Not a total disaster

Last night we went out for dinner - Chinese.

Thankfully it was not the "all you can eat buffet" - they don't do that on a Friday, much to DH & DS's dismay. I love it too, but not when I am trying to lose weight. It's too tempting as I like too many things and you can order at will.

So it was 'a la carte' last night and we ordered the mixed hors d'oeuvres which consisted of

1. chicken satay
2. spare ribs in a crispy coating
3. sesame prawn toast
4. crispy seaweed
5. wantons
6. mini spring roll

Now, eating out is a fun thing to do for everyone and even though I am banded I want to be able to do this still- I don't have to worry too much with the band at the moment as its normally ok for me to eat a pretty much anything I like as its not that tight. There is some restriction there, but for me the band just stops me feeling hungry even though I am consuming less food - which is great and the adjustment level is just what I can handle right now. 

So out of the above - which unbanded/unfilled/uncaring I would eat 1 piece of everything - I ate half the seaweed, 1 spring roll, 4 pieces of prawn toast (cos no one else likes it). The boys polished off everything else.

We followed this with aromatic crispy duck in pancakes with hoisin sauce. I had 3 pancakes - light on duck, heavy on cucumber and spring onion.

I had 2 glasses of red wine (which tasted like vinegar) and a pot of jasmine tea.

I find that Chinese is the best food for me to eat out as I can have some Chinese tea first before eating which helps warm the band up before hand and stops those mad dashes to the loos - although that has still happened on many an occasion.

Its always a bit odd to order coffee or tea with your meal for some reason in England. Why is that? Does anyone else find that its just not the done thing? At home as a kid we always had tea with our dinner, but it seems its a bit odd to order this with your meal at a restaurant unless its an all day breakfast. The last thing I want to do after dinner is drink coffee or tea on an already full tummy. I would much rather have it before - hence I have never found the 'drink before meals' banded routine difficult. Sorry got a bit off the point. Its just it only just struck me. No one would mind if you ordered tea - its just no one does. How funny. Oh well.

So yeah, the dinner - we finished our duck and finished our meal there. We were all absolutely full. At the buffet we would then have ordered the following for sure: 

• crispy shredded beef
• chicken fried rice
• sweet and sour chicken Cantonese style
• beef in black bean sauce
• king prawns in ginger
• and possibly something else that DS wanted

The prawns in ginger... always a funny one. I had this dish years ago and it was DELICIOUS. I have never ever been able to find it the same again since. It is always a bitter disappointment - chewy stringy overcooked prawns in nice sauce, or delicious well cooked prawns in a rank sauce which ruins it all, or the sauce is yum, the prawns are cooked well, but they taste too fishy or something like that. *sigh*

No one else likes prawns except me, so whenever I order it, the whole dish would go to waste if I didn't eat it - however minging it is! Because I feel bad about leaving food I have ordered - which I know will just be thrown away if I leave it, and so as not to appear rude like it was horrible - cos they always ask 'you don't like the prawns' - I try and eat most of it anyway, and then regret it because I haven't eaten my favorite dishes cos I am way too full.

Oh the conundrum!!

It is deeply tragic that i care so much about this, but there we go. We're not banded for nothing!

Anyway, we didn't order any of these things, because we were full and satisfied so I was saved from the peril of the neverending prawns in ginger debacle.

So we all came home and were happy in our hearts. Or not.

The evil scale demon lashed its tongue at me as I sat watching Shortland Street. I was happily engrossed when it caught my eye - sitting there on the floor giving me evils. It's such a bastard. Being overweight really is a true eating disorder. Its as bad as being anorexic or bulimic - we are all messed in the head about food and abuse it at will and let it rule our lives until we decide enough is enough. But even when we decide to stop the craziness, the mental anguish/debating/wrangling still pervades. There was NO REASON for me to do what I did next. I was full. satisfied. not even THINKING about food.

The scale triggered my eating. It grabbed my mind like a vice. I suddenly felt rubbish about not losing weight this week - even though I had totally put it to bed in my mind way back at the beginning of the day. The mind is so powerful and I instantly thought "well I ruined it all anyway because of the Chinese"

Now let this be a lesson to you ALL.

I had NOT ruined it all.

I got up at 6am this morning to write to my future self - and to you all - to warn me/you - if I had not eaten another thing - gone to bed, right then - I would have been fine.

