Foodie Thoughts

These past weekends in May & June have been packed with events. Never a dull moment and oh-so-busy. Weddings, bridal showers, graduation parties, dance recitals, Mother's & Father's Day, Dad & Mom's 62nd Wedding Anniversary...I can't remember a summer this busy in recent years.

The reoccurring theme is that they all revolve around people and food. Good times.

I'm 46 pounds lighter now and I'm 30 inches smaller all around....but this is still difficult to manage. I have to make an effort to talk to people not near the food, or keep a calorie free drink in my hands. I just wish I'd be confident enough to walk into a room and not even SEE the food or think about it. It should be the last thing on my mind, but it never is....

It's been great seeing family & friends again. I keep trying to make the events more about the conversation and less about food. It's a constant battle with my food addiction.

At Medifast, I'm on week 40. Even if I was losing only 2 lbs each week, I should be down by 80 lbs now. Fact is, I'm not so strict with the program and I HATE keeping a food journal. I eat outside of the plan and then try to be better - worried I blew the week. I like flavored creamer in my coffee, I put shredded cheese on my salad that has shredded carrots, cabbage and radishes in it. These things are not on the plan. Black coffee can have milk with it, 2 cups coffee per day, recommended no carrots, no radishes...it's hard to feel normal. So here's the thing....follow it strictly and get it over with!

Why does it have to be so expensive? ...especially these days? The economy is in the tank and getting worse. Not a positive thought in my head right now. Think I'll sign off and pick up again tomorrow.

Yeah, tomorrow's another day and it'll be better...please God.

A January Visit to the Farm

Yesterday my sisters and I got together at Dad & Mom's farm to visit. John & I stayed home for Christmas this year and hadn't had a chance to see everyone and Colleen & Brad are planning to leave for Arizona next weekend for a month, so it was a good time to connect before they left town. I really need the family touchstone - particularly this time of year is difficult for me personally. I feel so confined and isolated because of the weather.

I was concerned about the weather, so unpredictable this time of year, but it had cooperated. We had a beautiful, crisp, clear albeit cold 9 degree winter's day. Monica had already arrived and was visiting with Mom when I got there around 12:30pm. Her rutabaga vegetable beef soup (made by Denny) was already on the stove warming for the coming luncheon. After me, Renee arrived and then Colleen. Shortly after Colleen was Calista with Madeline & Lynnea, then Therese. We all brought goodies to share: a vegetable tray with dip, cranberry nut bread, cheese and crackers, barley vegetable soup, more crackers and fresh fruit and plenty of coffee and creamer. It was a feast fit for royalty to be sure.

We enjoyed our visit. We spoke of jobs, schedules, kids, church, friends and families. Dad & Mom enjoyed the visit too, we all sat around the dining room table. The only interruption was a young man who wanted to get his trailer out of Dad's storage building. Dad was telling me about Leona Hartmann who had just died the previous week. Her funeral will be Monday in St. Michael. She is a relative of ours and my classmate, Susie Haus's mother. Dad recalled fondly of the old days when the neighbors would gather in the living rooms, clear the furniture to one end of the room and create a dance area. Alec Micheau would call the dance moves and there was Evaline Lehn on the piano, Leona on the guitar, there's a fiddler and perhaps and accordion and/or harmonica too. Those stories hold an interest for me that I don't fully understand. I have nothing in my past experiences that relate to them - except the people, but I love to hear them anyway. They create a movie in my mind of all the players in period dress, including deceased members who are present and everyone takes their place and plays their part.

At about 4 or 4:30 we decided to head back home. We started putting the extra folding chairs back downstairs, closing up the dining room table, shaking and folding the table cloth. Mom was in the kitchen sending home soup with those interested and bagging up leftovers - there weren't many - the fruit, veggies and crackers were gone but I wasn't taking any of the cranberry nut bread back home with me. While all this hustle and bustle was going on, Dad was reminiscing about the old days. "There used to be so much of this noise going on in the house years ago with you 6 girls here.....now it's so quiet!" I am always surprised that he finds comfort in all the noise. He's told me that the little shouts, screams, shrieks and laughter of family get together's was the best part of the day. Especially the little kids and that he misses that. I guess it helps to explain how they survived raising a large family all these years!

We hope to be visiting with Colleen on March 19th, when Therese will be advising her on decorating a few rooms in their home. Colleen & Brad are refinishing some rooms and there's always a concern for balance and color. That will be a fun get-together too.

Weighty Issues

So here it is...I was at the YMCA working out for an HOUR today. Shocked me too! It just felt so good and I'm down by 31.1 lbs now. Fantastic!

I was able to watch Oprah too. Portia de Rossi (Ellen DeGeneres's wife) was on, talking about her book, "Unbearable Lightness". This is about her eating disorder, purging, hating herself, feeling like she was fat as a 5'6" size 8 - beautiful woman. As Oprah said, most women feel that a size 8 is a GOAL weight. At times she lived on 150 calories A DAY!! Portia weighed as little as 82 lbs. The loss of control was what she feared the most. Starting to eat a favorite food and eating too much of it. She she avoided the food and the feeling. She has pictures of herself looking like a walking skeleton and all she noticed (back then) was a teeniest bit of tummy fat on her in the picture. Amazing - boy we can do a number on ourselves. It was a good show and very interesting.

Weight issues, food issues, addictions can be so hard to face and deal with - but so rewarding when we get to the other side. So I gotta keep going.

