A Walk With the Dog

Nothing is going on.  I have nothing to post.  I lost another pound, I think it took two weeks this time.  I still haven’t decided if I’m moving or not. So I’ll post some pictures of the walk I took with the lonely old dog who lives upstairs.  She likes the grass here.

Homeless man sleeping

Then we went to the end of the block to check out some “unpermitted” street food.  This is a dead end street, behind a park and some tennis courts.  I think this is just great, cheap food, but unfortunately many come by car, park illegally, block driveways.  Also there are no trash cans.  I carried mine away, threw it out in the city trash.   The parking thing may cause a crackdown, if it pisses off the neighbors.  We’ll see.  I love the underground foodie culture popping up in the ‘hood.

This takes a while

There was a curry cart (!), creme brulee cart, mini-tart table, and shrimp rolls.  I ended up eating a tiny chocolate creme brulee followed by a shrimp roll.  I have to admit, I had brief thoughts of food poisoning/swine flu, but I have an iron stomach and a immune system of steel.

I’ll be sure to make it to kickboxing tomorrow.  Maybe yoga, too, if I can find them in a row.

I ran into two guys in the last two days who I haven’t seen in over a year.  They both said I looked really good, and keep doing whatever I’m doing.  They hadn’t noticed weight per se, just that I looked different.  I no longer look fat to myself, just slightly chubby.  I have a feeling I’m going to have some psychological battle through the next 10 pounds or so, as I head into normal body weight land.  Bring it!

I don’t eat clean

I don’t even try.  I like sugar, salt, fat, empty carbs.  This doesn’t mean I eat these with reckless abandonment, it just means that I am realistic about how much I’m willing to restrict my eating.  It fits my lifestyle better to eat big meals not very often, with snacks if I need them.  Last night, out drinking, I had a bacon cheese burger with fries at 10 pm.  There was no way I was going to gag down anything but coffee this morning, so I packed up a half pb&j with some fruit, english peas, and nuts, and went for a hike for four hours.  I ended up eating the sandwich bits, an apple, and a few peas.  Then I had a Malaysian buffet around 1:30, for lunch.  Dinner is crudites (radishes, carrots, bell pepper, celery), and a glass of half 1%/half chocolate soy milk.  And I’ll probably lose a bit of weight today, maybe even enough to even out yesterday.   I like to overeat sometimes.  I like to eat greasy fried stuff sometimes.  Regular meals aren’t always convenient.  I used to try, but a conversation with a guy I was seeing made me think.  He told me that I didn’t always have to eat as soon as I got hungry, I could just have a fat snack (as I was carrying so much excess).  This weekend, talking to him, he said something about it being more convenient to eat a bunch at once, not have to worry about it for a while.   Maybe neither of us have blood sugar issues because we both exercise so much.  I don’t know.  I just know that this seems to be the way I roll, so I’m going to work with it.

Anyway, found this excellent blog post:

http://refusetoregain.com/my_weblog/2009/04/fat-what-no-one-is-telling-you-challenges-fat-prejudice.html#comments

And here’s a picture of my lunch spot today, not as spectacular as the last, but I love these woods.  They are steep, remote, storm-damaged, and semi-rainforest like in their constant heavy fog.

taken with night settings

shame on me

I started smoking again on Sunday.  I feel like such an idiot, especially since it’s the same thing that tripped me up last time I quit.  Anyway, no news on the weight thing.  Actually, I tried on a pair of size 8, and they were too tight.  I also tried on a size 10, and they were too tight.  Other size 10s fit.  I suck, and I have nothing more to say.  I’ll quit again in another week or two, when I get up the mental stamina for it.

Happy Earth Day!  Spare the planet, drive less, breed less, use less!

Two weeks

Two weeks off cigarettes, I feel mostly normal.  I’m still going to be very careful around alcohol for another week or two, but life is moving on.  The boy I like smokes a bit, that may be aproblem.  I lost the two pounds I gained along the way, plus two more.  This brings my BMI to 27.5.  This is where I went to eat lunch yesterday as a present to myself.

It is hard to see, but I am sitting in a poppy field, being ignored by two deer who don’t even have the courtesy to pretend to be afraid of me.

I’m going to try to figure out how to do a blog list this weekend, hope everyone has a good one!

Potato chips

I like my veggie burgers with potato chips.  It’s an awful habit my sister got me into when we were pre-teen.  Hamburgers are fatty enough for me to do without them, but veggie burgers-not fatty, salty, greasy enough.  I used to be able to buy a 50 cent (I actually am old enough to remember 25 cent) single serving bag of chips.  This would be 150 calories.  They phased that out a few years ago, now I have to buy 2.5 servings, 99 cents, 330 calories.  I now buy Sun Chips instead of Lays, on the pathetic hope that the few extra grams of fiber makes them healthier.  I resent them not making these smaller bags.  Tonight I actually threw some of them out, maybe 1/3 of them?  I resent having to buy food just to throw it out.  It’s not like it sat in the fridge going bad before I got to it.  I can’t have potato chips in the house and not eat them.  That and ice cream.  Probably anything salty and greasy and crunchy would give me problems.  I can always make popcorn, but not so greasy, thus not so attractive an option.   This is the first time ever that I’ve thrown out chips.    I am going to check the natural food store for a 99 cent bag of chips that’s just one serving.  Can it really be that NOBODY makes them?

Today I charley-horsed all through yoga, and teacher said it can be potassium.  Or, more likely, the sodium-potassium balance.  Funny, for some reason I thought citrus had a lot of potassium, but it doesn’t.  I eat a bunch of potassium decent foods, but I will have to be better about this, since I eat some really strong sodium foods.  Middle age is so much less forgiving than youth.

