Twitter's Stolen My Appetite

You would not believe the behaviors I am conquering just by taking pictures of my meals to share on twitter before eating. Doing this has led me to think about what I'm doing - sometimes cautiously and carefully. Here's how:

It underlines the importance of honesty.
Oh, I've had the inkling to deceive you by taking a picture before adding cheese to a scramble of some kind...but I didn't! Taking shots of eggs and bacon or whatevers every morning and plowing through with images of lunches and dinners has heightened my respect for my personal dignity.

I am more conscious of what goes in.
Changing my diet from a drive-thru and/or quick bites and big dinners lifestyle is a process for me. I'm not 100% there yet...but I've done some mental and social work to tweak my behaviors already (hosting a real foods group has been especially helpful) and am more aware of what is going to pass my lips. Taking a picture of what is about to end up in my stomach? Yeah. I am not going to want to share a picture of a sloppy burger and a heap of fries without having thought it through.

Note: I ate that very burger and gave most of my fries away the Friday night I went out with my friends. And I didn't feel bad about eating it OR tweeting it because I'm taking better care and attention of what I eat ALL the time now. That burger was awesome and a good choice. I make even healthier choices day to day, meal to meal, so I don't feel guilty.

I think about food differently.
And I can't say that tweeting what I eat is wholly responsible for the change in how I think about food, but it does have influence over presentation.

For a while I have planned meals and grocery shopping (as part of yet another group I started for people who want better home organization). I still do that...but because I am tweeting, I plan to make even nicer things to look at. I hate tweeting pictures of blobs of food. I do eat blobs of food sometimes, but I mostly want to make things that look delicious.

Portion control is spontaneous.
My -portion- size has trimmed on its own. It has! I am not going to send you an image of a heaping plate of spaghetti bolognese with two slices of garlic bread and a meager salad of not much in it. I did eat like that.

I don't now.

Just the other day I tweeted a photo of spaghetti squash with three meatballs and sauce. I skipped the garlic bread and the salad and was still satisfied, not left feeling hungry or wanting, which means I can eat less and feel just fine about it. Being aware of how much food is on my plate is all twitter's fault. I love it. I won't cheat myself by going hungry because that will just push me to binge eat between meals. I eat enough to satisfy my stomach but also appeal to my sense of pride (and embarrassment!) because I am tweeting what I eat.

I get to share my life.
Now I find myself excited to show you what I'm doing. I am not having but wanting to photo journal every day....and I get to avoid food logging the old fashioned way and I inspire people to cook more and I get asked for recipes. This feeds my slightly social personality.

I encourage you to try this for yourself in case you find the same benefits - or even better ones. #tweetyereats with me @wendytime

Enthusiasm

I am learning to cultivate enthusiasm with the help of the second book on my list. I am learning a host of other things to go with it, but I want to bring forward how delight for the small stuff contributes to general happiness, contentment with things as they are.  Please don't confuse enthusiasm with acceptance because of what I am about to say. The two positions don't relate in this model.

Acceptance says, merely, "Yes."  Enthusiasm leaves an thumbprint, a feeling, "Yes!" that needs no voice.

I've experienced enthusiasm enough to know what it feels like.  Is there a way I can feel it ...most of the time? Yes!

In this book of several steps aimed at parents of children with special needs I am absorbing the importance of a slower pace, of varying procedure, of employing subtlety, finesse, creating much more flexible goals, and actively noticing neat things that contribute to my enthusiasm.

This is not a new concept in my bloodline. "Find the Good." is a family phrase we often tease each other with, but we do mean it and we do try to see silver linings even in the midst of anxiety and chaos. ...but enthusiasm differs from finding the good.

Bolstering enthusiasm is not a means to an end (or a safe place) like "Find the Good" can be. Enthusiasm is the feeling that remains one moment into the next because I have noticed good. I have not found good. I have noticed it - and I haven't got to spark a doob or drop a tab to notice.

Think of the how we notice and think of how we find. Doesn't noticing feel more gentle?

So when I gently notice things like.... well, I'll share my list of "neat things I notice" from two days ago:


Sheldon loves to cuddle with me in the morning.
I like making Hopper breakfast.
Hopper answered her phone this morning - she even lingered to talk and joke a tiny bit before hanging up on me (I gave her permission to because I snuck in a pretty horrible pun.)
Both my husband and my BFE were interested to know what I planned to do today.
April is back. (She is someone in my community who makes me smile, she just returned from a month's hiatus.)
Frank is really nice. He told me about coming to America after fleeing his communist country of Vietnam. Really interesting. It took him jail time, torture and a number of years to be free but he kept on.
Found out Joshua Radin is performing tonight with A Fine Frenzy!!! <3
It was easy to say when I'm going on vacation and won't be available to work.

There have been more things since...all these situational smiles that pile into the day which I could, and often do, forget about by the time I go to sleep at night, but because I noticed them and took a moment to enjoy them, and write them down, I've given myself the opportunity to feel that soft, internal, "Yes!" with each and every one.

This may look like a list of things I'm grateful for. It's not. It's just a collection of neat things I notice. Again, do you feel the difference?  I am....so in love with having learned this. It is going to take a heck of a lot of practice for this kind of noticing to become natural for me to do. So be it. :)

My Surprise Wake Up

I thought about skipping my blog post today, because I don't have a lot to share right now, but then I woke up pretty.

