Positive Affirmations

I like realizations in life because sometimes they’re affirmations.

Affirmations are good for us because they make us feel like whatever it is we’re doing, no matter how small, is the right thing. For me, I had one of those small ones today. It came when my coworker were running an errand for the office and we got stuck behind a giant truck. This was a McDonald’s truck. This would not be a bad thing except the enormous photograph of McDonalds French fries that dominated the entire rear of the truck.

Let me explain.

Since the new year, I made a vow to myself that I’d drop the extra 15 pounds that I’d allowed myself to gain during the past few months.

So far, I’m down by seven pounds and I really didn’t have to do much at all. As I’ve said before, I’ve been blessed to be a huge fan of vegetables. I’ve always centred the majority of my meals around vegetables when I cook. I find veggies to be a gift in life- there are so many types out there and so many things to do with each type that were it not for my fondness for meat, I could easily be a vegetarian. Unfortunately, while I do prefer veggies, I have a certain fondness for bacon, chicken and other carnivourous fodder. I also adore fish which I would still be able to eat if I were a vegetarian. Of course, I’ve never understood that because I’d think fish were as much a live creature as, say, a chicken but who am I to argue?

Anyway, the point is that it’s been easy for me to switch to a healthier eating plan. All I had to do is adjust how much I ate and when I ate it and I’ve been able to lose weight without much deprivation at all. I still get to eat things like cheese and bacon, I just do so in moderation. Instead of pouring cheese onto everything, I consider what else I’m eating with the cheese to decide if it’s worth the nutritional black marks or not for that day’s eating. I have a fabulous website that I use that lets me log what I’m eating and then it estimates the nutritional content of that food. It makes me responsible for what I eat and how much I eat. I love that. I know how many calories I’m supposed to have in a day and so I can see how I’m doing.

I like having that discipline. I find that it makes food rewards fun. If I’m doing well for the day and I’ve eaten primarily healthy, low fat stuff then I can have a glass of wine in the evening or a piece of chocolate or even some cheese with my dinner. It’s actually a much nicer way of eating than letting myself cram my face full of whatever I feel like eating at that moment.

There are times that it is hard. I find that if I have a day that doesn’t go well, I’m hungry. I want to fill that emotional hole in me with food even though I’m technically not hungry. I think half the battle is recognizing if I am actually hungry or if I’m just thinking about eating because I’m watching TV and it seems like the thing to do. Of course, there are days that I am really hungry. These are generally the days when I’ve been super healthy. Fortunately, if I’ve eaten a low amount of fat and calories for the day, it usually means I can have a healthy-ish snack and not suffer the consequences on my thighs or hips.
The only really hard time is when I’m subjected to temptation. At my job, we have a lot of business lunches with our consultants. This is our way of saying “Thank you for working for us” as well as to stay in touch with them. These lunches are nice but they’re always at a restaurant where healthy eating is not always easy. Compounded with this is the fact that I’m faced with a menu full of pictures of items that are not healthy but are, in fact, absolutely delicious. It’s so easy to listen to that voice in my head that says, “You’re craving bacon, cheese, hamburger goodness with a side of salty French-fries”.
The voice in my head is usually right. If I’m given a picture of a juicy hamburger when I haven’t had one in ages and I really, really want one, of course I’m going to crave the bloody thing. It’s a law of nature: we crave what we shouldn’t have.
Since I started my attempt to lose weight, it’s become very easy to talk myself out the hamburger. At first, it wasn’t. It’s much easier to cheat when you first start something- (“Oh, go on…order it! You can start over again tomorrow.” ). The longer you persevere, the easier it gets because you’ve come a certain distance and you don’t want to undo the good you’ve been doing.

There are times when I do go ahead and order the hamburger. It’s part of that reward system. If I let myself have it once in a while, I’m far less apt to say, “screw it! I want bad food now!”

There comes a place when you realize you’ve turned that corner and trying to eat well 95% of the time is as natural as eating itself.

Thus comes my affirmation.