I had consumed 2395 calories yesterday - that included the Chinese and the wine and my lunch and everything. I was only 350 calories over my limit. This was FINE.

But the fucking diet devil deceived me into believing that I had bust everything anyway, so why hold back. What was the point? You feel rubbish. Comfort yourself. You poor thing.

Ok - the title of this post is absolutely true. It could of been A LOT worse but only wasn't for the sheer lack of food in the house and the time of day - 12pm = little 'house of chocolate and crisps' shop shut.

Feeling like shit for eating out, thinking the day was irredeemable - I get DH to make me a coleslaw sandwich. And after I had polished that off - ANOTHER one!

So 2395 calories becomes 3000. In 15 minutes.

1000 calories over my goal.

It was so quick, so easy!

But, the reason I am writing this at 7:45 in the morning (I started it at 6:30) is because I didn't want today to be messed up by the FDD. The FDD also didn't want me to add my foods up with livestrong, but I came down here - the whole house is still asleep - and carefully remembered every morsel and put it on livestrong.

The reason my day went to shit was because I had no idea how many calories I had consumed at the Chinese Restaurant. When we came home I did not go and record it down on Livestrong. I was not in control.

Its the not knowing. Thinking you have gone over the top and you might as well give up today. Well I am going to try and remember this and know that a Chinese meal out does not tip me over the top of my calorie goals. If I had not had the wine, I would have still been under for the day!

So I need to especially remember this on Sunday after the Italian. I must go careful, but its not going to be a crisis.

I must not let the FDD win!

This was a necessary vent. I am still strong. Don't worry :-) 3000 calories is not the end of the world. I need to eat 3000 calories a day to maintain my weight, so I will just have slowed my progress a little, but I can rationalise it out. For some of you it might seem that I am over analyzing things, but I must tell you that I need to do this, have the control, or I lose my fight. Its how I do things when I am on track.
 

Chocolate Mousse

Ingredients:

• 2 cups heavy cream


• 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa


• 3 packages artificial sweetener

Preparation:

• Mix all ingredients together and grab a
  
  spoon!

Weight Loss Recipes Amount Per Serving: 10 carbohydrate

How is it possible?

If you eat less calories than you expend you will lose weight.

Fact

I have gone up 0.5kg

Perplexed is not the word.

Now then, before you assume that maybe I thought I was eating under my calorie/expenditure level but I wasn't - sorry that is not true. Nor am I in some kind of starvation mode (which I don't believe can happen anyway) as I am not following a diet that is very low in calories.

So how, kind people, is it possible for me to eat less than 2000 calories per day for a whole week (actually slightly less in total than last week) and PUT ON WEIGHT???????????

To maintain my weight I must eat 21,200 cals per week
To lose 2 pounds a week I must eat 14,200 cals a week.
I actually ate 11,800 - an average of 1680 per day

Obviously to gain weight I would have to have more than DOUBLED my intake of food. Can you see why I KNOW that my gaining of 0.5kg is ridiculous.

I and not actually cross about gaining - I am miffed, flummoxed, perplexed, flabbergasted and stunned but not cross - because basically I know I MUST have lost weight, you know what I mean? It just doesn't add up that I haven't! I find this absolutely fascinating - I want to know what on earth is going on in here!!

I cannot begin to tell you how dedicated I have been to this cause - every single bit of food that has passed my lips I have recorded. I have fastidiously weighed and measured, checked packets, chosen things on purpose and been super careful to a fault for the whole fortnight. How can I lose 2.8kg last week and gain 0.5kg this week doing exactly the same thing?

Well you can't. You cannot put on weight by eating less. Its not possible. It goes against everything we know about diet and the physics of weightloss. If it were possible, then the opposite would be true and we would all have to eat 5000cals a day to lose weight.

I just MUST have lost weight, but the scale is wrong... or something else?

Funnily enough I have a slight thought it might be something to do with having the mumps. I was one of the lucky 5% of women who, when they have mumps, also get swollen ovaries. Now, this is no joke I can assure you.

33% of men who get the mumps get swollen testes and 5% of women get swollen ovaries & breast tissue

You can see who complain the most as we only ever hear about the blokes getting hot balls!!!

