So Close...

Good morning! I was thinking I should babble on about something topical and important for a while before getting to my weigh-in, but really that's all I want to talk about today. I lost again! 3.3 pounds to be exact, putting me at 190.3. I'm very happy with that. I know I said yesterday that I was ready to see an 8 in the middle decimal place (and believe me, I am!!), but I really cannot complain about a 3.3-pound loss. That's pretty awesome, especially given that I really only ate healthfully 5 of the 7 days this past week.

On the headache front, things are going well! Much to my dismay I discovered yesterday that it is not possible to purchase wheat-free bread that does not have fresh yeast in it in the DC metropolitan area. Of course, I discovered this only after treking to Whole Foods during my lunch break in the rain and wind, buying some gluten-free bread, treking back, and THEN reading the label when I got back to my office. Brilliant :)

So I decided that if I was ever going to get a break from oatmeal for breakfast I was going to have to find a way to make my own bread. I found a recipe for yeast-free oat bread, and I already had all the ingredients necessary, so I made that last night. Once again my lack of baking/cooking prowess stymied a successful effort. Somehow the bread turned out very heavy, dense, and kind of gooey. I guess it didn't rise, despite the two tablespoons of baking powder I put in. Does anyone know if baking powder goes bad? I've had mine for about 7-8 years, so I'm blaming that. Not, of course, my lack of baking skills :)

I also made some zucchini fritters last night which were...meh...I didn't have the energy to defrost and cook a chicken breast or shrimp (peeling! Deveining! ugh!), so to satisfy my protein/vegetable/fat requirements for dinner, I just shredded some zucchini, added eggs, chopped onion, chopped parsley, garlic, and a bunch of spices and then fried them in patties. Not exactly spectacular, but I'm going to pretend they were because I have leftovers for lunch today :)

In totally unrelated news, tonight I'm going to watch the pre-Halloween drag race that takes place in Dupont Circle every year. I've lived or worked in the area for 8 years and yet I've never witnessed this sublimely sophisticated DC institution. I anticipate it being...bizarre. Of course, I forgot my camera so I won't be able to post personal photos, but here's a preview of what I'll be seeing tonight...among other things, I'm guessing! You know, watching runners compete in races like marathons and 5Ks is usually very inspiring for me. I wonder if watching a bunch of men in fishnets, feather boas and stilettos galumphing down a road will have the same effect?

DIY- How Not To Make Meringues

So I learned yesterday that in order to make meringues properly, you actually have to follow the recipe's directions. Well, some of them at least.

Over the weekend I was having some serious cravings for something sweet. Anything. It could have been a mince meat pie and I probably would have eaten it. But given that I had a spectacular 4 migraines last week (boo migraines - I'm blaming the wheat/flour I ate), I knew I couldn't go out and just have any random crap. I needed headache-safe crap. Which meant I needed to make it myself.

I think I've mentioned before that I'm not the most accomplished cook, and this whole anti-headache diet effort has been an ongoing lesson in How Not To Create Inedible Meals With Very Few Ingredients. I have an anti-headache cookbook, which has been pretty helpful. I'd say that half of the meals I've made from there have been edible (the other half, not so much). But to satisfy my sweet tooth, I decided to try to make lemon meringue cookies from the cookbook. They headache-safe and they're low-calorie! What more could I want?

A lot, it turns out. Apparently when making meringues, dumping an entire cup and a half of sugar at once into soft-peak" egg whites turns your mixture into a soupy mess. Apparently they weren't kidding about adding the sugar slowly. And no amount of additional beating will change that. I decided to try and salvage the effort by pouring the egg-sugar soup into lightly greased muffin tins and non-baking as instructed.

The result? 12 hours later I discovered I had egg-sugar muffins consisting of an incredibly sweet hard-sugar shell surrounding equally sweet white goo inside, layered over a pool of oily nastiness on the bottom. I'm pretty sure that's not how the recipe was supposed to turn out. Wish I'd taken a photo.

