Feeling Judged for Everything

We went out to dinner last night for our monthly "sib dinner" with Tim's siblings and spouses. Afterward, I suggested going out to get frozen yogurt at TCBY. After everyone ordered, I noticed that one SIL didn't get anything. When someone commented, she replied, "I'm just trying to stay away from sugar." My other SIL said, "You've dropped some more weight, haven't you? I thought so." The first SIL replied, "Yes I have. Thank you for noticing." Then she repeated that she was trying to not eat sugar. I immediately felt judged, and vaguely threatened. I think that's why I dislike when people comment on my weight loss. I feel like they are judging the fatter me and finding me wanting.

It seems a common thing that people feel judged when someone is eating salad instead of the burger they ordered. My coworkers make constant comments about my healthy foods, and seem embarrassed that they are eating a cookie while I'm eating spinach. I NEVER make any sort of judgmental comment about food someone is eating, though (to be honest) I have been known to read ingredients on the packages of snacks on our back counter and announce "PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED OIL!"

It's not just food either. We haven't had TV reception for 16 years, but it came about sort of by accident, rather than by choice. We have chosen to continue to live without it, but would never have had just given it up if circumstances hadn't led to it. When people hear that we don't have TV (I don't usually announce it, but it comes up in conversation eventually with most people), they immediately announce, "Oh, we hardly watch any TV" or "I only watch the news and such-and-such show". I always stress to them that when we did have TV, it was on from dawn til dusk and we didn't give it up out of any disapproval of it or anything. Nonetheless, they really want me to know that they don't really watch it. Much.

Hunger and Satiety

Sheesh, I had no idea it had been so long since I'd posted! I've been in a holding pattern as far as Weight Watchers is concerned. I've lost about 15 pounds, but keep going up one or two and down one or two. I go over my weekly points almost every week. I just don't understand how members and leaders say they stay within their allotted points while eating out in restaurants and eating desserts, unless they go around hungry most of the time. One dinner with one piece of veggie pizza, one smallish piece of birthday cake, and one 1/2c serving of ice cream is enough to knock out most of your extra weekly points.

I met with a nutritionist recently as part of a community wellness program. It was free so I figured "what the heck". I think she was a bit puzzled about why I was there, since I already knew everything she shared, but I did discuss my hunger issue. I told her that I was simply ravenous sometimes by late afternoon and then had difficulty not overeating at dinner and after -- even when I eat an afternoon snack of greek yogurt and fruit or something else equally nutritious and protein/carb filled. She suggested that I eat smaller meals and more snacks in between. I'm a little torn about that because I don't want to be constantly focused on food, but I must admit that I sometimes feel somewhat stuffed after lunch. Even if I'm stuffed with vegetables and beans, eating to the point of being overfull isn't really a good habit to get into. Lately I've tried to stop sooner at lunch and have a bigger snack, or have two afternoon snacks. I'm not sure it really makes a difference, but I'm going to experiment further with it. This morning for breakfast I had oat bran (1 serving -- 1/3c uncooked) cooked with: 1/2c of unsweetened almond milk, a medium banana, a tablespoon of flax seed, and about a tablespoon of peanut butter. I got up at 4:45am, walked the dog a mile, did 20 minutes on the elliptical, and about 20 minutes of weight training. I ate breakfast at 7:15am. It is 11:06am right now and my stomach is asking for lunch. I know I exercised and all, but I still feel like my breakfast should have lasted a bit longer.

I found a study that talked about satiety. It mentioned that some of the most satisfying foods were baked or boiled potatoes, apples. oranges, fish, whole wheat pasta, baked beans (!), and oatmeal. I wonder why baked beans rather than simply beans in general? I try not to eat baked beans because of the sugar. Yesterday I had a homemade soup that had potatoes, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, mixed vegetables, and black beans in it. It didn't keep me satisfied for more than 3 hours. That was disappointing, especially since it was 8 points! I have some again today for lunch, to eat over a couple of handfuls of spinach and kale -- along with an apple, orange, and a mini Kind bar for snacks.

