5084 Calories

Friday, August 26, 2016

Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.

 – Eric Hoffer --

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I figure I've got to lose weight, because I have to fight the nicotine gain, and since since my ovaries aren't pumping out estrogen, most of that is coming from the fat.  Less fat, less estrogen; less estrogen, less potential tumor growth.

I started counting calories today.  By the time I'd finished supper, I had a total of about 900, maybe a little less, including the creamer in my coffee, and a one ounce bittersweet baking chocolate treat.  Today is a "no meat" day, I do that about two or three days a week, so that makes it easier to count. 

Then Daughter brought over an ear of sweet corn (fresh, boiled, no salt or butter).  I love her corn.  She always does them just right, sweet and tender.

I ate it.  Then I tried to find out how many calories to add to the total.

Some websites say 59 for a "small ear".  Some say 59 for a "regular ear".  Other sites say 135.  All the others are somewhere between.  89 seems to be popular.  Very few get into specifics like weight.  All I can say about this ear is that it was 7" long and had about 17 rows of kernels.

Maddening!  Whose numbers do I believe?  Whatever.  I think no matter what number I use I'll probably still be below the target 1100 for the day.

It's a sad truth that if I stick to canned and packaged foods, it's easier to count calories.  Something wrong with that.
.

3772 Dieting Disappointment

Saturday, October 5, 2013

"A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her." 

--Oscar Wilde--

------------------------------------------------------

I haven't had Bisquick Impossible Cheeseburger Pie, one of my favorite things, in ages, and suddenly had a hunger for it.  So a few days ago I made it.

I was SO disappointed.  It didn't have the right texture or taste.  Not at all what my mouth remembered and expected.

I used 90% fat free hamburger, Lite Bisquick, 1% milk, and 75% fat free Cabot Cheddar.

No wonder it was blah.  The only things that were "real" were the onions, eggs, and tomato.  They tasted fine.  It was everything wrapped around them that was yuck.

Sigh.  It's sad when you get old and fat and have to make choices like that.
.

3711 Baked beans?

Tuesday, March 2, 2013

The art to April Fools’ Day is to come up with pranks that aren’t in the least

cruel, but are funny and interesting. It CAN be done, but

being mean is easier,

and dumber.

-- Ian Osmond --

-----------------------------------------------------------------

The past few days I've been having a problem with excessive underarm odor.  Washing doesn't seem to make a difference; neither does antiperspirant.  My clothing quickly picks up the odor and retains it.

My activity level hasn't changed.  There's no sweat, I'm dry.  The only thing that has changed is that I am eating a lot more fruits and vegetables and a lot less meat.  (Except beans.  I don't like beans and rarely eat them.)

I don't understand.

What's really weird is that it doesn't smell like normal perspiration --- it smells like beans.  Barbeque baked beans.

-----------------------------

I'm eating more veggies because I've discovered a farmer's market.

It's not really what I, a country girl, would normally think of as a farmer's market - a weekend affair, outdoors, with booths manned by local farmers selling their own produce.  It's actually like a large grocery store, indoors, open every day, heaps of produce in huge bins, and they are selling a lot of stuff that couldn't possibly have been grown locally at this time of year.

At the A&P, blueberries are ridiculously expensive, like almost $5 a pint.  At the farmer's market, although prices fluctuate, I have been able to  get a quart of blueberries for less than $2.  Everything is so much cheaper, and so much fresher, and there's a huge variety, some stuff I'd never heard of before.

I've found that what I buy there is ripe, and lasts longer in the refrigerator, possibly because it's handled/bruised less.

Last trip I bought two pints of blueberries, three apples, two oranges, two baby eggplants, a huge bunch of asparagus (about 40 stalks, took me five meals to eat it all), baby bok choy, kale, carrots, two large sweet onions, big brown mushrooms, ruffled tree mushrooms, snow peas, two small zucchini, a cucumber, five little things that look like sweet potatoes or yams, but they're dark red on the outside and creamy white inside, baby spinach, five tomatoes "on the vine", a loaf of poppy seed filled bread, a loaf of chocolate-filled bread, and I've probably left something off that list.  My bill came to less than $25. 