At any rate, I think I'm going to try again tonight. Maybe overnight I will have been transformed into a culinary genius.

On other fronts, tomorrow is my weigh-in. I'm not sure how this one will go since I didn't behave very well in the first part of the week but then behaved quite well after Wednesday. I'd love to see the scale go down. After 5 months in the 190s, it's time to see 180s, baby!

I'll be sure to report tomorrow.

When Life Hands You a Loss, You Take It

Good morning! I'm feeling surprisingly good this morning, despite how last night turned out.

So first, the weigh-in. I was down almost 3 pounds to 193.6. Strange considering a) I ate pretty badly straight through until Friday and was 196.4 on Saturday b) It's TTOM, which usually adds some pounds and c) I ate badly last night (more on that in a moment). Is it a real loss? Who knows, but I'll take it, and that might have something to do with why I'm feeling pretty good.

Especially after last night, which was a doozy. I mentioned yesterday I started to get a headache after lunch. I'm guessing it was a TTOM headache, because it turned into a full-fledged migraine with no provocation whatsoever that I could think of (again, possibly too many tomatoes or avocados, I guess, but I doubt it). I was so pissed off that I had a headache that just said, "screw it, if I'm going to have a headache anyway, I might as well eat the kind of crap that gives me a headache!" So I did - a Snickers bar, an M&M cookie, an apple streudel, a cinnamon scone, and a couple pieces of toast with butter or brie. All carbs, sugar, fat, and white bread. Mmmm...actually, it wasn't really that great. It didn't make my headache worse and it made me feel a bit more cheery, what with the cramps and everything. But I did have the presence of mind to make sure I have a non-headache-inducing lunch for both today and tomorrow (it involved cooking, which I totally didn't want to do but did anyway) and a good breakfast for both days too. (Muesli with fruit for breakfast - thank you Dietgirl - and brown rice pasta with white clam sauce and asparagus for lunch).

So here's to a headache-free and healthy day! We'll see how it goes!

Still Kickin'

Helllooo! On the off chance that anyone is reading this, I thought I'd start with a proper greeting and pretend that all my loyal readers missed me...that sounded a bit cynical, didn't it? It isn't, really. I just know that the chance of anyone finding my blog randomly is very small :)

So anyway, I have news! I think I solved my headache problem!!!!! It's amazing and exciting and I'm cautiously optimistic that I will pull through. You see, my friends, it really does seem to all come down to diet (seriously, is there any part of my life that doesn't revolve around food? Ugh). But no, really. To recap, I started following the headache prevention diet using recipes from the Headache Prevention Cookbook (I'm sure there's some official credit I'm supposed to give here, but I'm kind of lazy). I also eliminated dairy and wheat, on the off chance that I have developed some kind of allergy to those products in the last couple of years.

This restrictive diet has done four things for me: It has given me the chance to explore the vast and heretofore untapped world of rice milk, rice pasta and natural thickeners such as arrowroot powder; it has made me a better cook (seriously, you have to make things taste good just with meat, vegetables, and herbs and spices - not easy for this culinarily-impaired person); it has made me healthier - I actually have energy! And I lost weight; and, most importantly, it has gotten rid of my headaches. I should also note that I've stopped taking any medications, including Excedrin, and am treating any pain with ginger (a natural anti-inflammatory) and am taking Migrelief, which is a mix of B vitamins, and tumeric (another natural anti-inflammatory). HOWEVER, while these natural herbs are likely helping, they are not the source of the pain relief because a couple times when I have eaten things that are not in the anti-headache diet, I have developed a headache (interesting, no? Oh, it's not? Well, it is to me!)

At any rate, it's good news all around. The first week on the diet I lost 4 pounds to go down to 192. Then the Boy's parents came to town and it involved a lot of stress (marriage questions, blah) and eating out. So this Tuesday's weigh-in was not good. I was back up the 4 pounds I'd lost the week before (and had more headaches). So as of this morning I'm back on the anti-headache regimen. I think I'm going to have to try to do this regimen most of the time and then allow the occasional slip-up. We'll see. It's a tough prospect for someone who has so many Issues with food as it is.