February Podcast: Running After Baby, Getting Started, Raising Eaters, Cals vs. Points, Habit Eating | Roni's Weigh

February Podcast: Running After Baby, Getting Started, Raising Eaters, Cals vs. Points, Habit Eating | Roni's Weigh:

'via Blog this'

I just finished watching this podcast of Roni Noone's, and I thought she had some sensible things to say. What really got me, though, was her comments at the end about habit eating. I have had that same "the kids are in bed -- it's time to eat!" sorts of associations -- in all kinds of various situations, and have tried hard to break them. The car trip comment she made though was so spot on for me. She said that when she and her dh travel, he will get a soda and some combos at the gas station, and then if she doesn't get a snack, she will end up feeling deprived. So, even though she may not be hungry, she takes along a bag of popcorn popped at home to munch on. It's funny -- I have the same husband! He'll buy Combos, the kids will beg for snacks, and everyone will be munching away in the car except me. Though I may not be the slightest bit hungry, I end up feeling kind of resentful and angry about the situation. I always try to tell myself not to eat if I'm not hungry, or to take some healthy snacks for the family, but as soon as dh buys some unhealthy snack and my kids clamor for one also, no one ends up eating the healthy snacks but me. Sometimes I end up eating more calories than I would have had I just given in to my desire for some potato chips! So maybe it's okay to give up the whole intuitive eating thing once in a while. Rather than forcing myself into a situation when I'll feel put upon for listening to my stomach, I should just listen to my desires instead. Not every day, or even every week, but at least some of the time.

A Doughnut is Just a Doughnut

I had a slight gain at home last week, but a slight loss at WW. I think I'd believe the loss more, since I overate a lot last Saturday at my daughter's party, but ended the week at -2 points. I wore three pair of pants last week that I hadn't been able to wear for at least 18 months, and I felt quite good about that.

My daughter's school had "Family Donut Day" last week. I looked up a glazed doughnut and saw that it was 7 points, so I ate just some egg whites and veggies for breakfast that day, planning to eat and enjoy a doughnut. They were getting the treats from a local bakery that is famous for its fabulous doughnuts, so I wanted to have one. When I got it and took a bite, I thought "Hmm. It tastes like any other glazed doughnut I've ever eaten". I had two more bites and chewed them slowly, just to make sure, but yep, it was nothing exciting or special. It sat next to me for an hour while I handed out tickets to families coming in the door, and then I threw it away. I didn't feel any regret about it, either. It was just a doughnut with no magical powers or forbidden appeal.

Yesterday I baked chocolate chip cookies, always a huge temptation for me. I wondered if perhaps I was making a mistake because I'd been having those "I want to sit around and eat junk" urges all morning. To help out somewhat, I made a pan cookie instead of a zillion scooped cookies. I ate one small bit of dough, and enough small tastes of the finished bar to equal about two cookies. I counted the points and felt okay about the whole thing. I sort of wished I'd just eaten two cookies though, rather than just a bunch of little tastes while I was cutting them and putting them away. I could have had one nicely sized cookie with a cup of decaf and thoroughly enjoyed it. Next time. I'm taking most of them to a school fundraiser the elementary school is having today, but I left about eight of them for us. I don't know that I'll eat any more, but they are there if I want one.

I'm going to a baby shower today. I don't know if there will be food there, since it's at 2pm. Maybe cake. If it's a supermarket cake, I don't know that I'll even be tempted to eat it. Can you say "partially hydrogenated oil"? Ew.

My hip has been bothering me lately, and I'm wondering if I need to cut back on the exercise a bit. I usually walk at least 10,000 steps a day, in addition to doing 50 min of elliptical or stationary bike, and only take one rest day a week. That doesn't seem excessive to me, but a couple of years ago, my hip was bothering me for a while, and when I really cut back on exercising for a while, the soreness went away. My knee has been hurting too. I thought when I got below 150 (I think I'm 153 right now), it wouldn't really hurt much anymore. So today is a rest day. I walked the dog 2 miles this morning, but will probably not do much the rest of the day. The shower is over an hour's drive, and then I'll be sitting on my behind there for a while before driving back home another hour plus.