That was about 10 days ago, and I haven't finished it all yet.  I'll have a stir-fry for lunch.

Oh, and in the back they have a polish deli, with pickle barrels!  I bought some half-sours.  I LOVE half-sours, and they're difficult to find anywhere these days.

Daughter is worried that I'm not getting enough protein, but you really don't need high quality protein (like meat or beans or soy) more than once or twice a week, and I get enough lower quality in the yogurt and cheeses I eat every day.

Seems like with all that chlorophyll I shouldn't smell at all, let alone like barbeque baked beans.

------------------------------

Becs:  http://www.yelp.com/biz/route-9-farmers-market-inc-south-amboy.  They get crowded after work and on weekends, but reviewers say it's still worth it.  There's an excellent Thai restaurant next door.
.

3645 Even mold avoids it

October 19, 2012

Women might be able to fake orgasms. But men can fake whole relationships.

-- Sharon Stone --

-----------------------------------------------------

I don't much like bread, except maybe with a fried egg or as a grilled cheese sandwich.  It's just a carrier for the good stuff.  I'm limited to about 150 calories for breakfast and 300 for lunch (I eat six times a day), so two slices of bread at 80-100 calories per slice kind of  limits what I can put in or on a sandwich.  All I want is something that will sop up egg yolk or hold meat, cheese, and lettuce together, and provide some fiber without using up my allocatable calories.  Oh, and taste good, or at least not bad.

Hello low calorie bread!  It's not always easy to find, but there are about three brands out there that have like 40 calories per slice.  (There's an absolutely fabulous bread available up by my old house, 40 calories per slice and multiple whole grains - actual chunks of grain and sunflower seed in it - that's delicious, but I can't find it around here.)

I tried one brand down here that was ok, but I didn't save the wrapper, and the next time I bought bread I got some other brand of tasteless dreck (Pepperidge Farm Lite Style 7 Grain).  I didn't eat half of it.  It tastes like cardboard from the basement.  You know it's bad when I start calling meat wrapped in lettuce a "sandwich", or when I'm making Welsh rabbit (rarebit!) instead of grilled cheese sandwiches, or when I lick the yolk off the plate rather than use bread - well, maybe I'm avoiding the bread.

Believe it or not, next shopping trip I bought the same dreck again.  I'm not too smart.

So I figured I'd feed it to the squirrels and birds.

Today I realized I'm probably starving the animals.  I'm throwing what looks nourishing out there, and they're gobbling it up like it has calories or something.

Oops.

You know there's not much nourishment in bread when closed up in the cupboard for three weeks it doesn't mold.  Or go stale.
.

3456 Jasper says, "Eat more cat food!"

Saturday, February 4, 2012

When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.
--Sinclair Lewis --

(Yep. I hear ya, man.)

-------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm having fits about food.

I have osteopenia - mainly as a result of suppression of calcium absorption caused by years on Nexium and Prilosec for severe acid reflux when I was heavy. So my GP said to increase my calcium intake, both dietary and supplements.

The nutritionist whose recommendations helped me to lose the weight wanted me to get most of my proteins from from beans, nuts, and dairy products like eggs, yogurt, and cheese. When I eat a carb, it should be combined with a protein, like peanut butter with an apple. I usually eat only one palm-sized serving of meat a day, maybe four or five of the seven days a week.

To slow down any tendency of the macular degeneration to grow, the ophthalmologist says I should eat more dark green vegetables, like kale, collards, spinach, and chard.

So far, it all goes together.

BUT
Because my kidney stones are calcium oxalate, the urologist says to curb my calcium and oxalate intake.

The dairy products are full of calcium. The dark greens and peanuts are full of oxalate.