Um, I'm still here...

Ok, so it's been a while. I don't know exactly whether that's good news or bad news. Mostly bad, I guess, if you're looking at this as a weight-loss blog. I'm still about the same as I have been all summer. 195.4 as of this morning at 7 a.m. I've been hovering between 192 and 199 since June. The good news is I haven't gained weight. The bad news is? Well, that's obvious, I guess.

I think life has gotten in the way the last few months, and unfortunately for me that life includes headaches. Bad ones - almost daily, punctuated every few days with a migraine. I've gone off the medication I was taking to prevent them, partly because I hate taking drugs and partly because one of them, Topamax, was making my hair fall out and causing other, even less savory, problems.

So now I'm taking some herbs and trying to eat an anti-headache diet. As far as I can tell at the moment, that means eliminating pretty much all food. No, I'm kidding. But it kind of feels like it. I'm exploring the wide world of gluten-free products, no dairy, and basically no condiments. It's awesome. But I'm going to try to keep a headache/food diary here to see if anything seems to set me off and record how I'm doing. So this blog might seem more like a headache blog than anything else for now. Sorry.

So, here's my last few days:

Sunday I ate 2% greek yogurt with pumpkin seeds and brown sugar; greek salad (includes feta in dressing, I think), bread, and pumpkin spice latte; quesadilla with cheddar cheese and sour cream. I had developed a slight headache by bedtime. Triggers? Possibly the yogurt, seeds, feta, coffee (caffeine), cheese, and sour cream.

Monday I woke up with a headache from the night before and took Excedrin. Had Total (contains wheat) and a banana for breakfast, plus coffee with 2% milk once at work. Lunch was another greek salad, also with feta in the dressing, as well as bread and a pumpkin spice latte. Headache returned within a couple hours of having lunch and got progressively worse. By dinner it was a migraine. Felt sorry for myself and took an imitrex before having whole wheat pasta with tomato sauce, spinach, and turkey kielbasa - and then a lot of chocolate and peanuts (heck, I took an imitrex, might as well eat the triggers). Triggers? Wheat in Total, banana, feta, bread).

Tuesday woke up without a headache. Had Total and 2% milk for breakfast. Minor headache returned by lunch. Had a salad with supposedly headache-free dressing but was too gross so ended up just eating cucumbers, boiled chx, a few tomatoes, egg, apple, wheat Wasa crackers. Took Alleve to address headache. Triggers? Wheat in Total, wheat in wasa crackers. Am determined to have a headache-trigger-free dinner!

Must...get...back...on...track!

I'm not gonna lie, I'm struggling, foodwise, right now. It's been The Summer Without a Measurable Loss for me. Unless you count the 5 pounds I've been losing and then regaining all summer. Right now I'm on the recent-gain end of the spectrum, weight in this morning (it being Tuesday, my weigh-in day) at 196 lbs. It's not tragic. I still weigh 45 pounds less than I did in January, I know exactly how the 5 lbs came on (helllooo, pasta and sugar!), and I know how to take it off. It's just getting myself to buckle down and do it already that seems to have me stymied at the moment.

It's easy to say that you will eat a healthy meal in the next go-round, especially when your stomach is bloated and still groaning from pesto pasta and these amazing apple pouches I discovered at Trader Joe's last night. (They're like mini apple pies, only with a sprinkling of cinnamon and sugar on top. I'm drooling just thinking about them). But then it comes down to it and you really, really want something unhealthy for lunch. Whether that's from boredom at work (does anyone find correcting grammar fun?), anxiety over something (hello, bridesmaid dress plus photos!), or sadness about something (hello, relationship troubles). I've been dealing with all of the above categories for a while now...hence the stress eating.

I guess I just have to try to take it a meal at a time. For now, I've got a big cobb salad for lunch. We'll see how full I am after.

The other good news is it's raining. Which would normally sound like bad news, but it's actually a very big exciting storm, which I enjoy :)