Watch, learn, and don't eat my cookie

I ate half of a cookie today. Amazing! I mean the half I didn't eat is AMAZING.



So this is how it went down. My 14 year old daughter went into Subway for her vegetarian sub (bread with lettuce?) and came back into the car and the conversation went something like this:

Her: Mom, I got you a cookie.

Me: You got me a cookie, I'm on a diet.

Her: Well, actually they were 3 for the price of 2 and I wanted 2, so I got you a cookie. You can have one.

Me: I'll have it if you think it is REALLY good.

Her: (pulls out the cookie) It looks good. Here.

Me: OK, I'll take a bite and if it's good I'll eat it, and if not, we'll toss it out, it's biodegradable. (bite, nomnomnom) It's good. (nomnomnom) I think I'm done. A whole cookie probably doesn't taste any better than half a cookie.

I was pretty impressed with my ability to stop.

Admittedly, had this been a wedge of cheese, the outcome would have been very different.

My Lunch is Waaay Better

My lunch was born with a silver spoon in ...my mouth.



Today was the second day in my whole life that I turned down an invitation to go out to lunch because I realized that my lunch would be way better than anything I would find elsewhere. The first time was yesterday.

Before SparkPeople, even if I did make my own lunch (which was seldom) I would throw it out in a heartbeat in order to go out. Now I make my lunch every day. I have hundreds of these tiny little boxes which I pack with delectable vegetables and salad items that I mix together. I bring greek yogurt to which I add my little box of raw nuts and a small squirt of agave syrup or honey. My salad dressing is to die for. My mouth waters just thinking of Newman's Own Light Lime vinaigrette. Then there are the little boxes of sugars snap peas or carrots and the little container of fresh hummus.

But what beats all of it is my set of sterling silverware that I carry in my lunch bag (it's actually a big tote). I'm not going to find my pattern at any restaurant around. The latest addition is a Jacquard Francais tea towel. I can lay that out and make anyplace look great.

So most of these things I already had, I just re-purposed them.

Everyone has some kind of containers. A pretty tea towel. Some nice flatware or silverware. It doesn't take much for it to seem better than what you'll experience at the usual lunch places where we end up when we haven't brought our lunch...and it keeps you on track and in style!

Where do Bad Habits Go

I'm figuring out that a lot of this is related to good habits and bad habits. Replacing bad habits with good ones seems to be a great way to make progress, but how can I be sure that the bad ones are really gone. Maybe they are lurking, waiting for a chance to show themselves again.



I suspect after a while, bad habits will wither away and die, but I'm thnking that the 21 days for a good habit to come into being is not the same time table by which we can reliably say the bad one has been put to rest.

Think about it. When you come back from a vacation, it seems that the good habits are the ones you forget. Bad habits aren't forgotten. Being away for a week may mean that I forget my good habit of eating breakfast, but I don't forget to bite my nails! So what gives? Are bad habits more persistant, more resilient?

I've made a lot of progress in the past couple of weeks. Bad habit be gone and beware: I will be vigilant.

Semper Vigilans

Plotting Temptation

had a few opportunities to take some willpower measurements today, and I learned a lot. One opportunity arose when I went to the Atlanta Bread Company counter to retrieve my "bowl" of vegetable soup and realized that it had been encapsulated in a loaf of bread. I ate the soup, careful not to scrape up all the bready insides and then sat and stared at the loaf. I love French bread. I resisted for a while, then the brain started saying "you can have a small piece, you are ahead today". Seconds later the thoughts changed to "even if you kept eating it, you could just make that your dinner". Something brought me to my senses and I quickly made my way to the trash bin and threw the temptation down the black hole of the garbage can.

My second opportunity for data collection concerned a home made brownie that was in my lunch bag that had been given to me. Now let me explain that this was no ordinary brownie. This was a whopper of a decadent brownie that I estimate contained at least an entire stick of butter unto itself in it's 2x2 dense formation. We're talking about a brownie that would make you feel like you cheat more than Tiger Woods. And all day it sat in my bag and I barely thought about it until the end of the day... It started to call. I am proud to say that it too met it's demise and I was not involved. (Kudos to my Executive Assistant who really understands!)

So here it is, the moment when I reveal to you how much of a geek I am. If you are mathematically challenged, skip over the next part of this entry and just hit the "I liked it" button without tormenting yourself with the plot and its analysis.



Above I have plotted my perceived ability to resist a food with respect to the amount of time I am exposed to it. It is definitely dependent upon type of food.