So yeah, I had swollen and very painful ovaries - like period pain on steroids direct from the devil - and one tit swelled up to near double its size. Now I am already a big girl in that department so this was totally rivaling Jordan. It was soooooo painful though.

After all my swellings had gone down - face, tit and ovaries - Things returned to normal. However I should have had a period about the time I got the mumps, but I didn't. My period came last Monday 4th October - 9 days late. It was normal in everything but length - 2 days.

I am regular like clockwork - if I am 1 day late, I am pregnant for sure. Also I got pregnant so darn easy we used to joke that we just had to share the same toothbrush and I was done! My only trouble was holding onto the slippery little blighters. So after losing 6 babies, being diagnosed with Lupus and antiphospholipid syndrome, I was told I could not have children. Ooops - cos I was pregnant. Mass backpedaling by my consultant and 7 months of horrible treatments, hospital stays and coma/pneumonia episodes, DS came into the world through the sun roof exit! Then I was sterilised.

So, sterilised - I have had a textbook period every 28 days, lasting 5 days and each month I know exactly which ovary is firing cos I feel the ache in that side.

To be 9 days late, and have a 2 day period is for me a deeply disturbing occurrence. I have booked holidays and even parties around my period before!!!! Even though the doc said it might disturb my cycle - I got a fleeting panic that my clips had failed and I was indeed with child. Its just too unusual for me to be irregular.

Right now, I have what I can only describe as period pain - 21 days after my last period was due, and 12 days after the weird one. Both ovaries ache though.

So, is this my body fucking me over or have I really gained 0.5kg??

On Wednesday evening DH said to have a sneaky try on the scales, I jumped on, fully dressed and loaded with the days food and drinks and I weighed 118.7kg. This would have been a loss of 0.5kg and I always weigh my heaviest in the evening!! I was looking forward to a nice result. WTF? Thursday morning, I hop on and get 119.3 - I shrug it off and carry on my day. So it was a great surprise to have 119.7 staring at me this morning. Not a nice one.

I have decided that there cannot possibly be any way on this earth that I have REALLY put on weight. Its simply not possible and must be something to with something else.

Onwards and upwards.

Just a weird thing... this is absolutely no lie... I just rang DH and told him, and he said last night as I drifted off to sleep I said "I hope I have lose weight this week" and he said he was sure I had and then I said "I am paranoid that I haven't as I feel fatter". I don't remember this. I also had a fleeting urge when I got up this morning to instantly drink 2 pints of water so that I couldn't weigh myself (I always weigh empty stomach) so maybe my body knows something I don't.

Keep on keeping on I guess. I am going to weigh in daily for a while and see what is going on.

14th 119.3
15th 119.7

Quick Healthy Breakfast for Weight Loss

Why you shouldn't Skip Breakfast: Eating a Healthy Breakfast is essential if you're trying to Lose Weight.

Eating breakfast revs up your metabolism and helps prevent you from overeating throughout the day. Remember that you're going without eating for 7 to 9 hours while you sleep, so your body requires nutrients at breakfast.

Breakfast Made Easy: Breakfast bars and Good Breakfast Options!

With everyone being so busy, breakfast bars are becoming more and more popular and they can be a good breakfast option- as long as you get the right one!

To make sure you're getting a breakfast bar of good quality, look for one that contains higher levels of fiber and protein, with lower levels of fat and sugar.

Since most good breakfasts include some type of a carbohydrate source, best choices will include whole grains of some sort. These will help you feel fuller longer because they take longer to digest than refined carbs.

Long-term studies have shown that women who choose whole grains over processed, refined products gain less weight as they age. In fact, one long-term study showed that women with the highest intake of fiber (from foods such as oatmeal and whole grain breakfast cereals) were half as likely to become obese later in life than those who eat lower amounts of fiber.

With this in mind, some good breakfast options would be:

* 1 cup of oatmeal with 1 tablespoon of raisins and 1 cup of skim milk
* 2 pieces of whole-grain toast with 1 tablespoon of peanut or almond butter
* 1 cup of bran cereal with 1 cup skim milk and 1/2 cup blueberries
* 1 cup of fat-free cottage cheese or yogurt with a fat-free bran muffin.