Binge and Recovery

I took my healthy-ish snacks to the Super Bowl party we attended. Unfortunately, I sampled quite a bit of them before I went, and wasn't really hungry when I got there. I say unfortunately because I still struggle a bit with not eating when everyone around me IS eating, even when I'm not hungry in the least. Eating when I'm not hungry invariably leads to overeating because I don't have an "end" point. There's no "I feel much better now that my stomach isn't empty, so I will stop now" cue. Needless to say, I DID eat at the party, and ended up feeling a bit too full. In the danger zone, I headed home to put my girls to bed. When I got home, I started by eating two of the doughnuts that were in our refrigerator, and went on from there. It wasn't the worst binge I ever had, but I went to bed feeling terrible - emotionally and physically stuffed. Not only did I feel miserable -- bloated and hot (I always get too hot after bingeing -- maybe my metabolism going crazy?), but about half an hour after I went to bed, my heart started pounding. I was seriously afraid that I was going to have a heart attack or something. It was the first time that I really thought about what bingeing must do to my body, rather than thinking only of the calories I ate, why I ate them, and how much damage I'd see on the scale.

I hesitate to say this (having had to admit to setbacks many times in the past...), but I'm not sure I will ever binge like that again. I've never been that afraid -- not even when I shattered my leg or had my mastectomy. If I'd had a heart attack, I would have done it to myself. There would be no one else to blame. Unlike previous binge aftermath feelings of hopelessness, the next day I felt stronger and more determined to eat normally. I simply wasn't very hungry for the next day or two, so I listened to my body and ate only 23 points Monday and 26 on Tuesday. I stuck to vegetables, beans, and fruit, and nothing processed. Since then, I've had two WW weeks when I haven't gone over my points. I've not gone hungry, but I've not overeaten at very many meals. I think I ended up not gaining weight over my binge, but whether I did or not, I've had a nice loss for two weeks in a row now. I haven't seen this new low weight in quite a few years.

On Valentine's Day, we went out to dinner. I had 20+ points left for the week, so I tried not to worry about how much oil was in my (vegan) dinner or my salad dressing. It was so yummy that I ate all of my portion, and ended up a little too full. I declined dessert, and when we got home, I thought, "Oh, I could probably still eat a Hershey's Kiss or two for a bit of dessert", but honestly, it didn't really appeal to me. I was full -- a bit overfull -- and chocolate just didn't sound very good. Crazy, huh? I made a cheesecake in the slow cooker last weekend, and after the first piece, it sat in the fridge because it just wasn't good enough to waste my points on. Of course, I did eat the entire 8-point, not-great piece the first night when I really could have stopped after a few bites -- when I realized it wasn't all that exciting. Progress though.

The Glacial Pace of Healthy Weight Loss

At last week's WW weigh in, I'd lost the weight I gained plus an additional .2 lbs. I was pretty happy, though one always wishes for more. It never ceases to amaze me how quickly weight goes on and how incredibly slowly it seems to go away. Truly though, I think SEEMS is the watchword here. When I look at my WW stats, I've lost an average of .9 lbs since I joined on November 30. I've eaten an average of 45 points a day, so I definitely haven't been starving myself. Truth be told, I could have eaten less many days if I had truly been eating intuitively. Last night, I ate a bit past full because my roasted veggie pizza was so yummy. Anyway, even at .9 lbs a week, I could lose the 12 lbs I need to lose to have a "normal" BMI in just over 13 weeks. That's a blink in a lifetime. I keep reminding myself that I am eating the way I need to eat for my health. I will need to eat like this every day for the rest of my life if I want to stay healthy. So, if I'm not willing to do it now, I won't keep off any weight I lose. I'm living without the comforting fullness of a belly full of cookies, but also without the knee pain that was sometimes keeping me awake at night a couple of months ago.

Our WW meeting last week was a bit better. We discussed the difference between snacks and treats. Our leader talked about things that are "treats" (different for everyone, but for me might be things like graham crackers or snack bars) versus "snacks" (anything that you like, tastes good, but doesn't tempt you to eat multiple servings of). I had never thought about it in that way, but she made the point that something that is okay for a snack isn't necessarily okay to eat 2-3 times a day for a snack. If you are depriving yourself of healthy foods because you are using your points for things like graham crackers or Kind bars, you are fooling yourself if you think it doesn't make a difference. Oddly, this is at odds with her "one point hot dog" speech last month, when she said that WW doesn't tell you what to eat, but rather how to maximize your points (with things like 1 point hot dogs). She actually said, "the kind of food you use your points on makes a difference."