McDonalds french fries have always been a weakness of mine. Generally when I crave something, it’s savoury, rather than sweet. I want something salty. McDonalds french fries? Perfect salty snack food. Two months ago, I would have seen that picture of the french fries on the back of the truck and instantly, my taste buds would have been kicking into sense-memory mode. I would have been able to taste them and smell them in my imagination. I would instantly have wanted those french fries and found a way to get them.

Two months later…not so much. I could still smell them and taste them in my imagination but internally, I simply shrugged and said, “eh, I’d rather have the brussel sprouts roasted with bacon that I’m planning for dinner tonight.”

I liked that feeling. Granted, there’s bacon involved in my dinner but it’s only three slices and combined with the Brussels and the fennel I plan on also roasting, I have a pretty darned tasty meal there with very little badness except for the bacon.

The more important thing is that I’d rather have that than Mcdonalds. That was my affirmation that all the work I’ve done in trying to lose some extra weight and improve my overall health is sticking. Also, I’m enjoying it. It involve creativity, planning and research but those are three things I enjoy very much anyway.

I have to say, I would never have thought a giant picture of french fries would seem like a life affirming thing but that’s probably why it was such a nice moment.

The unexpected things always are.

Thanks, as always for reading and have a Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

Food Musings

Have you ever noticed when you can’t have something, it’s all you seem to want in the world?

In my case, at the moment, it’s bad food. Since the new year, I’ve been working on being healthy and trying to lose a little weight. Since I’ve finally had to acknowledge that the days of having a super fast metabolism that lets me eat pizza with French fries and cheese sauce for lunch and not gain an ounce are gone, I now have to watch what I eat.

Also, now I’ve learned the glorious ways of The Food Network and what it is to really cook, I confess that I cringe at the idea of pizza and French fries with cheese sauce. Separate, they’re ok. Together?...What was I thinking???!

Still, food is different in our youth, I think. Unless you’re born knowing that you love food and want to spend your life cooking it and appreciating it, food is a learning process. This is why, as a child, I preferred things like fishfingers and chips and frozen pizza over more exotic things like, say, beef casserole or meat pie. I think there are two types of children: The picky eaters and those that will eat everything. My nephew who will be eight this year is a picky eater. He eats Oscar Meyer Weiners, cheese puffs, cheese and a few other very select things. My niece, on the other hand, will eat almost anything.

I was a picky eater. I didn’t like very many things at all. I wouldn’t eat mashed potatoes. I didn’t like ‘gravy’ dinners. I didn’t like anything remotely different so Chinese food was out. I used to think lasagna smelled like vomit. You get the idea.

I stayed a picky eater all through high school. I remember in my last years of high school, I went on dates to exotic places like The Olive Garden (don’t mock- in high school in Indiana, that is exotic). I would order fettucine alfredo because it was ‘safe’. There was no scary tomato sauce or meat or weird vegetables in it, it was simple.

Then, in college, something changed. I hung out with a group of friends that liked Chinese food and Mexican and seafood. Our dining hall offered things to eat I’d never tried and since it was ‘all you can eat’, I started to try new things.

From then onwards, I was no longer a picky eater. I don’t even know the moment of revelation where I realized that I was now eating ‘different’ food. It just happened. I don’t know if it’s because, in college, I was always hungry because I was quite active and busy or because I was just exposed to more. It’s hard to say but I do know that that time period in my life changed my food habits.

Of course, college is also the time when it’s ok to eat junk food. It’s ok to have pizza several times a week or to eat an entire bag of Doritos and wash it down with Mountain Dew while you’re studying. It’s ok to run to the express area on campus and grab a Pizza Hut personal pan pizza and a bag of barbecue potato chips for lunch. There’s no one standing next to you saying, “Where are your veggies?” My eating habits weren’t that unhealthy though. I liked veggies and fruit so even with the junk food, I still got some nutrition in there.

But, even with the occasional injection of healthy eating, my college years were filled with the food that belongs to the young: pizza, hamburgers, tacos, Doritos, etc. This is not to say that older people don’t eat those foods but hopefully you know what I mean.

