What are you, chicken?

Mmmmmm… Chicken. Last night my daughter and I baked a chicken for dinner. Well, technically all I did was flip the pieces over so that she could put spices on the other side. Oh, and I also got to put on some of the barbeque sauce at the end. It was really good.

Here is the thing about chicken though. I love the skin. I absolutely love it. I think that chicken without the skin on is dry, tasteless and completely pointless. Some may look at that and say "Well I thought you were trying to lose weight." But you must remember I am trying to lose weight eating real foods that taste good. So how does one go about eating a dinner that is healthy, even if it includes a full chicken with skin on? Here is how: I only ate one piece of thigh meat, and then heaped my plate full of steamed vegetables. I got the protein, fat and complete satisfaction from the chicken, and I got the "full" feeling from the rest of it. Now I happen to like vegetables, so this wasn't a huge concession on my part. The difference between what I used to eat and I what I ate last night was quantity, not quality. To be completely honest, I do put unsalted butter on my steamed vegetables, but I have found a satisfying (but sneaky) way to avoid a lot of the calories. I steam my veggies in the microwave (or more rarely on the stove) with a little more water than recommended, and when I am done I don't drain the water. Then I put the butter (about a tablespoon or less) on top of the veggies in the main serving bowl, and stick it back in the microwave to melt. After I pull it out of the microwave I stir it all around with a slotted spoon so that the veggies have a nice sheen to them. When you look at the bowl after the veggies are gone, what you will notice is that most of the butter is still in with the water. It gives a very slight buttery taste to the veggies which is just delicious. I do this for corn, broccoli, green beans, and brussel sprouts. With corn I usually add a little salt and pepper too, but for the rest of them I like them with just a touch of butter.

Often times on Sunday I eat a really late breakfast too. We will just call it brunch. I find late breakfasts on Sunday very liberating. While I eat more calories than I would normally eat at just breakfast or just lunch, I don't eat as many as I would normally consume in both of them put together. For instance, my normal breakfast these days is a Dannon Light & Fit yogurt with some Fiber One cereal mixed in. For lunch I will eat a variety of things from a sandwich and fruit, to some pasta or a baked potato. Between the two of those I am usually sitting at about 600-750 calories. Sometimes more. But yesterday I had two poached eggs on toast, two slices of REAL bacon (although not Albertson's bacon which is the best), and a glass of orange juice. I didn't even clear 500 calories and I was full until dinner. I would actually be surprised if I topped 1,000 calories yesterday (I don't remember what my caloriecount.com total was), though I do truly try to get as close as I can to my target of 1,300 calories a day. But I am trying very hard not to eat if I am not hungry.

Now I don't usually eat that many foods with a high fat content in one day, yesterday just worked out that way. Today I am back to light yogurt and Fiber One. But it is also Monday, so I reserve the right to eat a treat after dinner when I go to my dad's house. I hope he serves something good. It's such a copout when we have Costco cookies leftover from the weekend adult single's activity he went to.

And there you have it. Chicken.

F. Bear Slippers 

P.S.  I've lost 9 pounds!

Rock-a-bye baby, in the tree top...

I have been having a real heck of a time sleeping the past few days.  This effects me throughout my day and makes me feel all weird and buzzy headed.  When I do sleep, I have the strangest and most vivid dreams.  I have not been able to figure out what was going on, until I had a particularly vivid dream last night involving Harry Potter, sharks and snorkeling.  I know, right?  Anyway, it was the vivid nature of the dream that made me realize that I had been forgetting to take a particular medication a lot lately, and have just started taking it regularly again.  The side effects include insomnia, vivid dreams (gratefully not nightmares this time), and loss of appetite.  When I first started taking this medication I lost 10 pounds in a month.  I am kind of hoping that I get those results again.  I haven't felt hungry for the past couple days and I think that is part of it too.  I am, of course, not putting all of my eggs in that basket, but it would be nice if it gave me a little nudge towards my first goal of 185 pounds (only 15 more pounds to go!).  

So, I am going to take a little Benadryl tonight and hit the hay early.  

Night night!

