Food Holidays

Who benefits from these massive binge holidays? From Halloween candy to Easter Bunnies. From getting drunk at St. Patrick's Day to stuffing yourself like the Christmas Goose?

The marketers and the stores get the benefit.

Every month there is another holiday. Throw in birthday parties and anniversaries and you have a lot of days which are only "normal" if they are highly caloric.

I want to stop this cycle. What prompted me?

I was in the card store buying some thank you cards for after Christmas and I saw a whole rack of Happy New Year cards.

Huh?

Isn't that covered on our Christmas cards? Maybe they are for people who don't celebrate Christmas. But more than likely someone just said, 'hey, what OTHER days can we sell people cards on?"

It's like that with food and drink holidays.

When do they put out the candy for Halloween? They do it well before Labor Day. That is so that you will buy early, eat it all before Halloween and then have to buy it again.

Now, I could say that I want 2015 to be the year of no-food holidays, but I am dragging the family with me and that is going to be an uphill battle. But I can decide that instead of a quarter sheet cake for each family birthday, to buy a little 6 inch round cake. Or better yet,  make a cake. That way NO ONE would touch it.

And you know, most of these holidays really irk me. Santa and the Easter Bunny usurp Christ's place in His own days of recognition. I hate making Easter baskets. Yeah, you can turn it around to put some sort of religious slant onto it, but it's still a holiday that has nothing to do with Christ.

More toast. Because carbs are so good for us, right?

Ah. Way off track here. What I wanted to say is that I am  buying a two slice toaster today. Why? Because I don't want to eat four slices of toast every time I decide I want toast.

Yeah, I could put in two pieces, but those two empty slots taunt me. I always grab four pieces of bread. With a two-seater, I would be forced to choose between quelling my impatience to wait for the toaster to brown two more slices and my hunger to eat the toast that is ready and waiting for me.

My actual arms. Yes, I am proud of my guns!

I am not going to obsess about the once a month food holidays and concentrate, instead, on the daily small things that I can do to make my food intake better. Like eating less bread with butter.

The bread is just a vehicle for more butter.

Baby steps.

Hey, it's only 356 days until Christmas!

Shoot me now.

Post Christmas Blues

I have issues with Christmas. I don't much like the buildup, the finances just terrify me and the kids are off for three weeks. Then there is the fact that our house is tiny and the tree consumes the living room.

So today I evicted the tree.

I have two or three decorations still up on the walls, but the rest is gone. Now I just wish I could get back on track with my swimming and my eating.

I pretty much carbed out this morning on buttered toast, vanilla oreos and coffee. I am having this really rebellious feeling that I just want to EAT.

I feel that my surgery date is too far away, my final weighin is about the only thing that is holding me back from majorly strapping on the feed bag.

I'm stressed and depressed.

I am trying really hard to stay steady here. I am going to go get my ass into the pool, peeps.

UPDATE: I am down another pound to 262.5!!

Holy cow! I think that makes a huge difference in my mindset. I totally have got this!

Tummy Owie - Will I learn?

I sit here at the computer in self-inflicted owie hell. In overeating hell.

I have been eating pretty cleanly for months and the last two days I have had junk. I won't spell it out, but junk. Now I am paying bigtime. My digestive tract is just killing me. Cramps and pain.

I need to remind myself of this. Even though I am still pre-op (five weeks and counting down), bad foods hurt. I will feel better once they are out of my system, so today I will be eating right and drinking lots of water.

Owie.

The coming holidays.

I have 6 minutes left before my kids are on Christmas break for nearly three weeks. In fact, before I finish this post, one of them will likely be home.

We have plans to make Christmas cookies this weekend. My son who has autism does this every year. He has no idea how hard it will be for me this year.

Because I don't want to pig out.

We have plans to see the autism friendly Nutcracker on the 23rd and then visit my husband's elderly aunt on the 24th. We never travel on the 25th.

By the time the kids go back to school, I will have gone from 6 weeks & 4 days until surgery to  4 weeks.

I guess I am writing this because I want to stay centered. Not because I think I am going to overeat, but because I am afraid that I will overstress. I am afraid that my pool will be jammed with people vacationing in our town. I am afraid that I will really have a hard time.

People will drop by, our house will be in disarray -- and by that, I mean, it will be a horrific mess. I will end up with hot flashes from anxiety and embarrassment.

I have to find something to wear for when we visit my husband's 87 year old aunt. God I hate dressing up. How to hide all of my lumps?

She still has the picture up of me when I hit 150 pounds on my last diet. She points to it often and asks, "Where is that girl?" This lady is in a size 22, herself. I wonder where HER thin person is.