I'm going nuts trying to figure out what I CAN eat. It's like I have both Jack Spratt and his wife inside.

Maybe I should just throw it all away and go on my grandmother's diet. She lived into her middle nineties on pot roast, cabbage, and root vegetables like parsnips, turnips, radishes, carrots, onions, potatoes, and rutabagas. And the occasional macaroni salad. And lots of Welsh cookies. Which are full of lard. Which makes them good.

Or I could take Jasper's advice.
.

3238 My strange relationship with coffee

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

A girl has to have a life goal before she starts dating boys, or boys become the goal.

------------------------------------------------

I read somewhere that coffee can contribute to the formation of kidney stones.

I have a strange relationship with coffee.

I like coffee ice cream, and chocolate covered coffee beans, and the Starbucks frappuccino that comes in the little bottles in the corner store (which doesn't actually taste like coffee).

I intensely dislike brewed coffee of any kind, and especially Starbucks brewed - it tastes burned, and too acid. I intensely dislike the smell of brewed coffee in the morning. It can make me feel sick. The simple smell will make my stomach roil and fill with acid. Extended exposure to the smell can cause diarrhea. That could have been a major problem when I was working. Luckily, I had a private office with full walls and a door, some distance from the coffee machine. After about 10 am I could handle the smell better.

So, do I like coffee or not? Some people say I like bad coffee and don't like good coffee.

Over the past three years I've developed a morning taste for very bad coffee. I have three cups of it almost every morning. I love my personal mix:
1 well rounded teaspoon of store-brand instant coffee (the usual for one cup),
1 super-heaped teaspoon of Coffee-Mate sugar free French Vanilla (enough for 1.5 cups of coffee),
3 cups of boiling water
Make it in a teapot.
Yummy. It's delicious, and has none of the bad effects on my digestive system.

So, if the doctor asks how many cups of coffee I drink per day, what do I say? It might be three cups, but it's the equivalent of one. And do I count the occasional orgy of chocolate-covered coffee beans?
.

3054 Weight experiment

Thursday, August 12, 2010

"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."
-- Voltaire --

-----------------------------------------------

Z - you win the Glucerna. I'll get back to you when I've located all of what's squirreled away.

--------------------------------

When I started eating six times a day, and started losing weight, I was happy. When I continued to lose weight, I got worried, because it felt like I was eating constantly. I often had to force myself to eat the afternoon snack, because I wasn't hungry. I started to worry that maybe it wasn't the regimen at all - maybe I was sick and that's the real reason I was losing weight, and whatever was wrong just hadn't hit the pain centers yet.

So I experimented. I started allowing the fats I'd been avoiding. Like the frappuccino, the bagel with cream cheese, the potato chips. Mayonnaise. Very small quantities, but more than the once a week orgy I'm allowed.

I gained weight. Fast! I shot up 7 pounds in two weeks. (I also started the acid reflux thing again. I hadn't had that in months.)

A happy seven pounds. I guess it really is the diet. I've lost three of those seven over the past week, back on the rules.
.

3052 TMI, of the bubbly sort

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

"If the Islamists laid down their arms, there would be peace in the Middle East. If Israel laid down its arms, soon there would be no Jews, Christians,
or any other 'infidels' left alive in the world."
-- (I forget where I got this, but it was a journalist very familiar with middle eastern politics.
I'm not sure what to think of it.) --

---------------------------------------------------------

During the second meeting with the nutritionist, last March, after I had been on the low sugar low fat high fiber diet for a month and had already lost some weight, I mentioned to her that the only problem I had was flatulence. A LOT of it. She laughed and said it was probably the fiber, and it would probably get better as my body got used to it.

Well things did and didn't get better.

My body did finally adjust, and an ordinary day would be fine, no problem. But things fell apart badly, and loudly, and odoriferously, when I went to the movies and when I spent time with The Man, both especially bad times for it to happen.

