Friday Tidbits: A Chatty Weigh In

I'm sure all these Russians are rushing home to eat. 

We're now into Day #4 of the New Year and since it's time for Friday Tidbits, I have a few odds and ends I'd like to cover regarding weight. (As if my other posts aren't odds and ends already?) So, here we go! 

The focus is a bit of a progress report on a large front today, FOOD (Yay!) and WEIGHT (Boo!). Food is one of my favorite subjects - rivaled perhaps, only by beauty products (YAY!) But as you can see by this cartoon, I'm quite the disciplinarian. 

It was Erma Bombeck who said, "Never eat in excess of your body weight." Some days that sounds fair enough! Other days, not so much!

After gorging on everything and anything on New Year's Eve, after a wonderful meal which hubs made, (and I actually really mean it, not sarcastic for once) I was true to my word and started the year out "right" on New Year's DAY.  Note this was after I finally got to sleep, so technically, I was cheating by eating after midnight but we'll just let that slip by, OK?  I was actually in "hog" heaven as I "pigged" out: how do you like them apples/puns? 

My daughter and I made a radical decision.  In our town it's considered good luck to eat any sort of pork at all with sauerkraut on New Year's Day.  Yes, this pork and sauerkraut will evidently bring you good luck, prosperity, good health - to own Walmart and everything else you could possibly hope for.  (I'd take Saks or Nieman Marcus over Walmart if truth be told but hey, Walmart works for me as well.)

Well, that pork thing hasn't worked out too well for us, as any reader of this blog well knows! Duh!  Since we stopped our old "tradition" and took on the new one, we've had nothing but bad luck, so we decided to go back to our splurge for New Year' Day: beef tenderloin stuffed with lobster with a wine sauce.  Decadent, I know, but it kept everyone (but me) healthy for decades, thus saving us a small fortune in doctor and hospital bills. So, if I've not just  jinxed our family by admitting to this, I'm looking forward to a very successful year. Excuse me as I go "tphoo! tphoo! tphoo!" and as I also knock on wood.  Oh my, it's so weary to be a Russian/Ukie-American: we're such a superstitious lot!

Anyway, we pigged out, or rather *I* pigged out.  Hubs and daughter were having their fun with the tiny bit of champagne, as y'all have seen from the picture of them laughing hysterically (link).  No, not the first picture: silly people that's Colin Firth.  No, not the guy with all the hair, that's President Kennedy!  No, mine is the guy who's getting old, and I say "getting"?  Really?

Oh!  Here's a good one, the reason for the hysterical laughter.  I was trying to convince hubs and my daughter of the merits of Russian pop music - funny to them to begin with, for oh so many reasons.  First, I often get mad because they don't understand Russian.  I know: totally unreasonable for hubs and somewhat unreasonable for daughter.  But often I'll find an incredibly moving section of some lyrics.  The words themselves are beautiful for the sound and then those beautiful words come together synergistically with very nice music and suddenly you have poetry.  

As I was extolling the virtues of one singer, I read from Wiki's Russian site that this singer wanted to be an oceanographer but didn't get accepted to the program.  Then I read/translated to them that the singer's father was a veterinarian of reindeer.  Well, that was the last straw, with Santa jokes, reindeer jokes, Russian jokes galore.  Oh, they were on a roll.  (OK, maybe you needed to be there for that to be funny, plus have yourselves two sips of champagne.)

But to get back to food.  My plan of attack is always that before starting back on "a diet," I DO intentionally pig out beforehand.  My reasoning goes like this: if I eat enough of the forbidden foods, I won't miss them so much once I stop eating these foods.  However, there is a major flaw in this sort of thinking. This doesn't always work out well in the sense that can you imagine how much weight I put on getting ready for a diet that I can't start!  ENORMOUS?  Yeah, enormous body and an ENORMOUS amount of food!  