I made three healthy-ish snacks for the Super Bowl party we're attending tonight. I adapted a Buffalo Chicken Dip recipe and made it into a Buffalo Bean Dip, and made a recipe from the Weight Watchers handout they gave us last week, substituting vegetarian chili for turkey chili. I was given the choice to bring cookies and veggies or hearty appetizers, but I really didn't want to deal with the temptation of making cookies. I know I won't go the rest of my life without baking or eating cookies, but it is a food I have difficulty eating just one of. I suppose I could have just bought some, but there's something about the idea of buying those bakery cookies with partially hydrogenated oil in them that just makes me queasy. There was cake served at my daughter's play on Friday night and I wasn't very tempted by it Thinking of that greasy tasting frosting and all those trans fats just turned me off. Imagine that.

Soup, Glorious Soup

Mmmmm...I love soup. There's nothing better than hot soup on a cold winter day. I especially love the taste of Campbell's Tomato Soup. I've been making all kinds of tomato soup recipes, trying to duplicate that velvety taste without all of the salt and HFCS, but so far, no luck.

I did, however, make this yummy soup. It may not look all that tasty, but it was. The whole family ate it with no complaints -- a red letter day. I think I got it from the cookbook The 30-Minute Vegan. I did change it slightly -- I added an entire jalapeno instead of a tablespoon, and I used chopped cabbage instead of sliced.

Quinoa Vegetable Soup

serves 6



7c water or vegetable stock

3T soy sauce

3/4c uncooked quinoa, rinsed if needed

1 1/2c chopped purple potatoes (or whatever potato you want to use)

1 large carrot, sliced

3/4c diced yellow onion

4 large garlic cloves, minced

1c chopped cabbage

1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and chopped

2 large tomatoes, chopped

1/4c minced fresh cilantro

1/4c minced fresh Italian parsley

1 tsp sea salt, or to taste

1/2 tsp black pepper, or to taste

Add quinoa to water and soy sauce in a large pot over med-high heat.

Begin cutting the veggies and add them to the pot as you go in this order: potatoes, carrot, onion, garlic, cabbage, jalapeno, and tomatoes

Cook until potatoes are tender and quinoa is cooked, about 20 min from the time the quinoa was added.

Add the cilantro, parsley, salt, and pepper.

Stuffed Butternut Squash

My dh and kids liked this recipe, which makes it an automatic keeper. The only thing I'd change would be to add in some beans or something. It didn't keep me full for long. It also made way too much stuffing for one squash. It probably would have stuffed 3 -- at least 2, anyway. It was quite tasty, anyway.

Stuffed Butternut Squash
serves 4
1 med onion, minced
2 med carrots, shredded
1 yellow bell pepper, seeded and chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 tsp turmeric
2 1/2c cooked brown rice
1 T minced fresh parsley
1 tsp dried sage
salt & pepper to taste
1 large winter squash, halved and seeded
1c hot water
Water sautee the onion, carrot, and bell pepper til softened, about 5 min. Stir in the garlic & turmeric. Then stir in the rice, parsley, and sage. Season w/salt & pepper to taste. Mix well and spoon mixture into the squash cavities.

Pour the water into a 6-qt oval slow cooker and add the squash halves, stuffing side up. Cover and cook on low 4-6 hours, til squash is tender. I don't have an oval slow cooker, so I cut the squash's "neck" off so the halves would fit -- I had to overlap one with the other, but I'd washed off the outside of the squash, so it was okay. I tucked the "necks" in on the sides. It worked okay, though it wasn't as pretty as it would have been if I'd had an oval cooker.

Kale = Blech! or Maybe Not?

You can't turn around these days without reading about how fabulous greens are, especially kale and spinach. I like spinach and make my salads at home almost exclusively with spinach, but kale is another matter. I just don't much like it. I don't care for any cooked greens. The texture is unappealing to me, and though I choke them down, I really wouldn't eat them if they weren't so healthy. I've bought kale a few times and thrown it away two weeks later after it has turned to slime. I made the ubiquitous (in the healthy blogging world, anyway) kale chips, but eh. They weren't very good, IMO.