I'd be climbing out of The Man's bed in the middle of the night and running the water in the bathroom to cover the sonic booms (and I'm the one whose bottom whispers, remember?), and as soon as I went back to bed, I'd have to do it again. Fighting against release during, um, "athletic pursuits" was very distracting, to say the least.

In the movie theater I'd sit somewhere distant from others, and try desperately to let it go slowly and quietly, which left me with cramps, or I'd be running for the bathroom again. And in the little arts theater I go to, the door to the restrooms is at the front of the theater, right next to the screen, so everyone would see me going there three or four times an hour.

Wanna know how bad it was? My nether cheeks actually burned from it. I got a kind of diaper rash from it, even when the ammunition was "dry air". A few rare times it wasn't dry, if you know what I mean.

I couldn't figure out why. And why only at those times.

I finally figured it out when I bought a bag of "sugarless" chocolate candies. The ingredients listed one of the several sugar alcohols. Sugar alcohols are neither sugar nor alcohol. They are sweeteners that are not treated as sugar in the intestines, are essentially indigestible. And cause gas! I figured it out because the time-connection between eating one of those candies and blowing the cat away was immediate and obvious.

Backtracking, I figured the other connection out. I'm supposed to eat something every 2.5 waking hours. When visiting The Man, I'd take Glucerna shakes or bars, because they were more convenient than packing nuts and berries and cottage cheese, and they were convenient for consumption during the drive south. When I go to the movies, I'd take Glucerna bars because the show times rarely lined up with my snack/meal times, or I'd drink a shake earlier because I'd be in a hurry. And Glucerna supposedly fits my new diet.

The Glucerna labels don't mention any sugar alcohols, but legally they don't have to. Surprise. The difference between Glucerna and the sugar-free chocolate was how long it took to trigger the volcano, and how long it lasted. If the shakes or bars did not include chocolate, the eruption was delayed. That's how the connection between Glucerna and the problem escaped detection.

Back to that last visit with the nutritionist - as I was going out the door, she said, "Watch out for sugar alcohols." I didn't know what she meant, and didn't ask. I should have,

--------------------------------

Anyone interested in a few cans of Glucerna? Boxes of snack bars? I've got some, free to first responder....
.

2983 I haven't been THAT good!

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

I takes 42 muscles to frown, and only 4 to reach out and smack you.

-----------------------------------------

When I arrived so early for the movie yesterday, I decided to window shop a little in Rhinebeck. I tried on a pair of on-sale slacks in Winter Sun. They were a little loose. They were size XS.

I weighed me this morning for the first time in a week or more. I'm at 123 lbs. That's the first time I've been below 125 in at least 20 years.

I don't know whether to celebrate or worry.
.

2486 Diet, Day 20 - and notes

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Roman poet Juvenal: “Never does nature say one thing and wisdom another.”

------------------

[Note - my posts are numbered sequentially.  "2486" is the sequence number of this post.  It has nothing to do with any diet by that name.]

The purpose of this exercise is not control of diabetes, even though there are diabetic meals included. I just bought those prepared meals to find out what they looked like, and to serve as a base and example. The real purpose is weight loss, to wean me off sugar and fat, to reset my metabolism - get me off "starvation mode" - and to try to build some new and moderately better habits.

I know that if I do need to control the blood sugar more rigorously, I need to do a better job of balancing carbohydrate, fat, and protein intake, which isn't easy. Restricting something is a lot easier than balancing.

It's relatively easy to lower the cholesterol intake, for example, but according to recent research, that doesn't matter all that much to the blood cholesterol levels anyway (and mine is ok).

One interesting thing, I haven't taken my Prilosec in over a week now, and I've had no acid reflux. The Prilosec was interfering with calcium uptake, which resulted in an "uh-oh" bone density scan, so this is an unplanned benefit.