So what did I binge on?  I thought I'd paraphrase what I wrote on the AMR site when Ruth asked what things we stuffed ourselves with and my response was basically:

...lots of foods that perhaps sounds strange and a bit gross to the West, like Kutya (wheat berries with honey, poppy seeds, nuts, raisins, etc.) made only for Christmas Eve, and a couple of other occasions, with "Vinegret," (a delicious Russian beet/potato salad with a bit of sauerkraut, pickle, onions, carrot, and so forth), herring, "Olivier Salad" (another type of Russian potato salad, synonymous with New Year's Eve: songs are even written about it; we Russians DO love our food), New York cheesecake, lobster with beef tenderloin, shall I go on?  I won't say how many helpings of everything I had. I had better stay virtuous as the belly (and other parts) are doing the Jell-O jig and it would be embarrassing if anyone asked me if I were preggers (I am, let's just say, over 45 - hahahaha, she laughs!). OK. This probably DOES qualify for gross and strange: pickles (from salads) w/ cheesecake. Come to think of it, I did this once while preggers, at a deli across from Lincoln Center in NYC, and grossed out my company. What's wrong with good kosher dill pickles and cheesecake? OH!  And all this was eaten between 10PM and just after midnight....

 Here are some of those bullet points: 

• I've already written about my belief that the first three days of any habit, including or especially dieting, are the hardest and the most dangerous time.  It's so easy for the diet to "not take."  
• It's so hard to stop thinking about food.  
• It's so easy to give into convenience food.  
• I'm into and just past day #3 (yay!) and have been successful in getting back to healthy eating. 
• No sugar, no carbs.  
• I'm hugely into food combining.  

Now one of the reasons I've been on twitter so much lately is because I'm still on my migraine streak and thought that being at the computer would serve two purposes:

• keep me from noticing my migraines too badly, using the old Lamaze theory that to be distracted helps the pain
• sitting in front of the computer will keep me from eating too much.  

My feet may be swollen and my belly has probably increased by about seven inches in the last month or so and it may hurt from the gallbladder surgery, but at least I'm successful thus far in my eating.  

I also have been motivated by the fact that I see my endocrinologist on Wednesday and he may actually want to weigh me - and I don't think I have it in me to stare down his nurse and refuse to be weighed.  My GP's office is used to me.  I tell them my honest weight from home that morning and they write that down.  I'm not sure the endocrinologist will allow himself to be "swayed" by me.  I just have this... PHOBIA about anyone seeing me on the scales or even knowing the number.

Which dovetails into this second point of the day.  I'll be seeing the endocrinologist on Wednesday.  As I already said, I've tried to make up questions for him, as well as writing down a few (hahaha, "few": no one would believe that of me, and rightfully so!) bullet points of the rather long list of out-of-the-ordinary (for me) symptoms and which I can't take any longer.  

• Our family doesn't do nausea and I'm ill-equipped for it.  So, nausea will be addressed as well as the fact that  I'm ravenously starving to death (when it comes to food, I'm a certified foodoholic).  
• And everything tastes terrible, which makes me want to search for the food that will satisfy and I end up eating hubs and myself out of house and home.  THEN I send hubs to the grocery store to start on that as well. 

Hubs says he can't understand the nausea and eating at the same time.  I tell him that he's obviously not a woman.  End of discussion.  Period.

But I'll be in danger on Wednesday.  Whenever I need to leave my bed, it takes so much out of me that I'm super-ravenous and can't stop eating.  My body must use up enormous numbers of calories in any get-readiness and then the outing itself is so tiresome and overwhelming that it just makes my body go wacko.  Then I'm craving carbs like mad, those Slavic genes screaming out for good bread and any kind of potato at all, the more kinds the merrier.  

So, to get back to the endocrinologist, if anyone has any good questions I should ask him, or discuss with him, please let me know.  This is really a field I know very little about.  I know that many with CFIDS, etc. and fibro have thyroid troubles.  Much of the thyroid problem is contributed by stress (as if that's a novel theory!).  So, suggestions away!

In the meantime, I hope everyone's doing their best, only better.  Take care of yourselves in this sudden freezing weather that's finally come our way if you live in a temperate climate.  It's good to be getting rid of the bacteria and viruses that fester if we don't get good cold freezes occasionally, but the price paid is that the sudden temperature changes wreak havoc on our bodies as we await the spring.  So, do take care.  Ciao and paka!

Soon, I hope, soon, soon, soon!