So, I brought home yet another bunch of organic kale a couple of weeks ago, determined to make a salad recipe I'd found in a cookbook. When the time came, I just didn't want to go to the trouble, and let the kale wilt for a week before I decided that I needed to cook it, at the very least. Maybe if I mixed it in with a bunch of other vegtables, I wouldn't notice it? I started a pot going, and threw in the kale, several ounces of spinach that were also getting old in the fridge, and a box of mushrooms that I'd bought with some vague intention of sauteeing. I rooted in the cupboard and found a jar of garlic salsa and poured that in. Hmmm. It was starting to look like stew. I added a jar of roasted red peppers packed in water that I'd had for months, and found most of a packet of sun dried tomatoes in the fridge that needed using up, and tossed those in as well. It looked quite unappetizing and I was wondering if I'd be able to make myself eat it when I had a brainstorm.

I've been kind of addicted to eating vegetables with spaghetti sauce lately. I really like spaghetti squash with it, but have taken to eating it on broccoli, green beans, cauliflower, mushrooms...whatever. What if I used my hand blender to blend the concoction into a "sauce" to use over my veggies. It would be so much healthier than jarred spaghetti squash, and heartier too! Here is the end result:

My photography may be less than stellar, but the sauce was absolutely fantastic! It made about six cups, and have been enjoying it on veggies all week. Toss a half cup of beans in and lunch kept me full for hours with no need for an afternoon snack. I put the ingredients into the Weight Watchers Recipe Builder, and it came out to 2 points for a cup. Low points and satisfying -- bonus! I may be eating a lot more kale now.

Weight Watchers was a definite disappointment this week. I really like my leader's manner and personality, but her content leaves something to be desired, especially for an aspiring vegan. This week's "theme" was maximizing your points. I assumed that she'd be discussing how to bulk up your meals by adding in vegetables -- extra veggies in casseroles, pureed veggies in sauces or smoothies...that kind of thing. But, no. She spent the entire time talking about milk, and how you should make sure to get in your milk servings because of all of the good protein, vitamins, and minerals milk has. Milk is so satisfying, etc. She spent quite a chunk of time going over all of the different smoothies you could make with the Weight Watchers brand smoothie mix. I haven't looked at the smoothie mix label, but if it has half of the artificial ingredients that are in the bars...well, no thanks. If I'm going to eat artificial crap, I'd rather eat a Pop Tart.

My weigh-in this week was less than stellar. I was up 2.4 lbs (1.2 on my home scale), but I wasn't really surprised. I went on a scrapbooking retreat last weekend and ate WW-unfriendly food all weekend. I went thinking that there'd be something reasonably healthy at each meal, but it didn't work out that way. Breakfast was home fries and a white flour bagel and peanut butter if I wanted to stay away from eggs and meat. Lunch on Saturday was pizza and caesar salad already pre-mixed, along with cookies. I didn't eat the cookies, but had to eat pizza and caesar or starve. Dinner on Friday was only meat for main dishes, so I had a big salad and had some cottage cheese and hard-boiled egg for some protein. Would it have killed them to have garbanzo beans on the salad bar? Dinner on Saturday was salmon, rice, vegetables, and potatoes. Everything was drenched in butter. I also had a piece of cheesecake -- just kind of giving up.

Sunday was a disaster for me. I got up at 4:45am, but brunch wasn't til 10am. I started out eating a banana and apple, but by the time we had brunch, I'd eaten a granola bar, pretzels, cookies, and who can remember what else? I got home, and the snacking continued, unabated. I ate some sugary cereal, Pop Tarts, chocolate....well, you don't really need to know the details. I did log everything in my WW online food diary. I'm trying to do that even when I overeat, so that I can clearly see the connection between what and how much I eat and losing/gaining weight or staying the same. I've never before been this faithful about keeping track of every bite and it's kind of interesting. I've found that it's very easy to think "Oh, I didn't overeat much", only to see that, well, yes I did!

After my Sunday eating fest, I got right back on task on Monday, and ended up eating only 23 points that day, and 26 the next (26 is the absolute minimum I'm supposed to eat). I tried to eat intuitively, and just wasn't very hungry. I'm hoping my weight gain will disappear at my weigh in next Wednesday.