I am incapacitated due to a knee injury and haven't done much of anything since Friday night. I'm home, though, and doing everything I can to keep from getting sucked in by boredom.

But, I woke up pretty. My face was a comforting sight in the mirror when I hobbled to the sink to brush my teeth and all.  My hair didn't even suffer much for having had a tiny cat jumping all around my head through most of the night. 

Don't you love those mornings, though, when you happen to glance and notice you're not so bad looking after all? I'm going to avoid the mirror the rest of today just so I can remember that first look. It was a good one. :)

Weight Update

I can't believe it myself...but the numbers are what they are. Since beginning my program, I've lost 30 pounds. I know! I am going like this.

Down WHAT?!

I weighed in at the gym today. I started the Yourishment plan on Monday and completely cut out simple carbs and increased fat in my diet. I'm down FOURTEEN pounds since last week's weigh-in. I don't know that this great a loss is going to happen again, so I thought I'd jot it here. I need someone to gape at it with me. I haven't stopped gaping since I stepped on the scale about an hour ago.

Lately, I have felt like I've lost weight, but I haven't been able to tell where the weight may have been lost from... and yet I remained skeptical that I'd lost any weight at all because I'm eating fattier meats and using real butter and stuff. So, I got on the scale today hoping whatever number showed up was going to help me feel sane and more grounded in whatever reality turned out to be. If I did lose, I figured it would have been a pound or two like I've been doing on my own before Yourishment with Ivana started. If I'd gained, I thought it would be at least 5, maybe 10 for all the bacon I cooked up this week.

I feel pretty good, though. I still get tired a little bit during the day, but not as desperately. I can eat lunch and skip a nap if I want to without any cost to the rest of my day. Something's working out right here on week one. I hope the remaining weeks will be as kind. I'm still fretting over blood work, but I don't get that again until a 3 month period is over. We'll see if this fat is kicking my cholesterol around or not. I sure eat eggs a lot. We'll see.

Okay, gape with me. :o I am full of wonder at this occurrence.

More Fat? REALLY?

You know I'm reducing carbs in my diet, right? I have been able to keep from breads, pasta, fruits, milk (yes, milk has 12g of carbs per serving) carrots, peas and potatoes for...it's been since Monday. Nearly a week. Wow!!! I'm not tempted by the pantry full of them in the kitchen except for when I'm feeling hungry.

So far, on this food plan, I'm feeling hungry a lot. So, I wrote to Ivana. Do you know what she said? "You are not eating enough fat." WHAT?! My mind rejected the logic immediately. I thought, "Okay, what if Ivana's doing some kind of odd experiment with fat people to see whether they will 'buy' the idea that a diet of high fat, low carbs is going to make them lose weight."

Sorry, Ivana, I do appreciate you and I know you to be an informed, intelligent woman...but my mind went there.

Eat more fat. That can't be real. I didn't believe it. So, I did what any overweight fat-obsessed woman would do. I sought Google for wisdom. Keywords: "EAT FAT TO LOSE WEIGHT" "LOW CARBS HIGH FAT" "IS IVANA STRAIGHT TRIPPIN ME?"

Google spit out a number of opinionated forums and a couple of websites, including the blog of Dr. Michael Eades. I absorbed the information he posted on his website about lowering carbs and increasing fats, increasing water, lowering caffeine... a lot of his opinions made sense when spelled out with metabolic explanations of biochemistry attached. "Huh..." I though to myself. "Huh." and kept reading.

Dr. Eades's blog has become my Cake of the Day - a term my best friend ever (BFE) uses often with me because I find something to love with PASSION and WOW! pretty much every day and I soak up as much as I can about it until exhaust both of us with too much info. Cake of the Day can literally be cakes decorated in some sort of theme or it can be blogs full of info like this.

Dr. Eades says MORE FAT, MORE FAT! and explains the body's process of switching from using carbs for energy to using fat instead... ah! See? This makes sense. And I still feel like I am some sort of whacky experiment, but I'm not willing to let go of this food plan just yet. It's only been about a week.

I do want you to know that while I am not eating grains, I AM getting fiber from the green veggies that I eat. I'm learning to drink more water (this is a tough one for me!) and I can totally eat spaghetti squash with a homemade bolognese sauce and LOVE it.

I had black forest bacon from Whole Foods for breakfast today...which was amazing and so good. I paired it with an egg scramble into which I added: sauteed mushrooms, spinach, yellow pepper, onion and broccoli. The result: a very, very delicious breakfast we all really loved. My daughter, the vegetarian, had fake sausage with her eggs, but the result was the same: deeeelicious.

I'm still not entirely convinced that more fat is the key to dropping pounds; however, in the interest of seeing things through I'd like to go ahead with the plan and give it fair effort. I'll judge later, when I see how my body responds via scale numbers and blood work. That's one thing I wouldn't do this without: the companionship of my own medical records and my physician.

Exercise is a bit slow-going still because I'm not out of the tired rut yet, but that is promised to come. I am; however, walking with Hopper tonight as planned. We have a date to do so at 9:30. :)

But, yeah, can you believe that idea? MORE FAT?! I am a little intimidated.