Food as reward-background for understanding

According to information gleaned from my Medifast manual, I'm learning a lot about the brain and the role it plays in obesity:

Have you ever felt "driven to eat" or "not satisfied"? Reward deficiency syndrome is a problem with the brain's pleasure mechanisms, essential to feeling like we've had enough to eat. Some people are born with fewer "pleasure receptors" in the brains. These receptors are signaled by "pleasure molecules" to let our brains know when we're content and satisfied. So for those of us born with a shortage of them, eating an ice cream cone might not be as pleasurable as it would be for someone without a reward deficit. We feel the need for a bowl of ice cream.

A muted pleasure response to ice cream and other yummy, rich roods does not make us want them less. Rather than saying no to the ice cream, we eat more of it in an attempt to get the pleasurable feeling of eating something that tastes good.

Dopamine is an example of a"feel good" pleasure molecule neurotransmitter that gets released in response to rewarding activities, including "natural" rewards (e.. love, reproduction, eating) and "unnatural" rewards (e.g. compulsive overeating, drug & alcohol abuse, gambling).

Dopamine molecules have to attach themselves to the pleasure receptors located in various places around the brain. If the pleasure receptors don't work like they should, the reward signal is diminished, driving people to get a "fix" of something in order to feel good. For the obese the fix may come in the form of overeating. Dopamine has been shown to be the primary controller of hunger and the motivation to eat and is also involved in the "rush" of food, drink, sex, and drugs of abuse.

People prone to obesity may have a tendency to overeat, especially sweetened, high-fat foods, in an attempt to stimulate our short supply of pleasure receptors. However, when we attempt to stimulate these blunted dopamine receptors by overeating to compensate for the reward deficit, we desensitize the few receptors we have, and make bad eating behaviors even worse...a vicious cycle.

There's also genetic evidence of this in the "Taq 1 A1 allele" genetic code. With this code, we are more likely to be obese or to have substance abuse disorders like cocaine, alcohol, or opioid abuse. Obese individuals with this genetic code may be prone to abusing food in a way similar to how an addict or alcoholic abuses drugs and/or alcohol.

Finally, I understand these cravings and not feeling full or rewarded. I understand how and why I need to work with this issue. The type of weight I carry causes inflammation and swelling in the joints, leading to arthritis, coronary problems and cancers. I never understood this before. I hope it not too late to reverse some of the damage done over the past 30+ years.

New Year's Day 2011

Wonderful day - had 8 for breakfast this morning: hash browns, sausage, ham, french toast, fresh grapefruit and cranberry nut bread with coffee. I had my Medifast eggs and coffee.

Gracie & Zach played downstairs afterword, John & I cleaned up the kitchen and JJ, Jenn & Sarah headed home to clean up the house from Christmas and get ready for the week. The grand kids came upstairs and we had a tea party together. Gracie & I played UNO Attack and Zach was playing with the DVDs and the TV looking for a cartoon. Then I pulled out the Moon Sand for both of them and the ice cream scoops and trays. They had fun with that too. They asked if they could watch The Incredibles and we did. Gracie & I did her nails in a pretty pink color, although she thought the color should be a little darker, she liked it. We had a good time and they helped me clean up before they left when dad came back to get them.

Gracie couldn't help herself, she asked if they could have a sleepover. Zach said he wasn't ready for that and he and his dad had to start building his car for the Cub Scout toy car race. He was really excited about the race next weekend. Gracie was disappointed but I told her that we could plan a sleepover and set it up and have a great time on another weekend.

I realize that my time with the kids and sleepovers is limited and that made the decision more difficult. I love spending time with them, but try to balance that with what their parents want and need. I hope the grand kids remember the good times we had together and things that we've shared.

Lunch from Jimmy John's

OK - so today was a little better. The boss only bought lunch for us from Jimmy Johns: sandwiches and chips. The sandwiches were small - I only had one - with my own drink and only tried one (1) single chip, a Vinegar & Sea Salt chip...yum! It was hard but staying involved in conversation helped....can't eat and talk at the same time. Our group was in a festive mood and we all seemed to enjoy ourselves telling stories about each other and our groups beginning and the company's move from Princeton. We were able to get back to work and finish up a few things before the boss sent us home early for the holiday weekend. Three of us went out afterward for drinks before heading home. I stuck with diet Coke. The fog and cold weather should start to worsen - we just didn't know when.

Speaking of which it was raining all day today with temps up to 42 degrees and it's predicted to drop down to -30 degrees by tomorrow night, quite a drop. So much rain on top of so much snow and refreezing spells disaster on the streets. It'll be a weekend at home. I'll have to get busy with projects and stay out of the kitchen. Wish me luck - Tuesday's weigh-in time!

Snacks-goodies and other landmines

The boss brought in homemade goodies for the second day this week: sweet dough holiday bread (with nuts), mini-muffin pecan pies and many more assorted cookies. All were arranged on a this beautiful huge cut-glass 16" round platter and located next to the licorice which is also between the fax and the closest printer, in the center of the office.

What??!!??

It was so hard today, I had a couple of licorice, then one small cookie, later a 1/2 slice of bread - finally I had to stop myself - ENOUGH ALREADY.

I had hit the gym early this morning before work, so I know that helps, but I literally RAN back to my desk and drank 16 oz of water...more like guzzled it - that felt better. I've really got to get a grip on this. She won't change and I had better get use to passing up the goodies. But for some reason last week was easier this this week. Maybe I'm getting wore down with all the holiday parties and treats.

Anyway, tomorrow's another day, it'll be better!

Hope the weather cooperates, they're predicting rain and icy roads starting just in time for the morning rush hour - YIKES.