Cookies in the House

We have cookies in the house.  Beautiful tiny shortbread hearts, dipped in chocolate.  Yum.  They joined us last Tuesday night, straight from Whole Foods, and they are flaky and buttery and pretty much perfection itself.  But strangely enough, there are still several left.  I'm not sure what to say about that...this is completely unprecedented territory for me.  Normally they would have been gone in at least 48 hours, and there is just NO WAY they ever would have survived a weekend with me at home.  But instead of eating the whole package as a snack, I've eaten just one cookie per day, right after dinner.  Three bites to savor, and that's it.  I am stunned, amazed and proud of myself beyond belief.

And did I mention the gourmet organic milk chocolate?  It remains on the counter, unopened and ignored since Tuesday night.  It's there for me when I'm ready.  Again, speechless but proud.

The hunger experiments went well this weekend - I managed to eat 3 meals and a snack on both Saturday and Sunday and went hungry in between.  I kept myself busy by organizing things around the house, cleaning, moving furniture, posting things on Freecycle, reading, blogging, watching movies, exercising...anything but eating.  I went to bed a little hungry last night, and woke up hungry this morning.  And strangely enough, I'm starting to like feeling a bit hungry - it reminds me that my body is actively seeking other sources of energy: FAT!

Of course, riding out the hunger at home which is essentially a stress-free zone is one thing, but trying this out at work will be a new challenge.  I'm glad I practiced for a few days before going pro.  I'll check back in tonight to let y'all know how things went today!

Experimenting With Hunger

In her book, The Complete Beck Diet For Life, Dr. Beck writes that you shouldn't eat unless you're experiencing true hunger pangs, and she feels that most Americans don't know what true hunger feels like.  I know I don't - I've always had trouble with this skill.  For example, last night I planned out all my food for today and have eaten everything according to plan.  I had a healthy breakfast and lunch, and just finished a very satisfying 650-calorie dinner about 45 minutes ago.  But I still feel kinda hungry, like I need to eat something else.  Sitting here, I'm mentally reviewing what's in the fridge, trying to decide how many calories I can eat to make the hungry feeling go away without doing too much damage to my daily total.  The urge to make the hunger go away is so automatic that my brain keeps returning to the thought "you're hungry, go get something to eat" about every 90 seconds.  I just can't stomach the thought of being hungry - it makes me feel uncomfortable emotionally as well as physically.  And I do NOT like being uncomfortable!

In Dr. Beck's words, "Being hungry is not an emergency."  And my logical thinking brain knows that it's not, that I'm obviously in no danger of starving.  Hell, I have 451,535* calories stored on my body as fat - that's got to be enough to get me through at least one evening without food, right?  So why do I feel a bit panicky at the thought of not eating and feeling hungry all night?  Do I need to run a marathon tonight?  No.  Am I Scarlett O'Hara (as God is my witness...), rebuilding my plantation after it was destroyed by the Yankees?  No.  But deep down inside...and I really think this is the root of the issue...I equate hunger with being unfulfilled.  And rather than take the time to find out what I really need, I take the easy way out and stuff the feelings down with food, rather than experience and deal with them. 

I could always drink a glass of water to make the hungry feeling go away, but I think this evening I'm going to feel the hunger, and prove to myself that the world won't end if I'm not fed.  I've never been one to just sit with a feeling, physical or emotional, and just experience it.  Not try to change it, fix it, make it better or worse - just experience it.  So tonight I'm going to do just that - I have a quiet evening planned at home, by myself.  I'm just going to putter around the house, maybe read, maybe do some housework, and just be hungry.

FYI - Jen at PriorFatGirl.com has a great discussion going today on this very topic - check out the action here.

*The reason I know the exact number?  I had my body fat checked yesterday.  Ouch.  But that's another post entirely.

Resisting The Cupcakes --OR-- Why Starbucks Is Part Of My Workout Routine

Every morning on the way to work I head to Starbucks to get my daily coffee fix.  It's a part of my morning routine that I look forward to every day - it doesn't add too many calories, I enjoy exchanging a few jokes and pleasantries with the baristas, and the coffee gets me ready for a busy day.  All in all, it's a harmless guilty pleasure. 

