kind, but I need to find some people who are less messed up than I am.  Should be a snap.  Ack.

What else.  I think that I have a solution for the lunch-going-out-for-problems with my ss friend.  I am going to propose that we alternate choosing a place to eat each time we get together.  I never really got into the problems we encounter each time I take her somewhere, but this should be a good solution for that problem.  This one should not be a snap, but it might be forward movement, especially if I intentionally choose places that she would not like to go.

Then, there would not be the whole changing her mind issue on the drive to wherever she initially chose, which, in actuality, turns into the drive to hell and no place in particular.  It is mean of me to do it this way, but every other way, advance planning, menus, letting her always choose, discussing, discussing and discussing it...until I just want to grab a fork and stab myself...might become a distant and less-heartbreaking memory.  I am willing to be mean in the desire to hold on to the remaining shreds of my sanity.

O.K., I just reread this next part and I have no idea where it came from or what it is doing in my head.  It is like this overwhelming heaviness just dropped down on me and brought a whole shitload of sadness with it.  So, I am going to make it really tiny so that no one reads it.  I would delete it, but it seems to be needing expression, you know?  For any hapless person who stumbles on this, just ignore me.  Ahhh, better.  You know, I am really not such a downer person.  Really.  It is true.  I swear.


One last thing is safe to share here because I am the only person who ever comes here and reads this dreck.  I mean, I wish that I could say even a bit of this to my friends, but, honestly, no one wants you to ever change or to share this sort of thing.  They just do not want to hear it.  Ever.
I am sorry for no longer being the person that you want me to be.  It is too difficult to always be the girl in who's world it is always high noon, the sun is always shining, the birds are singing and the unicorns are eating wildflowers and pooping rainbows.  It is too hard.  
It is also too hard to be the person that makes everyone laugh, soothes hurt or injured feelings and mediates between the rest of you.  I am not Switzerland.  I cannot do it anymore.  Well, maybe I can once in a while, but I cannot be that ray of eternal bliss and bandages that makes everything nice.  Not anymore.  You can want it, but I am no longer able to do it.
The truth is that I am sad, sad about a lot of things.  I might even be in a medium or serious depression.  There are parts of my life that are totally not wonderful.  My sadness is legitimate.  You are not the only ones who get to share the crap about your lives.  I am not the only method of transportation for those of you who have chosen to not spend your money on cars or bus passes or taxicabs, preferring to use that money for travel, fancy restaurants and travel.  
And, you, you in particular, if I have to listen to you tell me how much money you have saved over the past forty years by not having a car, whilst I am driving you all over the kingdom so that you can do your errands in the city where you live, which is a forty-five minute drive from the city where I live, and doing it on my day off, well, I do not know what I might do, but it certainly would not be driving you all over the damn place.
I am not anyone's ray of sunshine,  I am a busy person who has problems of my own, but you do not want to hear that, preferring only smiles, jokes and happy stories, and I understand that you have come to expect that from me. 
I have pulled back from a relatively significant number of my volunteer jobs.  I am not calling or calling on most of you, even my family, been staying home a lot, trying to be well or at least the kinds of not-well that I have been for months now.  I have cleared the decks, so to speak, and am coming back a bit. 
It is just that I am coming back as a bit of a different person.  You might not like me as much; I am not so happy-go-lucky and carefree.  But, I like myself better this way, I think I do, I think I could.  And, I am not sure where this came from all of a sudden.  Whatever.  So be it.

I do have a GP, but it is kind of weird.  It was supposed to be another coffee thing, but something happened.

Not just weird, kind of creepy, too.  Wonder what it is saying about my internal process

Seconds on that responsibility, please

Day two of accountability.

Needed a nap again today.  Just a short one, but, gosh, this tired babe needs to be less tired.  It might be time for another sleep study or some damn thing.  Whatever it needs to be, it is certain to need a chunk of money.  At this rate, the only travel I will be able to afford is back and forth to the medics.

Two corn dogs (the frozen kind) for breakfast.
Microwave popcorn for lunch. 
Three half-strength mugs of instant, sugar-free hot cocoa throughout the afternoon.
A WW frozen meal for dinner.  Followed by a cup of plain yogurt with a cup of frozen raspberries (no sugar), and another mug of the aforementioned hot cocoa.  The yogurt/fruit mix was surprisingly satisfying.  I might consider that as an entire dinner, along with some soothing tea.
Lots of water during the day.  Sure am missing soft drinks, though.

I think that I need to transition to hot, decaffeinated tea, instead of the cocoa mix.  I also need to get some fresh vegetables and more whole grains into the mix.  However, I am trying to use up the food that is already here before buying more.  I have whole wheat pasta, canned beans and tomatoes, canned pumpkin and boxes of stock.  More microwave popcorn.  More hot cocoa mix.  Plenty of tea.  Three apples, mostly because I did not eat an apple on Sunday.

I think that those corn dogs are going to tempt me more than I want.  Why did I buy them and the other frozen meals?  Yeah, I remember.  It is because I am often too tired and in pain from all my body problems, which are not weight related, to actually cook fresh food and it, the fresh foods, eventually get tossed in the compost or trash. What a shameful waste.

There must be an easier way to do this.  I was in enough pain today to keep me from going anywhere, much less the WW meeting.  I have to go out to mentor tomorrow and will try to stop in afterward. 

And, this pain stuff.  I can no longer take some of the over-the-counter analgesics.  That leaves the prescription meds.  I cannot even begin to consider all of that right now.

I know that thing about how we either try or we just do.  Well, just doing does not always work when you cannot walk long or far enough to actually do something.  Some days the best I can do is to try.  Is there not a way to make that work?

So, tomorrow:
Buy some damn vegetables.  Then, eat them.
Find a meeting time and actually go.
First go to the bank and get some damn cash or open a damn checking account to keep the meeting people happy.  When they are happy, all of us are happy.
As long as I am out, I should stop at the mall and try to find some walking shoes to help minimize the foot pain.

I will be less cranky and more everything that I want to be when I am healthier.  I can do this. 

Oh, and I took a single Benadryl tablet before bed last night and did not wake up choking on mucus. 

Not...one...single...time!!!  Wow, a plan, albeit short-term, to make one thing better.