Nowadays, I don’t eat like that. It’s partly because I can’t eat like that and partly because I don’t want to eat like that. Now that I cook and like to expand my horizons as to my cooking techniques and habits, food is no longer just something I have to eat to keep going or because my stomach is rumbling. Food has become a pleasure to both eat and to cook. I’ll never be a chef because the idea of working in a kitchen being screamed at by a Gordon Ramsey wannabe makes me cringe but I do love to cook. It’s become one of the ways I unwind. I write. I read. I watch TV. I cook. These are the simple things in life that make me happy.

I like to buy things like fish spatulas and ricers. I will treat myself to a new Calphalon pan rather than a new pair of shoes. I will appreciate things like Maldon sea salt and Spanish sweet smoked paprika because they really do make food taste better.

Now, for me, the hard part is trying to balance my love of cooking and flavour with trying to lose some of the extra weight that the holidays and indulging in too much bad food have helped me gain. It’s not that hard, really. I tend to cook a lot of vegetables and vegetable based dishes anyway so as long as I’m in control of the food that I eat on a daily basis, it’s not hard to stay within my calorie/fat range for the day and still try to lose a little weight.

The hard part is that the minute I know that I can’t have something, I suddenly think I want it. Chocolate, for example. I don’t have much of a sweet tooth. On occasion, there are times when I want chocolate more than anything but that’s not too often. So, when I plan to watch what I eat, it’s automatic that chocolate won’t figure in because I don’t eat much of it anyway.
So, of course, what happens? Yes…all I can think about is chocolate whether it’s those yummy Lindor Truffles (the red ones) with the melty milk goodness in the middle or a rich bite of Cadburys with it’s singular sweet flavour.

It’s not just chocolate. It’s things like bacon. I love bacon. Bacon is the meat that will always prevent me from being a vegetarian. Sometimes, you just need bacon. When you’re trying to eat healthy, bacon is not a huge part of your life. Sure, you can substitute turkey bacon but unless your taste buds are lifeless and dead, it’s NOT the same, regardless of what JennyO might say.

There are other things too: French fries, pizza and salty potato chips. I try not to eat them. It’s hard when suddenly your brain fixates on the idea of McDonald’s fries and you can almost smell them or, worse, you go downstairs at lunch and the lobby smells like fries.
It seems that the more I try to resist, the more my brain says, “oooh, go on! You deserve it!”

Sometimes I do. I’m not being so healthy that I’m denying myself everything. Complete denial leads to binges. It’s just that I have to balance the bad with the good so I have to ‘plan’ for the indulgences. If I want French fries for lunch, then I will have a salad with light dressing for dinner. That’s how it goes. It’s working out well so far. I just need to get my brain to cooperate with me a little more and try to get it to convince me that baby carrots ARE just as good a snack as potato chips (though I still think the TV ads that are promoting them that way really need to face reality- they are NOT the same) or that apples with honey are a much better TV snack than salt and vinegar potato chips.

It’s an ongoing process. It’s just interesting because before I was watching my food intake quite so much, I never craved bad food as much when I actually let myself have it often. I suppose it’s true: We always want what we can’t have.

Even though every now and again, it’s ok to cheat…just a little. Life’s more fun that way.

Happy Wednesday!

Random Rants

I'm in the mood to randomly babble and rant today. I have no idea why. Well, actually I do. I just woke up, I don't feel like being a morning person today and I'm drinking the vile office coffee.

On the plus side, I did manage to get rather a lot of good Halloween chocolate, lollipops and candy at CVS yesterday at 75% off so I brought it into the office. I have learned that one of the cardinal rules of getting your coworkers to like you is to give them a copious amount of sugary items. These items are best when in the form of chocolate. However for those smart sucker-uppers like me, you have learned that there's always someone in the office on a diet. Thus, you bring in lollipops (about 1 weightwatcher point each) and Twizzlers- low in fat, high in sugar. I have learned that basic dieters (not the hardcore ones who are truly following a diet) will look at the fact that something has no fat, decide that's a good thing and eat it. I confess that I do this. In my world, when a food is low calorie/no calorie and low fat/no fat, it is good to eat it because it is healthy.