Six Weeks In

After six weeks on Weight Watchers, I've lost 5.8 pounds (8+ at home, but 5.8 on the WW meeting scale). I think I've still had only one week when I really didn't go over my allotted number of points, though this week is shaping up to be the second. Over the two weeks of Christmas and New Year's, I had a 1.2 gain, but lost it again by the following week. I was pretty pleased with that. I definitely overate for a couple of days when my brother and family were here the week before Christmas, on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and on New Year's Eve. I ate beyond satiety, and even felt kind of miserable due to the crappy carb/sugar overdose on a couple of those days. I didn't count points for three of the days -- just entered 99 points and sort of "gave up" -- though I didn't go on to eat everything in sight that day or the days after. Unlike my usual modus operandi, I started counting again the day after Christmas, and have counted every day since. Somehow, counting points doesn't make me as obsessive as counting calories. Maybe they don't seem quite as concrete. Or maybe it's because it isn't an exact system. When I've counted calories in the past, sooner or later I ended up thinking, "Ohhh, I have 50 calories left for the day...what can I eat?" whether I was hungry or not. For the past several weeks, I've had some desserts, crackers, pretzels, and the like here and there, but I enter the points and that's that. Perhaps it helps that I don't have any points left over at the end of the day? I don't know. Whatever the reason, it's working okay. I'm not focused on food 24/7, and I'm not feeling terribly deprived about staying away from the treats at work. We went to a potluck last night and I ate the beans and pita I brought (in case there were no vegan main dishes -- which was the case), a big helping of the yummy cole slaw I brought, and a hershey kiss. I didn't even feel like having a bit of anything else on the table, except a spoonful of hummus that I added to my pita. Now, there wasn't any fabulous looking homemade cheesecake or anything sitting there, so that definitely played a part. I'd like to think that trying to lose weight isn't playing havoc with my "normal(ish) eater" status.

Making really delicious vegan dinners that my family AND I will eat is helpful. Rather than trying to cook something for them and something separate for me, I've been looking for recipes that seem pretty lowfat, but likely candidates to escape the "ewww, what IS that?!?" comment. I also don't sit there with my boring beans and greens, watching them eat pizza or something. One of my successes from this past week was Red and Green Lentil Enchiladas from Peas and Thank You. I left the cheese out of half of it, and spinkled cheese over the top of the other half during the last 5 minutes of cooking time. My 9-year-old actually had seconds! I can't ever make enchiladas stay together, so I just tore the corn tortillas into small pieces and then layered it all like a casserole. It really was quite yummy. A couple of them also liked the stuffed butternut squash I made, but tasty as it was, it really didn't keep me full for very long. It was something like 9 points a serving too.

That's a complaint I still have about the Weight Watchers points system. I've entered some really healthy, lowfat recipes into the recipe builder and had them come out to 16 points a serving. That's a big chunk if your daily maximum is 26 (without using extra or exercise points). It seems kind of silly that an extremely healthy vegan dish could have more points than pizza! In my WW meeting last week, we were discussing planning. I raised my hand and said that I spent 20 min or so every Sunday planning my week's dinners, making a shopping list, and entering the recipes into the recipe builder so I knew how many points were in a serving. I commented that sometimes vegan recipes I thought were really healthy turned out to be pretty high in points. The point I was trying to make is that I then planned the rest of my day's food to be lower, but the leader went off on a tangent about how beans are full of fiber, but also high in calories. Really? 110 calories in half a cup of beans -- with lots of fiber and virtually no fat isn't what I'd call high in calories! It's far healthier for you than a chicken breast! Argh.

They also handed out free samples of a snack bar you can buy at your meeting. Whoa. It was "only 2 points!" but had a list of ingredients as long as my arm. Scary ingredients. WW is really missing the boat here. They have a real opportunity to teach people about eating for health, and they're hawking foods that are full of artificial crap. If they are going to sell snack bars, why not make a bar like the Kind bar or the Larabar? In the 1970s, WW made people eat liver, for pete's sake! You can't tell me they couldn't convince people to move toward a less processed diet. Oh, sigh. If I were in charge of the world...

I watched this video, and found it really interesting, though it really only makes the point that I'd already kind of figured out -- that I mentioned in my last post, actually. If you are pre-disposed genetically to being overweight, the only way to lose weight and keep it off without going hungry is to eat only healthy food. The more pre-disposed to overweight you are, the less processed food you can eat, even healthy things like whole wheat pasta or bread. The think I liked about the video is that the doctor is very non-judgmental. He just states it the way it is.