Cinnamon Meringues

Ingredients:

• 2 tsp ground cinnamon


• ¼ tsp cream of tartar


• 2 egg whites


• 1 tsp vanilla extract


• ½ tsp almond extract


• ½ tsp salt


• ½ packet Splenda


• ½ tsp salt

Preparation:

• Mix egg whites with cream of tartar and salt in a bowl, beat until soft peaks form.


• Fold in cinnamon, vanilla and almond extracts, place by tablespoonfuls onto greased cookie sheets.


• Bake at 300 F for 30 minutes.


• Yummy!!

Weight Loss Recipes Amount Per Serving: 1.4 carbohydrate

What it means to me: Eating Guideline #1 Eat when hungry

When I first read Geneen Roth's Women Food and God last July, I was very excited. It was all I could talk about. I was about three fourths of the way through the book when I read about the Eating Guidelines.

I couldn't wait to read the "Eating Guidelines". So I skipped ahead to page 111, eagerly reading what I just knew would change my life.

Guideline #1 - Eat when hungry.

What the hell? I was angry. Furious at this Geneen Roth woman. She must be a freaking idiot to write such nonsense. Eat when hungry? Seriously? Excuse me lady, but that's what got me up to 240 pounds. If I had kept eating when I was hungry, in a few years I would weigh five hundred pounds. I'd become a bed person and they'd have to cut down the walls to get me out of my house. Eating when hungry? Who would think of such foolishness?

I felt like I'd been scammed. Cheated. I was hungry 24 x 7. I thought of food continually. If I really ate when I was hungry, I'd never put down my fork. So much for Geneen Roth. I was done with her.

Then there was the workshop. You have no idea how much I didn't want to go last weekend. I was dreading it. Thankfully Grace decided to go too. If it hadn't been for her I may have just not showed up, and then I would have missed one of the best learning experiences of my life.

Eat when hungry.

What does that mean? Sounds pretty obvious, if you're hungry, you eat. Not exactly rocket science. But wait. There's more. When are you hungry? Do you even know? I didn't. I thought I was always hungry. I thought I had some type of mental or physical disease. Most people don't obsess about food like me. It's like there was something wired wrong in my brain, something that made me think I always needed to eat.

After the workshop I started to really analyze my feelings of hunger. Was I really hungry? Or was it something else?

Maybe I was hurt because my husband said something insensitive, or he left for work without a goodbye kiss, just a "bye, see you later!" as he ran out the door.

Maybe it was worry about my job and that stupid NY Times article about if you're unemployed now at age 55 you'll probably never work again.

Maybe it's rejection, lack of love, fear of being homeless...maybe it's none of those things, maybe I'm just thirsty or bored.

I remember once I told a coworker that I was starving to death. I was being super strict with my diet (Weight Watchers), and I was really hungry. His comment was "well, eat something!". My response, "I can't do that! I might gain weight!".

Stupid, stupid girl. I really was hungry. Why didn't I just eat? Because I was afraid of gaining weight. It's been my lifelong theme.

I'm coming to terms with the idea of eating when I'm actually hungry. What's harder is coming to terms when it's something else and that something isn't thirsty or bored. What about rejection? Or the feeling of not being loved and cherished? Loneliness. Sadness. Past hurts. Current hurts. Fear. Feeling those emotions isn't fun. It would be easier to push them down with food. It's easier to just not think about the bad stuff.

The thing I'm most amazed about is that this isn't the hardest guideline for me, although it's somewhat difficult facing all those emotions I use to smash down with food. I was sure it was going to be impossible. I was sure I'd want to go on a full out binge. Surprisingly I really have no desire to eat like a crazed, food obsessed mad woman.

For the first time in 42 years, I think I know what it's like to eat like a normal person. Normal has always been my goal. I just want to feel normal about food, and I want to be a normal weight.

I'm still early into this process, and I have a lot to learn about myself. It's only been five days and I'm sure there will be bumps in the road. I only know that in a short time I've made huge advances in how I feel about food, about myself. I feel more comfortable with my decisions of what I'm eating, more relaxed. Calm.

Eat when hungry. Apparently it is possible for me.

Vacation

I'll be out of town until the beginning of November, so I won't be responding to comments or e-mails for a while. I'm going to set up a post or two to publish while I'm gone.

As an administrative note, I get a number of e-mails from blog readers each day. I apologize that I can't respond to all of them, as it would require more time than I currently have to spare. The more concise your message, the more likely I'll read it and respond. Thanks for your understanding.