F. Bear Slippers

Working 9 to 5…

I wonder sometimes, what my butt would look like if I didn't have a full-time job. Don't get me wrong, I don't in any way look down my nose at the noble profession of stay-at-home mothers. In fact, for very brief stretches I have had the pleasure of living that life myself. I only have one child, so it was usually very workable for me to fit in an hour or two of working out a day. So as I do not have the pleasure of ruling my roost from my motherly throne 24 hours a day, I am left to wonder what it is about the 8 hours a day that I spend at work that leaves me bereft of the motivation necessary to pick my chunky monkey butt up off the sofa so that I can get some exercise. I am not THAT tired at the end of the day (weary, but not always tired). I certainly could find the energy to bike for half an hour, or take a walk. Yet I do not. I understand that this choice leaves me extremely unhappy with my appearance and my fanny size. Yet still, I sit.

I wonder if so much sedentary office work has trained me to be inactive. Is my lack of movement in my job contributing to chunky monkey muscle memory?

Well, we shall see. I am going to try to get moving around the office more and see what happens. Maybe I will find that I do have the desire to get out and exercise in the evenings. Or, maybe I will be more willing to blow it off because I will feel as though I have already done something for the day. Who knows? All I know is that I can't just keep cutting calories and hoping for the best. It this chunky monkey wants to make real progress, I am going to have to get my butt moving.

 

F. Bear Slippers.

The Perils of Dieting on Vacation

You have probably heard of it, and more than likely you have tried it. Sticking to a diet while vacationing.

For the past week I have been away from my desk at work and indulging my whims on a lovely stay-cation. On the very first day my friend Trish and I went out for Thai food for dinner before hitting up our book club. Phad Thai may not be the most diet-friendly way to kick off a vacation, but there you have it. I limited myself to have the portion and I had it served up with a dish of brown rice instead of white. I limited my calorie intake in other areas so as not to push myself over the 1300 calorie diet ledge. And… Success! Yay! Score one for Fuzzy Bear Slippers, Zero for temptation.

If only it could have lasted. The next day my mother came into town and we went to visit an old family friend who cooked a lovely lunch of salmon (healthy!) and a side of homemade artichoke dip (not so healthy). There were a lot of fruit and veggies, which was good too, but I guarantee you I overindulged in that delicious dip (pretty sure the health benefits of celery are negated by artichoke dip spread all over it). Later that night I ate several slices of pizza at my sister's house, but vowed to start off better the next day. Um, yeah. Right.

It was at this point that I decided that I was not going to count a single calorie during my time off. I opted to enjoy myself and to not worry about undoing myself. This occasionally entailed cheesecake for breakfast, or lunch, or dessert… It also involved several meals out (where I did make conscious decisions about quantity), such as Dick's Drive-In (where I enjoyed a Dick's Deluxe, minus a meat patty and some sauce, a small fry and a small chocolate milkshake). I ordered an extra cheeseburger and fry with the intention of eating them, but instead mustered some willpower and saved them for my husband when I got home. I ate at Applebee's where I had a virgin strawberry margarita, but shared it with my daughter so that I wasn't taking the total hit. I also ordered a steak without any of their cheesy or sautéed toppings, and stuck with a leaner cut of meat. (BTW, really? Cheese on a steak? Come on America!) This particular night was also mitigated by a 3 hour leisurely stroll/sit on the beach. It wasn't really exertion, but I am sure it counted for something.

I think my greatest accomplishment during this time off was not allowing myself to pig out when I wasn't hungry. And believe me, that was a huge accomplishment. I kept myself busy with reading books I enjoy so that I didn't get bored, and I kept a bottle of water next to me so that I didn't get up and get something sugary to drink. Also, not eating if I wasn't hungry occasionally led me to skip a couple meals. If I ate a large or late meal, and didn't feel hungry, I didn't sit down and eat the next meal. If I did feel hungry, then I ate.

Finally, the day of truth. Preparing to go back to work today and get back on the band wagon, I weighed myself to assess the damage last night, and was shocked to discover that I didn't put on a single pound. In fact, I didn't go up or down. While I would have been happier if I had lost a pound or two, I learned a lesson about enjoying myself within moderation (cheesecake for breakfast aside), and I am pleased to essentially start where I left off. Besides, I didn't put in the work to lose weight this last week, so it almost would have felt like cheating if I had managed to shave something off. I feel much better about stagnation under the circumstances.

Sometimes dieting feels like a real punishment, but my intent this time around to try to do it in a realistic way with real food is really pleasing. I haven't suffered much, and because I am working the things I like into my daily diet I am not feeling deprived. Granted, I am not going to be eating anymore cheesecake for breakfast (for a while), but I don't feel bad about the occasional eggs benedict either.