Other websites I like?

I notice that most blogs have a side list of blogs they like. I was thinking of doing this too. I don’t think anyone has ever asked me one way or another, is it just common practice to add without any special permission? It seems people wouldn’t mind. Can I just add random blogs that I like, no matter how I find them?  Does it ever happen that a person requests their blog to be listed, but you think they’re neurotic or obsessed and don’t want to send traffic there? Does anybody ever request for their blog to be removed?  I’m just wondering about the etiquette of this.

Thoughts on Thyroids

I’ve been reading some interesting articles recently, including this one on thyroid function:

http://figureathlete.tmuscle.com/free_online_article/diet_and_nutrition/down_with_dumb_dieting

Beware, this seems to be a body building site for women, by women, and for reasons not clear to me, has lots of half naked muscly women. Not so much this article, though. Anyway, she talks about how dieting affects the thyroid, especially dropping calories to consistently low levels, effectively slowing your metabolism. Leigh Peele, the author, recommends “refeeding”, and taking breaks. Refeed seems to be common amongst weight lifters, and I’m not knowledgeable enough to discuss too much, other than to say, I do this anyway! Of course she doesn’t mean eating thousands of calories over maintenance, or empty calories, which I try not to do very much. But those off days when I’m damn well going to eat pizza and beer for dinner may have saved my metabolism! Or at least, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it! But seriously, it took me many years and nose to the emotional grindstone to not feel bad about my dieting indiscretions, and now I’m learning that this behavior can be beneficial. Obviously, if I did it enough so that I gained weight, it would be a problem, and I’ll bet most of my plateaus are caused by a bit too much of these.   I’m still working on finding that balance, but it’s good to know the reason behind the behaviors.

A whole week

I quit smoking one week + one hour ago.   I’m feeling more or less stable with regard to that.   I still have major decisions, namely I’m trying to get up the nerve to travel for a while, since jobs are few and far between and I am single and bored and lonely, etc.

My weight went up a few pounds about the same time I quit, and hasn’t budged.  I can’t blame pms, salt, etc.  I have been eating too much, but exercising too much, too, so I’m suspicious about what that extra few pounds is.  I’m a bit worried about the factors that are going to work against my weight loss.  Quitting smoking, approaching middle age, being female, not being willing to give up sugar and various treats, eating too much at parties when I’ve been drinking, etc, etc.   I can see plenty of eating behaviors on my part that aren’t productive to weight loss that I let slide, but maybe if I want to wear size 4, I would likely have to work on a lot more.  I’ve been size 6, and was still a bit chubby, though my BMI was an official 24.9.  I think it’s a continuum, maybe some chubby folks like me who want to end up at size 4 have to eat salads and baked chicken with brown rice, but for size 6 we can be more lenient?  Or the size 10 that I currently am?  How often can I eat a piece of chocolate cake at size 6 vs size 4?  My dad has always carried an extra 20 pounds or so (supposedly he was chubbier as a kid), and has not eaten a piece of cake in 30 years.  Lucky for him, he’s indifferent to chocolate, but still eats the occasional oatmeal cookie or whole grain muffin.  If he gave up treats like that, would he lose that last 10 pounds?  I think not, given his age and how long he’s carried that weight, but maybe the occasional treat is enough to plateau weight?  I’m starting to think that may be a problem for me now-too many “occasional” treats and overeating.

I know that when I go to parties and drink I tend to eat too much.  I think this is more of a problem than the occasional cookie I eat, though I have to watch the size and quality of my sugary treats.  A 40 calorie thin mint, hell yeah!  A 250 calorie donut, not so great.  A burger and fries once every month or two, hopefully ok, once or twice a week, not ok.  Or maybe if I eat a salad instead of fries, I could eat a burger once a week?   Baked sweet potatoes that I can eat with nothing added-excellent.  Cutting up sweet potatoes and roasting in salty oil until crispy, yummy but not a habit to get into.  I need to find a balance to get to whatever weight I’m going to get to, and then stay there.

Out of Danger Zone #1

OK, I’m now nicotine free for 70 hours. Close enough to 72. I’ve gained 3 pounds, though I suspect that’s more pms than any outrageous eating. Yesterday morning was the only outrageous eating. I ate a croissant, a hot dog, a burrito, and ice cream, all within about 4 hours. Then I came home, slept off my food coma, then went for a walk for about an hour and a half before it got dark. That was kind of my version of a binge. The rest of the night, I ate a piece of ww baguette with peanut butter, a grapefruit, a large cup of pink wine, and two manderins. Today I return to normal eating. I go to kickboxing, maybe some weird class called Grace and willPower (though probably not), and then I bike out to park, maybe to see cute ex-coworker, maybe to play board games in a cafe, maybe to see art, maybe eat sushi.

So for today, at least, I have a grip. After about another week, I won’t feel too many physical symptoms anymore (except randomly, or when I breathe it in for prolonged periods). In about a month, life will return to normal, just as a non-smoker.

Now I just gotta get off of this plateau. Truthfully, the scale isn’t very useful when I’m all pmsy, I will stay off for the next week. I’m not so happy that I will have to get a little more disciplined with eating, but that’s life as a non-smoker. My grandpa used to say that there’s absolutely NO reason for a person to be a smoker and overweight, but he certainly was both.

First of April

Just a normal day in my ho-hum city.  A few folks decided to visit our financial institutions today, to thank them for the good job they’re not doing with our economy.

Standing around

Says “I can’t afford an actual sign”

Venerable Sister and friend