But....as I stand in line each morning, I inevitably end up gazing in loving admiration at the baked goods, for which Starbucks is legendary.  Some are year round staples, and some come and go with the seasons (alas, the peppermint brownie has gone the way of the Christmas decorations and music) (not that I care, because of course I've never had one) (yeah, right).  This year the peppermint brownie has been replaced with cupcakes.  Red.  Velvet.  Cupcakes.  Yum.

**short break while I wipe the drool off my keyboard**

This morning as I was blatantly ogling looking at them while I waited for my coffee I thought "Why on earth do I do this to myself every morning?  One day I am going to give in and it won't be worth it.  Then I'll feel guilty, probably binge as a result, and have to work extra hard to relose the weight I've gained.  I just could buy a pound of coffee, make my drink at home and not have to worry about this temptation."

Hmmm.  ShrinkingJill, you've got a good point there.  Why not set yourself up for success rather than failure?

Then I considered Judith Beck's thoughts about strengthening mental muscles - the giving-in muscle vs. the resistance muscle.  Every time I eat something that wasn't in my plan, I'm strengthening my giving-in muscle, and every time I'm faced with a choice and stick to my plan I'm strengthening my resistance muscle.  When we don't work our muscles, they atrophy.  You wouldn't do biceps curls every day until you had the biceps of your dreams, and then just stop working them, right?  You'd keep doing those curls to make sure the muscle stays exactly the way you want it to be.  So it goes with the resistance muscle...if I don't challenge myself regularly it will get weaker. 

So, I'm going to think of my morning Starbucks excursion as my daily resistance muscle exercise.  My chance to start the day off right by saying NO rather than YES.  Some people start the day with situps or pushups right after they jump out of bed - I'm going to stare down those cupcakes every morning and show them who's boss.   Me.

Starbucks!

Oh Starbucks, how I love your latte.  The creamy foam, the bitter coffee, the sweetness of the syrup.  Nobody does it better.

My usual drink is a tall nonfat vanilla latte (or is it vanilla nonfat tall latte?  or tall vanilla nonfat latte?) and I pretty much start every day with one - I stop on the way to work, say hi to my fave baristas, and then relax in vanilla bliss in the car for the rest of the drive to work.  The 80's station on XM makes the experience complete - nothing beats rocking out to 'Livin on a Prayer' prior to a long day of meetings.

But...I don't think I can afford 160 calories for coffee every morning, no matter how much I love it!  So this morning I'm going to try to ease my way out of the latte habit.  New drink: tall nonfat Cafe Misto with 1 shot of syrup.  This still gives me 6 oz of milk plus my sweet vanilla fix, and comes in (according to the website) at about 80 calories. Hey - that fits in with my morning 80's theme!  I think this new partnership was meant to be.

Soy Sauce Rant

My husband makes an incredibly yummy Asian treat that I call Taiwanese mashed potatoes (inside joke) and that most Asian folks call Taro cake.  I am helpless around this stuff - it may not look or sound that good (I was tremendously skeptical the first time he made it for me) but trust me, this stuff is irresistible when lightly pan fried and dipped in soy sauce.  Which brings me to the point of today's post...

Ken made a batch of taro cake at the end of December and of course I totally indulged on New Year's Eve and ate several pieces.  Yuh-huh-hummmmm.  As usual I drenched it in lots of soy sauce.  New Year's Day I woke up with a crushing headache, and since I only had one beer the day before I couldn't fathom why.  Until it hit me - was there MSG in the soy sauce?  I'm pretty sensitive to the stuff.  We had just purchased a new bottle from an untried brand, but since most foods are MSG-free these days I don't normally check labels.  I padded downstairs, grabbed the bottle and...lo and behold, MSG was on the list.  Along with Insinate Disodium Guanylate, whatever the hell that is. And yeast extract.  And sodium benzoate.  Seriously?  I thought soy sauce was supposed to be water, soy beans and wheat.  What's the point of all that other stuff?

Fast forward to last night - my awesome hubby made more taro cake while I was in Indiana and I had some for dinner, forgetting about the stupid soy sauce.  This morning I woke up with ANOTHER headache!  Grrr.  I stopped at the store on my way home from work and tried to find some without any added ingredients.  The best I could do was Kikkoman: water, wheat, soybeans, salt, and sodium benzoate (which is apparently a preservative). 

