A Re-Do

I had started to write something today about how much one of my colleagues is driving me nuts (and in fact wrote a fairly long anecdote about how crazy she is), but realized that there is a remote chance she could read this blog someday and make the connection about who I was talking about. She herself is on a weight-loss endeavor, and if she stumbles across this in her quest for inspiration (which is how I have found all of my inspiration blogs), well, that would be bad.

So now that I'm on Post #2 for the day but no one gets to see the first one, I don't really feel like writing too much.

So I'll just put down for posterity that after 3 headache-free days, I ended up with a migraine yesterday after eating three bites (only three bites!) of an overripe avocado. That'll teach me to think I know better than my forbidden food list!

Feeling much better today, though.

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.

Who Are These People Anyway?

I could have alternatively called this post Why Weight Watchers Isn't for Me, and I might still change it...

One of the pages I have bookmarked on my computer is the Weight Watchers page. I have tried the program no less than 5 times (which will comprise future entries, never fear!), the latest for exactly one meeting...the admin folks there must hate me. But I keep going back because the program is sensible, overall. So I keep the homepage bookmarked and every now and then visit the message boards for recipe and other inspirations.

So the other day I was browsing the web looking for weight-loss inspiration (yes, I should have been working but no, I didn't want to. I'm guessing that doesn't exactly commend me to the boss) and I decided to peek into the Core Weight Watchers message board. I am, in some respects, following a modified Core plan, just without counting any points at all.

As I was clicking around, trying to find some inspiration, I happened up on a message titled "Pesto Core?" Thinking, "hey, I like Pesto, and I like the Core plan," I clicked on it (I also had the smug feeling that I knew the answer - yes! It is!)

It read (and yes, I'm paraphrasing, but I swear I'm not making this up): "I know you're not supposed to eat processed foods on the Core plan, so I'm worried about pesto. All the ingredients I used -- basil, olive oil, parmesan, and pine nuts -- are Core, but then I put them in the food PROCESSOR. I tried not to process it too much and just kept it pretty chunky, but does the fact that I processed it make the pesto non-core?"

Oh my god, people. And my family wonders why I don't do Weight Watchers anymore...

Something Smells Fishy

Have any of you ever been to the eating disorder website Something Fishy? It is a resource site for all kinds of eating disorders, ranging from anorexia to binge eating disorder and bulimia.

In my darker days, when I was feeling consumed by feelings of loneliness and helplessness and all I could see was a bleak future filled with nights spent sprawled on the couch surrounded by krispy kreme boxes and half-eaten pints of Ben and Jerry's, I would sit on my creaky futon in the dark after work and scroll through the website. I spent a lot of time looking at the memorials for people (mostly women) who had lost their battles with eating disorders. It was incredibly morbid, and yet it seemed to legitimize some of my own feelings.

One of the parts of that website is a message board that is divided into specific eating disorders. I spent some time on the COE/Bulimia/BED board, reading what others have written about their own experiences. I never posted myself, partly because I didn't know what to say and partly because in a way I felt food issues were not as severe as theirs and I didn't need to post. But I read a lot.

And one of the things I noticed was that it is verboten to mention specific foods, particularly when talking about a binge, because it might inspire others to binge on that food or trigger unhealthy behavior in other participants. I understood the concept but always thought they took it a bit too far.

But recently I have been wondering if they weren't correct in their thinking. I've been reading a lot of blogs lately, mostly weight-loss related. Some I've read before and others are new. It's a great way to gain some inspiration, but in the last week I've noticed a problem related to reading them. When I am having an emotional eating episode and I am trying to figure out what I want to binge on, some of the first foods that come to mind are those mentioned in these blogs.

For example, I've been reading blogs by a number of British weight-loss bloggers, and several of them mention their love of hot buttered toast and how that is a big binge food for them. So what did I do the other night when I was trying to figure out what would make me feel better? I went out and bought a loaf of white bread with the intention of toasting it and slathering it with butter. This was something I'd never done before.

I actually didn't get very far into the loaf, and the bread was pretty low-quality, so I didn't enjoy the toast much. But still, it was worrisome behavior.