 

F. Bear Slippers

Get thee out, Satan! (aka: Pizza and Cake)

We all have our crosses to bear. Unfortunately, mine comes covered in cheese and cut into eight delicious slices. We are having a farewell party for a co-worker (who I shall refer to as Dr. Unmentionable), and being served at this party are delicious slices of ooey, gooey, cheesy pizza. Since this is only the third day I have been writing in this blog, you have not heard about the past shenanigans of Dr. Unmentionable, therefore you might not feel the same sort of glee at the idea of her departure. I have been her assistant for approximately 3 ½ years, the first 2 ½ of which she was only in for about an hour a day. You might think that is the ideal situation (I assist about 10 doctors and 40 other staff members, so it wasn't all cake), however, the hour she was there was usually unadulterated suckieness. Whenever there was a grant due, she would drag her feet, not send me the information I needed, and then invariably I was left sitting at my desk pounding away furiously at my keyboard, while glancing anxiously at the clock in hopes that I would be able to finish the administrative part on time. Government grants are due at 5pm local time, so when she would hand me everything at 2pm (as she was telling me she was going home) I was usually already in a cold sweat. These are things that I will not miss at all. I found it interesting that in her very last act here she will be screwing up my calorie count. I spent a while this morning juggling my calories in an attempt to make room for lunch. You see, I would not have gone at all if it had not been made very clear to me by the administration that I was expected to attend and eat the lunch that was served (when I suggested that I would just bring my own lunch). So I am going and I will be eating pizza and a slice of cake to commemorate her departure.

I was very happy, I must say, to find out that with proper planning I had room in my day for both a slice of pizza and a piece of cake. While I don't really care for artificial sweeteners I will stick to the diet soda to assist in the calorie reduction. I know there will be salad, but it is the kind that comes pre-dressed so I will be very careful to limit the intake on it. I looked online to find the nutritional information beforehand so that I could enter it into www.caloriecount.about.com and judge the amount that I could afford to eat. Just an FYI, that delicious Grand Parisian salad mix from Costco is 140 calories per serving with 11 grams of total fat. One serving is 2 ½ cups, so I am cutting the serving in half. I will make it up with undressed salad at dinner tonight. I have to stand by my initial thought that life is much easier when you plan all of your food out ahead of time. I know that I have a meeting tonight and that the host generally likes to prepare food, but I want a piece of cake this afternoon so I will be saying no to treats. I will eat a healthy dinner at home after I take Baby Bear Slippers to swimming lessons, and then head to my meeting afterward on a full stomach. I am sorry, I just ate! I have no room for peanut butter chocolate Chex Mix.

The hard thing about today is that I had to get up very early this morning, and ate breakfast before 6am. This means that I am very grumbley in my tumbley right now. I had a banana for a snack to help tide me over until the pizza gets here, but usually about this time of day I would eat a handful of nuts which would greatly help to satiate my hunger. Because of all the calories at lunch I cannot afford the extra calories, so I must abstain from the nuts today. I just really wish that I had some gum to chew to help keep my mind off of pizza for the next hour. It is hard when you have your meals scheduled around someone else's timeframe, and are therefore unable to dictate the time of your own lunch!

Lastly, I have lost yet another pound today. I am down to 201.5. Yippee for me!

 

F. Bear Slippers

It's the end of the world as I know it, but I feel fine...

Ah, day 2. I weighed myself this morning and I am down 6 pounds since 10 days ago, which is awesome, and 2 ½ pounds since Monday. I didn't have time for breakfast this morning, so I subsisted on a light yogurt and a handful of nuts until lunch. I am saving most of my calories for BBQ chicken tonight. Mr. Bear Slippers is away at a journalism convention, so it will just be me and Baby Bear Slippers tonight. I will pull out the grill and serve up some BBQ goodness.

I have to say, it doesn't take me very long to remember why I hate this "life change" stuff so much. I really like sweets, and I have had to fight myself not to rob the candy dish in my co-worker's office. But, I have found a great way to help myself avoid this pitfall.


Weight Loss Tip #1:

Spend all of your calories first thing in the morning. By this I do not mean that you should start your day with ice cream on top of pancakes. I mean that you should plan out your day. Meals, snacks, dessert. Everything. I even plan out my splurges. If I eat a reasonable breakfast and lunch, that means I get a regular popsicle after dinner (not one of those sugarless imposters), and I can even have Thousand Island dressing on that big salad I will be eating with my chicken. It also means that I can't eat 10 snack sized Heath Bars because I don't have any calories left for the day. As far as I am concerned mentally, they were gone by 9 o'clock this morning.