What I ate yesterday:
Sanka, coffeemate vanilla sugar free
Grits, Quaker original pkg
Margarine, Promise, 1 tsp
Diabetic meal -oatmeal & baked apple
Eskimo Pie, no sugar added (can't give these up!)
Dole spring mix greens, naked, 1/3 bag
Blueberries, 1c
Eggplant parm, Celentano, 1/2 pkg.
Water & tea
The usual vitamins and minerals, not included in totals below.

Totals for yesterday:
Calories - 991 (out of 1153 allowed)
Carbs - 126 (299g allowed)
Sugar - 34g
Fiber - 19g
Fat - 49 (67g allowed)
Protein - 21 (47g allowed)
Cholesterol - 30 (297mg allowed)
Sodium - 975 (2402mg allowed)

Total weight lost since 6/17:
7.0 pounds
.

2462 Diet, Day 9

Friday, June 25, 2009

Political Correctness: The belief that anyone expressing a thought is responsible for the comfort of the person interpreting that thought.

Law #1 - You must not bother other people.

Law #2 - If you are other people,
you must not be bothered so easily.

-------------------------

What I ate yesterday:
Yogurt, Dannon, coffee flavor
2 coffee, coffeemate vanilla sugar free
Bagel, toasted
Margarine, Promise, 2 tbsp
Watermelon, 8 oz
V8 veggie juice, 8 oz
Diabetic Dinner - Roast beef, potato, broccoli
Water & tea
The usual vitamins and minerals, not included in totals below.

Totals for yesterday:
Calories - 992 (out of 1153 allowed)
Carbs - 131 (299g allowed)
Sugar - 46g
Fiber - 8g
Fat - 34 (67g allowed)
Protein - 56 (47g allowed)(but I suspect that's ok)
Cholesterol - 55 (297mg allowed)
Sodium - 1450 (2402mg allowed)

Total weight lost since 6/17:
3.0 pounds
.

2455 Diet, Day 6

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Doctor Who: "What is life? It's a way of keeping meat fresh."

-----------------------

What I ate yesterday:
2 coffee, coffeemate vanilla sugar free
pasta, mushroom, sauce (6/19 doggie bag)
grits, Quaker original pkg
Margarine, Promise, 2 tsp
MacIntosh apple, w. skin
Ice cream - eskimo pie
wild black raspberries, a few from the yard
Stouffer's turkey dinner
Water
The usual vitamins and minerals, not included in totals below.

Totals for yesterday:
Calories - 972 (out of 1153 allowed)
Carbs - 93 (299g allowed)
Sugar - 4g
Fiber - 15g
Fat - 34 (67g allowed)
Protein - 20 (47g allowed)
Cholesterol - 60 (297mg allowed)
Sodium - 1411 (2402mg allowed)

Total weight lost since 6/17:
1.5 pounds

---------------------

For many years I've been telling people I will gain weight if I eat more than 1000 calories a day, and the reaction has always been a snort, and "no way!"

I've been very good about tracking calories this past week. I averaged 799 calories a day over the past six days, and I don't feel hungry or deprived. I'm fine. I miss my yogurt, and I think I may add that back in. Otherwise, I miss nothing else.

This diet is giving me an understanding of how calories and exercise relate in my body. I've increased my activity level a little bit this week, and I credit that for the 1.5 pound loss. The gain of 15+ pounds since last November is due, I think, to a daily Starbucks Frappachino (sp?) and an occasional candy bar, without a corresponding activity increase. When I get to my target weight, I should be able to figure out how I can have frapps and candy bars occasionally without gaining.

-----------------

Update: I just made myself some ham salad, using Hormel canned ham. I usually like salty things. I'm more partial to potato chips than a piece of cake. But my tongue has already changed, I guess. This ham salad is so salty I don't really want it! And that's sayin' somethin'!
.

2451 Diet - Day 5

Monday, June 22, 2009

What I ate yesterday:
quiche, broccoli cheese
1 c broccoli, steamed
Iced tea, unsweetened
bagel, poppy seed
cream cheese
Diabetic Dinner - chicken chow mein, orient vegs
Water
The usual vitamins and minerals, not included in totals below.