I started to wonder about the rest of the food in my pantry - what else is lurking?  Here are some alarming results:

Progresso 45% Less Sodium Chicken and Wild Rice Soup - low sodium is good, right?  Nuh-uh, not when there are things like hydrolzyed corn protein, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate (sounding familiar?), chicken powder (WHAT THE HECK IS THAT???), soy protein isolate, and calcium chloride.  What is all this stuff?

Here's another one: Campbells Pork and Beans - High fructose corn syrup, modified food starch, caramel color and...wait for it...paprika oleoresin.  Seriously?  Is this some uber-flavorful variety of paprika extracted from the oleo tree?

What the heck is this stuff doing in our food???  It turns out that calcium chloride is used to maintain firmness in canned vegetables.  And contrary to what you'd expect, paprika oleoresin is a coloring, not a flavoring.  Disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate are both flavor enhancers, closely related in structure to MSG.  Hydrolyzed corn protein is also an MSG-related flavor enhancer.  Oh yeah - it's also made by boiling the corn in hydrochloric acid and then neutralizing it in sodium hydroxide.  That sounds like something you want to put in your mouth, right?

It seems that MSG is lurking everywhere!  Especially in foods that don't list it as an ingredient.  Over the years I've had many, many unexplained headaches - how many have been related to this pervasive chemical?  Have I been doing this to myself the whole time?

I honestly expected these ingredients to be preservatives of some sort - not flavor or texture enhancers.  Do these products taste that bad without chemical help?  Are these chemicals intended to trigger the addictive areas of our brain to keep us coming back for more?  What's wrong with just making products from real ingredients?  David Kessler (The End of Overeating) and Michael Pollen (In Defense of Food) have both written extensively about the dangers of food additives and the need for us to eat real food.  I think they are definitely onto something.

As for me, I'm going to start reading labels.  Closely.  It may take me a lot longer to get the grocery shopping done, but after my little research project tonight I don't think I'll ever shop the same way again.

Update on 07Jan10: This morning I went on a wild frenzy and pulled everything out of the pantry that had any kind of freaky chemical in it.  Buh-bye Gatorade powder, Kraft mac-n-cheese, Rice-a-Roni, random generic brand corn taco shells, Progresso soup, pumpkin pie filling, and so much more.  I filled an enormous shopping bag with everything and left it up for grabs in the cafeteria at work.  I feel a lot better about my kitchen now!

Back With A Vengeance, Baby!

The past few weeks have been an exercise in reckless, rebellious, I'm-cheating-on-my-diet-and-you-can't-stop-me eating.  I wouldn't qualify it as full-on binge eating, but I was not counting calories at all, and was actively seeking opportunities (some would say making excuses) to chow down on my favorite foods.  A lot.

But today I truly got back on track and it just felt so good!  Not like a sacrifice, but more like a gift I was giving to myself.  I was (of course) a little hungry all day, and my workout tonight was REALLY hard (due to muscles shrunken from extended couch surfing) but honestly I was getting tired of the reckless eating and it was just such a relief to relax back into my nice routine.  Sore muscles and all, I feel like my hard drive has been rebooted. 

And here's the best part - just after lunch I was on my way to a meeting and passed a basket of fun-size candy bars on the admin's desk.  Without thinking I exclaimed 'hey, free candy!' and gleefully took a piece.  When I got to the conference room I looked in my hand and thought - I don't even want this, why did I take it?????  High fructose corn syrup, refined sugar, preservatives...no, not today.  So I put.....it.....back.  Yes, you heard me correctly:  I. PUT. IT. BACK.  And ate a clementine instead.

Yummo Granola Bars

I've been looking for a good pre-workout snack recently that would be easy to toss in my purse and eat in the car on the way to the gym.  And of course something that doesn't contain a ton of chemicals with unpronounceable names!  I'm happy to say I found an amazing recipe for homemade granola bars - they are chewy and sweet, are super-easy to make, and have no preservatives, high fructose corn syrup or other chemicals!  I substituted a half-cup of chocolate chips for the raisins (gotta have that chocolate fix), added about 1/4 cup ground flax seed to the mix, and reduced the cooking time to 25 minutes to keep them on the chewy side. 

They came out so well that I'm going to make them again as soon as this batch is gone - which will undoubtedly be very soon.  Next time I'll add some peanut butter or almond butter to give them a bit more protein - I'll report back on the results.