Sunday, January 10, 2010

Thrown for a loop yet again, but I'm OK

I'm trying not to be all depressed about it, but the fact of the matter is, it hurts.

Yesterday morning, I'm eating my oatmeal out on the back patio and John is reading his newspaper.  I mention that, even though it's not trash day, I weighed that morning and oh-my-god I'm down to 209.  I'm excited, you know?  Guess what he said?  Nothing.   He said nothing.  He half-smiles and nods and goes back to his paper.

I know, I know, guys get into their caves and don't like to be bothered when they're in there, but I was just so excited, you know?  After he said NOTHING, I really wanted to lash out and yell and tell him what a shithead he was (is), but that wouldn't have solved anything but let the neighbors know our business.  So I went up to the craft room and stayed there all day.  Oh, I'm not letting this slide under the carpet, no way.  He's going to hear how he hurt my feelings, that's for sure. 

After thinking about it yesterday and today, I'm glad I'm fairly centered and realize that I'm losing weight for ME, not for him or anyone else.  I just want to know how hard it can be to say, "gee, you look good today" or "I notice how much thinner you look" or something like that.  ANYthing!  Hell, my coworkers notice every day.  My acupuncturist even tells me he can see the difference.  He calls me the incredible shrinking woman!  My husband?  No words.

This whole situation is nothing new.  We've been married for 22 years and I've been feeling left out for a long time.  We've discussed similar situations and things change for a short time and then back to what it is.  I can't help but take it personally.  What person doesn't like to hear personal conversation?  I get football, baseball or scouts.  Whoopie.  I just feel like we're roommates.  Sad.

I do fill my life with things that make me happy.  I get to knit night every Tuesday.  I go out with the girls for wine, food, movies or fun.  I have great relationships at work with my work family.  I know my relationship with my husband is not right, but it's always been that way and I figure it always will be.  If only one person wants to change, it's hard to keep trying when it's a one way street,  you know?

I didn't mean for this to be a husband-bashing post.  Not at all.  I think where I'm going is, that with the weight loss, I'm feeling my feelings.  REALLY feeling them and I feel alone.  Alone is good sometimes, but not all the time.  I'm just afraid if things keep going as they are now, that things will change, and not in a good or planned way.  Maybe, just maybe, he'll read this post and learn something.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Homemade Nut Butter

I've been craving fats. 
 
I've been limiting myself to fats for so long I guess it's catching up with me.  I went home for lunch today and thought about a peanut butter sandwich, but wasn't really in the mood for just peanut butter.  The peanut butter is peanutty enough, but it's dry and tastes only like peanuts.  Duh.
 
I decided I would make my own nut butter.  I always have plenty of raw almonds on hand, so I threw in three handfuls of almonds into the Magic Bullet.  Then I added two medjool dates and a couple of tbsp of coconut oil and another tbsp of toasted almond oil.  Blended that up for a few minutes and tasted it.  Wasn't quite what my tastebuds wanted, so I added a few more dates and about a tbsp of shredded coconut.  Blend blend blend and then another taste.  Oh-my-freakin-god, it's so GOOD!  I wanted to just eat it by the spoonful, but that wouldn't be very smart, now would it? 
 
So, I put my concoction, about a cup's worth, into a tupperware container.  I got out one of those multigrain sandwich rolls, you know those ultra thin ones?  I spread a few tbsp of my almond/coconut/date butter on it.  I enjoyed every single morsel.  I used a web-based recipe builder and calculated the nutrition for this.  It comes out to about 5 grams of sat fat and 1.1 gm of protein per tbsp.  This won't be an everyday food, so I can afford to eat it when the cravings start.
 
I'm waiting now to see if I'm going to have a reaction.  You know, the dumping kind.  I'm trying to figure out what makes me feel so sleepy and dump so hard.  See last few posts.  It's trial and error with the diet trying to figure out what makes me feel good or bad. 
 
On another note, it's trash day and I forgot to weigh.  Tomorrow it is, then.

Friday, January 1, 2010

Fooooood

Hi all.

I've been doing a lot of eating these past few weeks.  Even some secret eating.  Not good.  But now that that confession has been said and lesson learned, let's carry on, shall we?

I've been craving sweets lately.  Not necessarily candy (I won't eat that), but sweet things, yogurt-covered pretzels, commercial granola bars, oatmeal raisin cookies.  I have to nip that in the bud.  No more of that, but I can't cut out sweet stuff entirely.

I'm reading about low-glycemic index foods and it seems like this could work for me.  I combine low GI foods with a little bit of the higher GI foods and my blood sugar won't spike and I won't fall asleep when my body "dumps" the sugar.  I'm giving that a go. 

I credit Cindy with informing me about this.   Cindy has been my go-to food person ever since I decided to go ahead with the gastric bypass surgery.  She helped me plan out my juices, smoothies and foods as I went from each new eating level after surgery.  A tremendous help!  I credit her with much of my success. 

So now that I'm able to eat "normal" foods, I'm finding that I'm slipping back into my old habits:  snacking on high calorie foods (albeit smaller portions) and snacking all day long.  I am limited, however, by the size of my stomach, so I can't eat mass quantities, but I can still graze, and graze I do.  At one point last night, I realized I was feeling somewhat ill, and thought, "why do I eat all this crap?  Do I do it to make myself sick?  Is it so I FEEL?"  I don't know and I didn't take the time to explore that last night, but I did stop the eating.

When I woke this morning, I was not hungry and I didn't eat until 1pm.  I'm getting back to basics yet again (I have a feeling this is a lifetime process) and listening to my physical body and will only feed it when it is actually hungry.  I've had to do this numerous times since surgery in July, but hey, it's over 50 years of bad eating I'm trying to overcome, so I'm giving myself a tiny little break.

So back to the food.  When I was hungry, I looked through my food blog feed list and voila! I found the perfect recipe for today.  It's Whole Wheat Pumpkin Pancakes.  I did make a few changes:  I didn't have any almond milk left, so I used my pumpkin soy milk instead.  I was also out of almond butter (must make some) so I used my peanut butter (ground peanuts only).  I had some mini chocolate chips in the baking cupboard so I used those.  Can you say YUM?!!  John loved them.  He had 3 pancakes and I had my one pancake.  I'm totally satisfied!

I'm going to start sharing more food blogs and recipes that I find and use.  It'll help me later and heck, you might enjoy it as well.