Totals for yesterday:
Calories - 995 (out of 1153 allowed)
Carbs - 97 (299g allowed)
Sugar - 5g
Fiber - 8g
Fat - 42 (67g allowed)
Protein - 54 (47g allowed)
Cholesterol - 70 (297mg allowed)
Sodium - 270 (2402mg allowed

Weight lost since 6/17
I gained 1 pound.
.

2448 Diet - Days 3 and 4

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Aristotle: "We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

-----------------------

This gets a lot harder when one eats out. I have to guess at a lot, look things up on the internet, and fill in the blanks with approximations. I may be off by a bit (especially where sugar, fat, and cholesterol are concerned), but not by enough to make it completely worthless.

What I ate Friday, 6/19:
Orange, fresh
coffee, coffeemate vanilla sugar free
Omelet - tomato, basil, turkey bacon, mango & berries
Iced tea, Lipton diet
coffee, coffeemate vanilla sugar free
salad greens, berries, nuts, goat cheese
pasta, mushroom sauce
bread pudding
Earl Grey tea
Water
The usual vitamins and minerals, not included in totals below.

Totals for Friday, 6/18:
Calories - 1012 (out of 1153 allowed)
Carbs - 88 (299g allowed)
Sugar - 10g
Fiber - 18g
Fat - 46 (67g allowed)
Protein - 53 (47g allowed)
Cholesterol - 30 (297mg allowed)
Sodium - 650 (2402mg allowed)

------------------------

What I ate yesterday:
coffee, coffeemate vanilla sugar free
Iced tea, unsweetened
Beets, roasted, 1/2 cup
salad, diet ranch
grits, Quaker original pkg
Water
The usual vitamins and minerals, not included in totals below.

Totals for yesterday:
Calories - 389 (out of 1153 allowed)
Carbs - 43 (299g allowed)
Sugar - 8g
Fiber - 9g
Fat - 19 (67g allowed)
Protein - 3 (47g allowed)
Cholesterol - 25 (297mg allowed)
Sodium - 325 (2402mg allowed)

And I got lots of exercise yesterday....
.

2447 Diet - Day 2

Friday, June 19, 2009

Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."

--------------------

What I ate yesterday:
coffee, coffeemate vanilla sugar free
grits, Quaker original pkg
Margarine, Promise, 1 tbsp
MacIntosh apple, w. skin
coffee, coffeemate vanilla sugar free
Wheat thins, Nabisco, .77 oz
Iced tea, Lipton diet
LeanCuisine - parmesan fish, pasta, zucchini, carrots
Tomato, small fresh
Water
The usual vitamins and minerals, not included in totals below.

Totals for yesterday:
Calories - 732 (out of 1153 allowed)
Carbs - 107 (299g allowed)
Sugar - 11g
Fiber - 11g
Fat - 25 (67g allowed)
Protein - 20 (47g allowed)
Cholesterol - 30 (297mg allowed)
Sodium - 1245 (2402mg allowed)
.

2444 Diet, Day 1

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Thomas Edison: "Many of life's failures are people
who did not realize how close they were to success
when they gave up."

------------------------

I went to a site yesterday recommended by Becs, which redirected me to LiveStrong.com. You can enter what you eat, and they'll fill in all the numbers for you, and track you by day. I put in my current height and weight and activity level, and asked how many calories I would need per day to lose weight at the rate of 1.5 pounds per week.

It said 1153.

Then I started filling in what I ate. For some things it works well. Put in "Apple", and you get the numbers. Put in "CoffeeMate regular" and you get the numbers. But then I ran into trouble. I use CoffeeMate Vanilla Sugar-free, which is not at all the same as regular. It isn't on LiveStrong's list, and the program doesn't allow you to fill in the numbers from the package yourself. I ate a diabetic pre-packaged meal for lunch, which wasn't on the list of choices, so I tried looking up the separate parts of the meal, but LiveStrong's numbers were wildly different from those on the meal package.