Thinking this way has also made me look for low calorie ways to fill up. I really, really, really hate fake food (aka "diet" food). I think it is the Devil and it should be illegal. That is part of the reason that I have such a hard time finding ways to lose weight. I don't want to snack on food bars, or eat meal replacement shakes. I want butter and jam on my toast, and I want my toast to be full calorie bread. So in order for me to not blow my calories in one shot, I think big picture for my day. I know that I want some excellent BBQ sauce on my chicken and dressing on my salad, so I cram as many veggies as I can onto my plate. They help fill me up and they taste delicious. I made a delicious pasta with shrimp and garlic the other day. The topping for the pasta had shrimp sautéed in butter, and some real cream. I moderated the fatty foods by putting in a lot of other things. It was mostly mushrooms (fresh cremeni mushrooms), broccoli, carrots and onions. Then I tossed it with about two cups of cooked penne pasta. This made 4 servings of something that was mostly vegetables, but still tasted amazing. But because it was mostly vegetables, each serving came in at around 300 calories. Not too bad.

I guess my biggest challenge is learning moderation so that I can eat real foods. Perhaps I should define "real food" too. I mean food that doesn't have a lot of artificial (aka long unreadable names) ingredients. I have a friend that makes the best homemade bread ever. Baking bread is one of those things that I have sucked at forever. It is hard to do and it is regularly a failure. So I called her up and said, "Teach me please!" My friend happens to be a fitness instructor with 2 kids and body that looks like her childbearing is in the negative numbers. How can anyone with two kids have a tummy that tight? Anyway, one afternoon together and now I can make my own bread with nothing artificial in it. It is whole wheat (my dad even grinds his own wheat flour when he makes it), and there aren't any funny preservatives in the ingredients list. It makes two loaves which lasts my family about one week and it always turns out. I will have to check with my friend to see if it is okay with her for me to publish her recipe on my blog, but if it is you should see the recipe coming to a computer near you in the very near future. When I eat the bread, I just have to remind myself that I can only eat 2 slices per day. I can't have a slice at breakfast, two at lunch and then seven slices for dessert. Moderation. That is my first weightloss goal. Tonight, instead of eating garlic bread with my chicken I will have a big salad packed with sweet peppers and cucumbers, as well as some corn on the cob, so that I can justify the small amount of Thousand Island I will top the salad with. Moderation does not mean that I have to be hungry! Nor does it mean that I have to eat sugarless candy or low-carb ice cream.

I personally find it a hassle to cut up a bunch of vegetable to snack on during the day at work. Instead, I plan them into my meal so that I have a lot to eat and I can usually just pack up leftovers from dinner for lunch the next day. Vegetables already included!

So this is what I am left with for the day… Not eating a butt-load of candy is not the end of the world, I can eat well, so long as I do it in moderation, and diet food sucks, so find ways not to have to eat it.

Happy eating!


F. Bear Slippers

The Chunky Monkey takes stock of life...

I must admit, I am not 100% certain how to tackle this blog.  I love a good snark, even at my own expense, but my weight has always been a touchy subject.

When I was little, I was about as skinny as a kid could get.  My parents used to tell the story of how I was the only kid they ever knew who could take three bites of an M&M and still have some left over.  They used to find little pieces of M&M around the house.  Also, they knew that if I walked away from food that I was done with it.  I still do not much care for leftovers, but at the same time I never walk away from a cookie.

I don’t know exactly when the change happened.  I know that up until I was about twelve years old kids teased me that my dad was a light bulb (because of my big forehead) and my mom was a giraffe (because of my tall, gangly appearance).  There was a group of girls who stood on the playground every morning waiting for me to get off the bus so that they could chant “Roses are red/ Bats are black/ Why is your front side/ As flat as your back?”  Cute, no? 

Then, one dark and stormy night, I got boobs.  It really seemed to happen just like that.  One day I was being teased for being flat chested and the next I was being accused of stuffing my bra (on the very first day that I wore one).  From the age of about 12 ½ to 13 I went from an A cup to a C cup, all the time being accused of adding ever more tissue to my blossoming busts.  In fact, this went on until I went to a trip to Washington DC when I was 13 with my class.  As we were all meeting in the hallway to go to the pool, I walked out of my room and a boy (yes Dominic, I remember you) yelled, “Oh my God, they’re real!”  Sigh.  The joys of youth.  By the time I started High School a few months later I was already past a D, at which point I kind of stopped keeping track. 