The X-axis annotated at the bottom represents the amount of time a temptation sits before me. The Y axis annotated on the left side, represents the willpower I am able to exert. At Y= 0.5 I have about a 50/50 chance of resisting the temptation. I have drawn my weight loss line at 0.8 or 80%. I figure I need to resist 80% of the temptations to lose weight. That is represented by the gray dotted line.

If you look at the blue line, you see that I cannot resist savory carbs for very long. There are a few minutes where my willpower is there, but it will fall quickly. Next note the red line. I am able to resist a sweet temptation for a much longer period of time. This period seems to be long enough to exit any restaurant without ordering dessert regardless of how slow the waitstaff is to bring the check. Next, note the green line. Do not put cheese in front of me. I have virtually no resistance to this. If you put a piece of cheese in a box in front of me, there is about a 100% probability that it will be gone when you open the box to check. And it won't be Schrodenger's cat who ate it!

Understanding these things about myself is going to help me with strategy. I suggest you think a little bit about what affects your willpower, how long it lasts, and what you can do to avoid difficult situations.

It worked for me today!

My glAss Menagerie

Visuals seem to work with me, so I'm going to stick with them for a while. I found a picture of someone (Anky von Grunsven) who is very good at something I like to do (dressage). I then tried to imagine the difference in our abilities and how much my current health status has to do with that. Here you see Anky contending with the additional weight that I carry on my body, thus end up carrying on my poor overburdened horse. (Excuse the draft horse pic, I didn't have time for a good quality photo shop session today).



Yes, indeed, that is Anky with a cinder block (42 lbs), two jugs of water (16 lbs), a 2lb bag of flour, 2 bags of meow mix for 7 lbs, 8 pounds of chicken.

Scary! I don't think even Anky could ride well with an extra cinder block, a couple of chickens (nice epaulets, don't you think?), some kitty chow, a couple of gallons of water (did you see those jugs?), and a 4 pound lost chihuahua nipping at her heels. Yes, that chihuahua I lost last week is running close behind me. I had several high-sodium, high-calorie, high-fat, highfalutin' social events this weekend that are making me wonder if that pup is going to be back on my backside this week or not.

What hobby do you have? What is it that you do, or would like to do well? Can you imagine what it looks like with all of your extra baggage? I think this visual will help me out when I'm reaching for that extra serving, or putting a little more on my plate than what I'm intending to count. My mare certainly doesn't need a cinder block on her back when we're trying to do a canter pirouette, so why do I need an extra dessert here or there. I'll just think about that cinder block, or that cat chow when serving up the epaulet-au-vin.

Will you be running your marathon with or without that bag of flour? WIll you be walking up your staircase to go to bed lugging a bag of 4 pound fryers and two gallons of water? How's that cinder block workin' for you when you walk down the beach on vacation?

What in the heck was I thinking?
I'm going to imagine myself like this in the future, and hopefully you will read a blog from me in a few months entitled "My glAss is Half Full, and I'm Liking It".

Meanwhile, I'm going to get to work...

From Mardi Gras to Mardi Maigre

For those of you who aren't from Louisiana and who have only been exposed to Mardi Gras as a tourist, I thought I would go through a small synopsis of part of the tradition.



Mardi Gras means Fat Tuesday. Lent starts the next day on Ash Wednesday, and the forty days of Lent represent the time that Jesus spent in the wilderness before the beginning of his public ministry, where he endured temptation by satan. The forty days of Lent are marked by fasting, both from foods and festivities, and by other acts of penance. The three traditional practices to be taken up with renewed vigour during Lent are prayer (justice towards God), fasting (justice towards self), and almsgiving (justice towards neighbour). I can Spark those up to be introspection, healthy eating, and community interaction.

So, since many are preparing to fast and give up the good (but not good for you) stuff, they go hog wild on the Tuesday before...the feast before the famine. Thus the name Fat Tuesday, or Mardi Gras.

This isn't the only time our cultural celebrations revolve around food. In fact, I can't think of any get together these days that doesn't include a lot of food. Super Bowl = junk food. Happy hour = appetizers. Let's go to lunch. Let's meet for coffee (and pound upon pound cake). Why don't you come over for dinner? We're having a fund raiser, it's a banquet. This weekend alone I had three social obligations that revolved around eating.

Don't we know how to have fun anymore without food in our mouths? How about dancing (did that this weekend at one of my functions, forgot to eat, and got lots of exercise). How about playing games?

I'm going to turn my Mardi Gras into a Mardi Maigre (Skinny Tuesday), but I'm still going to have fun. Here are some ideas:

1) Intersperse a bottle of sparkling water between those bottles of beer. It will fill you up!

2) Play games at your parties. We had a bunch of people groan at first when we said "let's play taboo", but 25 people had a good time and got to know each other through a fun game.