So, in the end, I decided that LiveStrong would be useful for looking up data on some things, but to keep track of my daily fare I'll need to do it myself.

I set up a little database, and kept track of everything I ate yesterday. I used the package numbers for everything but the blueberries. Blueberry numbers I got from LiveStrong. (I'm amazed that nothing includes calcium numbers, but I take 1800 whatevers in tablet form per day.)

Daily requirements/Limits (per LiveStrong):
Calories - 1153
Carbs - 299g
Fat - 67g
Protein - 47g
Cholesterol - 297mg
Sodium - 2402mg

What I ate yesterday:
1 cup blueberries
oatmeal and a baked apple (diabetic pre-packaged meal)
cup coffee with CoffeeMate (sugar-free)
Lean Cuisine - garlic chicken, creamed spinach w. carrots
Ice cream - one Eskimo Pie
Water
The usual vitamins and minerals, not included in totals below.

Totals for yesterday:
Calories - 694 (out of 1153 allowed)
Carbs - 83 (299g allowed)
Sugar - 28g
Fiber - 12g
Fat - 31 (67g allowed)
Protein - 29 (47g allowed)
Cholesterol - 45 (297mg allowed)
Sodium - 807 (2402mg allowed)

Yesterday's fare is pretty typical for me. I didn't cheat at all - that's a typical day, that was my actual intake, and those are my actual totals. So, why don't I look like Paris Hilton?

Sob. I don't understand.

I'm going to track every day for a month.
.

2396 Sugar

Thursday, May 14, 2009

I've been off sugar for a week.

I'm having chocolate fudge fantasies.

I hate chocolate fudge.
.

2199 Cup O' Fat

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Over the past few days I've come across several references to Ramen noodles. Back when I was working in the litigation lab I often had either the noodles that come in the styrofoam cup or in the rectangular package when I couldn't take the time to go out for lunch. Haven't had them in years.

So when I saw the familiar cup in a half-box in the deli today, for 79 cents, I bought one.

For the first time ever, I read the package. I was surprised at the calories and fat content. They have a lot of salt, you can taste that right off, but I'd never realized how much fat they contain. It sure doesn't show.

In 300 calories in the cup, there's 13g of fat, or 35% of the daily value (whatever that means), and 1060mg of salt (44%), for a person averaging a 2,000 calorie diet.

I average closer to 1,000 calories, so that's more like 60-65% of my fat allowance, and 75% of the salt. In one little cup. A snack.

Wow.
.

#457 Losing Weight, but Not Changing Shape!

Walked today for the first time in a week. I stopped in at Piper's office and asked him if he'd like to walk with me (he keeps saying when I walk in town I should stop and invite him) but he couldn't leave the office right then. So I talked with him for a half hour or so, which cut the walking time down.

I've noticed that if I don't walk, the weight doesn't move, but when I do walk, the drop is noticeable and immediate - like, the next day. And it holds. Strange. What I eat or don't eat doesn't seem to matter as much as whether I walk or not. And I don't necessarily have to walk that far. Even just 1.5 miles will do it.

Sheesh. Winter coming. Cold. I guess I'd better unclutter the treadmill.

Another odd thing - as I'm losing weight, the shape is staying exactly the same, just getting smaller. So even 20 pounds down, the belly is still yucky sticky-outy compared to the base. No, it's not a muscle thing - it's a soft pad on top of muscle. Under all that famine-relief pack is a six-pack. Hard. Flat. Isometrics. Isotonic. Good stuff.

I know fasting is wrong, but I eat something other than 6 to 12 ounces of yogurt only about every other day, and when I do eat, I get way fewer than 1000 calories a day, usually closer to 600. Mostly I'm just not hungry these days. And yet I'm not lacking in energy.

Sigh. I don't understand.

~~Silk