I started to chunk up in the 9^th Grade.  I wouldn’t say that I was fat, but as my boobs grew, so did my waistline.  My entire body became uncoordinated and unwieldy.  I still have problems with running into things because my brain thinks I am much smaller than I actually am.  I had huge self-confidence problems, and I know that I became a very big consumer of junk food.  I had a little hiding place in the basement of our house (my dad’s dusty old accordion case) where I kept a stash of candy hidden from the eyes of my four siblings.  I babysat on a regular basis and used that money to indulge myself.  A pint of Häagen-Dazs here, a couple candy bars there.  I had a regular babysitting gig on Friday nights and I would stop at the Greenwood Bakery (which, by the way, I still maintain has the best pastries in Phinney Ridge), and I would buy myself a couple éclairs or other pastries.  When the kids went to bed, I would sit by myself in front of the television eating my treats, never once giving a second thought to the calories I was consuming.  I found a lot of what I considered to be happiness in those indulgences. 

By the time I was 16 I had grown to 183 pounds (at 5’ 8” I was about a size 16).  At some point I made a change and lost more than 20 pounds.  Unfortunately for me, as my waistline shrank, my boobs stayed put.  At the age of 17 my parents got me a breast reduction, one of the best choices I think I have ever made.  My doctor removed 2/3 of my chest (deemed medically necessary by my insurance because of their size) and left me at a very large C cup.  I remember standing in the shower shortly after the surgery and being astonished that I could look down and see my feet.  I put on some weight after that, but managed to lose it again by the time I was about 19 or so, getting down to about 145 pounds and a size 7.

After I had my daughter at the age of 22, my body bounced right back to a size 7/8, but within just a few months I blew up again.  By the time I was married 10 months later, I was back up to about 180 and a size 16.  We moved to Monterrey, CA a couple of weeks later, and by November of that year I was up to at least 220 pounds.  I say at least because when I started working out with my neighbor I did not weigh myself for several weeks and when I did I was at about 220.  I will never know exactly what my highest weight was.  I worked out for several hours a day diligently for a couple of months, getting down below 170 before we moved back to Seattle.  I got a job, went back to work and stopped working out.  I put on more weight, probably getting up to about 185/190.  Then I started Weight Watchers online program, and dropped down to about 154 pounds.  I was referred to at work as the Incredible Disappearing Woman.

I was able to maintain that for a while until I got a “promotion” which was so incredibly stressful that I put on 15 pounds over about the next 6 months, culminating in a separation from the company that I truly thought that I would work for forever.  I had been so miserable in the job, and so poorly treated by my new, slime ball boss, that even with leaving I was unable to bring myself out of my depression.  I got another job very quickly, for someone else I soon discovered was also a slime ball.  When my husband announced 6 months after starting my new job that he was taking a contract in Afghanistan, I took it as an opportunity to get out of the insurance industry and stayed home with my daughter.

I hovered right around 185 pounds (which at my height of 5’ 9” was a size 14) until I went onto the anti-depressant Paxil.  I didn’t take it for very long, but I put on 20 pounds almost immediately.  I had knee surgery and was working out several days a week for a couple of hours at a time, and I could not lose the weight.  So there it stands.  With the brief exception of dropping back down to 185 a year ago when I started a new anti-depressant which quelled my hunger for a while, I have hovered at or right around 200 pounds.

And that is where we find me today.  205 pounds miserable. 

I am completely certain that my weight is my own fault and 100% my own responsibility, but I have lacked the ability to care about it.  Or at least, I didn’t care enough to cut my calories and get my rump off the sofa.  I have hated my weight and my appearance for years, but I have never stuck with anything that I have started.  Most of the time I couldn’t even find the motivation to start.

For some reason, something clicked in my head yesterday.  I don’t know what it was, or why it happened.  A friend of mine posted something on facebook about something she was doing, and she gave me a link to it when I asked for it.  I started entering in my food and calories and in my head I thought, “I can do this.”  Why can I do this now?  I don’t know.  But I want to be thinner, I want to be healthier and I want to be happier.  I don’t want the disapproving looks from my doctor, I don’t want to have to stand on a scale and turn my head away while a nurse quietly writes down my weight.  I don’t want to shop in the big girl section anymore.

So this is it.  D-Day.  Ground Zero.  Or something.  I am starting small and documenting journey in hopes that I might one day be an inspiration to some other Chunky Monkey out there trying to figure out just how this whole thing works.   Mmmmmmmm… Chunky Monkey…  Damn you Ben and Jerry’s!

F. Bear Slippers