Then this morning when I was contemplating what to eat for breakfast to make me feel better about my car and having a migraine, it occurred to me that there was a Chik-Fil-A in the mall on my way to the metro. Normally it would NEVER occur to me to eat Chik-Fil-A...in fact, I wasn't even aware it was open for breakfast. But the other day I was watching a video on YouTube about someone with bulimia, and the video blogger mentioned having binged on Chik-Fil-A for breakfast - biscuits with gravy, specifically.

I really wanted biscuits with gravy this morning.

As I mentioned in my last post, I got through that craving and made my own breakfast, so all is ok for now. But again, worrisome behavior.

And as I was walking to the metro this morning, I actually passed a man carrying a bag of Chic-Fil-A. I didn't want it by that point at all, but it was a funny coincidence - and proof that the place really is open for breakfast!

I rarely go to Something Fishy these days. I'm not in as dark a place as I used to be, and for some reason that site always made me feel much, much sicker (in terms of food issues) than I do normally. Like I was absorbing these bad, psychotic vibes. And sometimes I felt like the people on there were almost enjoying wallowing in their behaviors. That's hardly fair, I know, but there it is.

From Compuslive Eating to Emotional Eating

I had a pseudo-revelation last night. I call it pseudo because it is something I've given a fair amount of thought to and acknowledged as being part of my life before, but never has it been so crystal clear.

Last night I went to a happy hour with some friends. It was at our local bar, it was really cozy and nice, and the company was great. In short, on a cold fall evening, it was a good way to spend some time. I even realized that at the time, looking around the warmly lit bar area. The atmosphere was great. But I wasn't drinking and I hadn't eaten yet. The first made it so that I eventually got sick of just sitting there while everyone else had a drink, and the second made me anxious. The fact that not having eaten yet made me anxious is probably a warning sign in and of itself, but when you're following as strict a diet as I am, the compulsion to stay on schedule and not having other plans "mess up" your eating is strong.

I was planning to make sushi, but for various reasons I knew it would be a while before after I left the bar before I could actually sit down and eat (to make a long story short, I needed to go back to my apartment, get the ingredients, drive over the the store, pick up one more ingredient, and then drive back to BF's place to make dinner for both of us - all starting at about 8 pm).

So I was annoyed/anxious when we started the trek but got to my place, picked up the ingredients and went out to my car.

And the battery was dead. Now under normal circumstances this would be annoying. As it was, since I was already anxious and annoyed and my battery had died multiple times in the previous year, I was furious. Possibly with my car but mostly with myself, because I was thinking I had done it myself - again! Maybe left a light on or something. I was so sick of just being disorganized and having crap like this happen that I was furious. Plus it meant we'd have to walk all the way to the grocery store and then all the way to BF's place (25 minutes total).

I was so angry I couldn't speak, and the poor bewildered BF had no idea what to do with me. As we were walking to the store, though, my immediate thought was, "screw it, I'm not going to make sushi, I deserver something fattening and good tasting and rich because my night just went to shit!" Then I realized I would look crazy in front of the BF (chances are he already knows I'm crazy, but still).

So long story short I stuck with the sushi but to make myself feel better used soy sauce and pickled ginger. I know, big splurge. The only trouble is, I ended up with a massive migraine afterward. Ugh.

So once again this morning I wanted to eat crap because of my headache and was sure that what would make me feel better was a big, greasy bacon egg and cheese and a blueberry muffin (that used to be my binge breakfast of choice). Instead, since I had to take migraine medication and I also knew that cheese and bacon would probably be bad for my head, I made simple fried eggs on toast...and even skipped the margerine in case it had bad stuff in it.

So my head mostly feels better now and I'm glad I ate a mostly healthy (and headache-avoiding) breakfast.

But it was interesting, both times in the last 24 hours, how strong and immediately the urge to eat crap hit me. As soon as something goes badly for me, wham! I want starches, sweets, carbs! Comfort food! I honestly don't know how to overcome that. But I have to try.

Let's just say I really identify with Erin, who writes over on Angry Fat Girlz. Her most recent post there really struck home.

That's all for now. Sorry for the rambly (and no so cheery) nature of this post. I just needed to write about this.

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!