3) Dance! If your partner doesn't want to, go out on the floor anyway. Someone will dance with you...eventually.

4) Talk to everyone you see. You can't talk with your mouth full (well, some people can, but they shouldn't).

So, happy Mardi Maigre to all you Spark People, and post your ideas for having fun.

Four ChiWOWwa pounds

One week gone and four pounds away. My scientific background tells me there is a conservation of fat law: there is a constant amount of fat in the universe and if someone loses, someone else gains. I always was the strange attractor, the one gaining everyone's lost pounds, but now it is going away to another part of the universe. I was contemplating what 4 pounds was...a bag of cat chow, a roasting chicken, a small medicine ball. But then my research turned up that the average weight of a chihuahua is 4 pounds. That's a good visual for now.



Not as cute as the puppy:



Where was this hiding?

Weekend Food Zombie

If you see this in my home, direct the zombie away from the fridge and out of the kitchen. Walk her around the block a few times until the glazed eyes and the person behind them is able to re-focus.

Build in lots of out-of-kitchen activities into her schedule for Saturday and Sunday.

If you value your life and limb, hide the cheese.

 

Frigidaire Relationship

I'm going to ask my refrigerator to leave. We can't live together anymore.



Last night when I came home he called to me, and like always I went, opening the door. But before I touched anything I realized what was happening and instead I went upstairs, changed my clothes and drank three glasses of water.

Then the rest of the family came home, with groceries and the makings of dinner. I started putting things away and he was smiling again. Each time I opened the door to put something away, I lingered a little longer. Was there cheese in there? A crumble of stilton, a wedge of brie? Was there something that needed no preparation that could be popped into my mouth and not recorded? I shut the door again. No. I will eat dinner.

We made a wonderful dinner of sauted crawish and whole wheat pasta, then I pulled up the episode of Lost we had missed. And he interrupted me again, calling me to the leftovers. No, I will not go to you. I realized how strong the pull was even though I was not hungry. Why? Is it a genetically mapped survival mechanism: eat all you can, there may be famine in your future? Is it a habit?

I said it out loud. I spoke the words. "I'm not hungry, but I would eat more dinner if it were here. I'm full, but if there were something to eat in my hands, I would eat it." I talked about it with my family, then went to bed. The weekend, without the structure of work will be difficult.

I'm ending this relationship.

Willpower

Willpower. Do you have it?

My friends and I were at a horse show one weekend and found ourselves in a terrible situation: we had cheese, we had our test scores, we had an unopened bottle of Prosecco, and we had FORGOTTEN the corkscrew.

We had our test scores. We NEEDED the corkscrew.

My girlfriends and I are smart and highly motivated. We have collective WILLPOWER.

Women with a toolbox (women who travel with horses have great toolboxes) and an unopened bottle of liquor can be dangerous but also very clever.

In our toolbox we found an eye screw and a screw driver...and did I mention we are really good at math?



Women with a toolbox and an opened liquor bottle can be even more dangerous, but not so good at math. To hell with the test scores.

Where there's a will there's a way. So if I have the willpower to find the tools to make a corkscrew, I'm hoping that means I have the willpower to use the tools on this site to make a lean and fit person. Let's see.



Mmmm, I see Pimm's there too.
Pimm's + Prosecco = Pimms Royale

Cheers!

Reason #3

Sometimes I think that my mental image of myself doesn't match what the real world sees. It would be nice for those images to be a little closer than they are

I love to target shoot. I'd like to imagine that I look like this:



I realize that is far from reality; though I do look nice in my shoes, I believe the similarity stops at about the knee.

When I am riding, I imagine that I look like this:



...but the mirrors in the arena show a different story:



(sorry Wynalda, you are much prettier than that).

So reason #3 for me in this program is to mind the gap, and close it.

Reason #2

I'd like to feel less compelled to ask the question:



My significant other tells me there is no correct answer to this question, so I'd rather not ask it.

Besides, it doesn't do anything to promote my superhero status.

Reason #1

I thought I would start my entries with a collection of photos, the inspiration collage. Today I post my first reason for wanting to pursue a more lean and fit lifestyle.

Reason #1: White full seat breeches



My hobby requires them, and they are the most unattractive article of clothing ever invented. Think about it. If someone asked you what the least attractive thing you could wear as an overweight person, I suspect that white stretchy pants with leather patches sewn onto your largest body parts would be way up there. (It would probably be second, right after horizontally striped tube tops, which are not required by any hobby I know of, and thus will never be a part of my wardrobe.)



See, these didn't even look good on skinny uniformed men.