Yes, I am aware that this does not really mean something is healthy. Nor does it mean it's not having a negative impact on my digestive system. There are a lot of other things in food I should be worried about like fiber, transfats, sodium...all that. And, oh yeah, those carbohydrate things. The problem with that is my favourite foods are all high in carbs. I love bread. I love potatoes. I love pasta. So, I've found away around the carbs-are-not-good-for-me-obstacle: I just ignore them and rationalize why I can eat foods anyway. Bread has grains which are good for me. Potatoes are a vegetable and thus, by the Rule of "Because it's a vegetable, it's always healthy", they are good for me. Pasta...well, I usually try to put a tomato-y sauce on my pasta and so I invoke the rule of "Because it's a vegetable" again. By adding a vegetable to pasta, it automatically cancels out the badness of the carbohydrates.

And yes, Captain Monkeypants is fully aware that she is under a self-imposed spell of delusion. Captain Monkeypants is also attempting to be a professional writer and thus, delusion is a necessary survival tool to have in her armory.

I was planning on ranting about Twilight again and why the poster for the movie makes me cringe. So I'm going to. Now. Not to Movie Promoter People: Edward looks like he's about to fall asleep. Also, his eyes do not look like "liquid amber" as described so frequently in the books. They look like he might have had a few too many psychotropic drugs. Also, I know he's supposed to be pale but he's also supposed to pass for a human because otherwise, how could he have been going to school for, like, two hundred years or whatever? The poster makes him look like he's a zombie. It also makes me wonder what he's looking at down on the floor. Did he drop something? Did he spot a particularly juicy spider that he's thinking about eating since he's a 'vegetarian' vampire (only drinks the blood of animals so take that, PETA!)? And Bella...well, actually, she looks as boring as expected. I never could understand how such a drip could get someone like Edward but I suppose that's the point- ordinary girls can find extraordinary men to love them. It's been the premise of every successful romance from Cinderella to today's Chick Lit avalanche so, clearly, it's a formula that works.

Since not everyone has read Twilight, I'll stop now.

Also, the ladybugs are back. Not the same ones since I did end up committing genocide and leaving the poor little buggers (HA!) in my vacuum bag. No, their friends are here. I could hear the flapping of their wings when I woke up in the night. I tried to ignore the fear in me that they would decide to swarm in retailian for the fact that I'd murdered their friends. I was also afraid they'd enlist more jumping spiders to join in the fight. They didn't but the fear was there anyway and so I didn't sleep that well. I'm going to try NOT to vacuum this batch up. But I'm telling you, one indication that they're forming a Gathering and those things are gone.

At least it's Thursday. Thursdays are good. I'm a fan of Grey's Anatomy. Although, I just found out that ABC ordered the show to fire Dr. Hahn....well, actually the actress who plays doctor Hahn who was the lady from Silence of the Lambs who had to put the lotion on (It's way more effective when Buffalo Bill says that in the movie). It's something to do with the fact that the network doesn't like the storyline she's involved in because her character just came out and admitted she's gay. The storyline wasn't that compelling but it was actually pretty natural. It wasn't some ratings stunt but an organic progression of two women who started as friends and grew much closer. I suppose the show did go into a fair amount of detail about the sex between the women but it's on at 9 p.m. It's not like they showed it. I think the show has bigger things to worry about, honestly. I mean, Izzie is still on it. I can't stand Izzie. She's a self-righteous whiner who gets on my nerves.

I'm digressing. I already have a TV blog so I won't go into any more detail. If anyone's interested, it's http://captaintv.blogspot.com/. It's very TV heavy but I love TV so that explains that.

Anyway, that's my ranting for the day. I'm going to go to work now and attempt to put myself in a better mood. Maybe I should have some of the Twizzlers I'm bringing in. They're fat free! This means they're good for me.

Happy Thursday.