Stress.

I guess I will try to use this time to really examine my eating triggers and see how to find a way to deal with them without food.

How hard can that be?

Thanksgiving - 80 days until VSG

Today I cooked our Thanksgiving dinner. We visit my husband's great aunt, who is 87 and lives in a senior living center. We visit frequently, but have all of the major holiday dinners there, because it would suck for her to be alone.

So today we had our dinner. I started cooking last night. It was not as hard as I thought it would be to be in a house that is drenched in the smells of food all day.

My calories for the day were 1637, that is over by 237, but in the big scheme of things, it's good.

Yesterday was my FIFTIETH birthday! Well, actually today is, but we celebrated yesterday. I had a bit of cake, dinner at Max and Erma's and got some really super presents. I felt really loved on.

Charlie has been having a lot of meltdowns, but we are dealing them one at a time. Today we had four. That's hard. It's hard on all of us.

I came home from being out with the family and was STARVING. We had eaten at 2 PM and it was 6 and I was just starved.  I had turkey, stuffing and gravy and some deviled eggs. I didn't journal before hand ---

Hang on, he's at it again...

--- but the result was only being 237 calories over. I can live with that. I did a kick ass swim today and swam an hour yesterday.

I have learned that in order to do a really good dolphin kick, you really have to twerk a little underwater to get the undulating movement going. Man, it felt weird, but good.

I also had to order a smaller bathing suit. Mine is way big on me, but most of that might be deterioration from chlorine. I am afraid the new one, when it comes, won't fit.

80 days to go.

Weekends and Holidays are the Hardest. And some good news.

I am still in the five month pre-op diet phase with about 12 and a half weeks to go until my surgery date in February. Daily, I log my foods and exercise on My Fitness Pal (username:imawaterbender) and I also keep a written log to turn into the Lifestyle Classes at Magee Women's Hospital monthly.

The week days I have a set routine:

Get up
Get the kids off to school
Go swimming (the pool is usually empty)
Eat breakfast
Clean stuff/laundry
Eat lunch
Go out for a while, oil paint, do some exercise - basically ME time
Get the kids to do their homework after school
Make dinner
Listen to my husband's diatribe about how work went (usually an hour or so)
Eat
Get ready for bed.

On the weekends and when the kids are off for these long holidays, everything is mish-mashed. I don't really like to take my kids swimming with me, but I can't leave Charlie and Rachel at home and there is no sitter.

When kids are in the pool, they keep coming into my lane when I am swimming laps. There are no lane ropes and it's irritating. That means that I either don't swim or I swim when hotel guests tend to be in the pool and they irritate me, too. Same reason, no respect for a swimming doing laps.

 

Disclaimer: Not my actual kid.

Everyone makes such a mess that it's harder to keep things decent. And by decent, I mean, my house is usually not that tidy and they make it look like a tornado hit. Then, when I go to clean things up, it's disheartening to see that nothing lasts. I sweep the floor and minutes later there are chewed up paper towels and paper from the dog getting stuff that the kids have dropped.

I just get pissed off. That makes me want to eat junk. Plus they all eat junk. Don't say get the junk out of the house, because I have done that and my husband just buys more. It's like they love throwing it in my face.

So I usually end up breaking down and eating crap.

Yeah, Not me, either.

Yesterday I nuked taquitos from a box. I had no idea how caloric they were. They are so SMALL! I was still hungry, so I had more. When I journalled them I had to do a double-take. I ate 880 calories of them before I had journalled them, putting me over 1800 calories for the day. I decided that I was done eating for the day, problem was, it was just 1:00 PM.

I told myself that if I needed to eat, it had to be green beans because they are low in calories.

That was hard because I had promised them that we could go see a movie. We went and I only had water, but I was ticked off. Mad at myself for eating that crap and made at them because NONE  of them are having to be constantly on a diet like I am. I went to bed early to keep from eating at night.

God I hate struggling. But I guess I am learning. No more taquitos for me and have on hand foods that are good for me AND satisfying.

But let me end this on a positive. I went coat shopping on Friday and was looking at the 3X coats, wondering if I would fit into one. The last coat I bought was 5X. For some reason I tried on a 2X and it fit really well. I looked down the aisle and was astonished at how many more options I before me, because I fit that size. There were so many more 2X than 3X.

But realistically, just shopping at a store that sells regular sized clothes is a novelty for me. I had been ordering all of my clothes online. This opens up a whole new world to me. And it's just the beginning.

I do feel upset and jealous that others in my circle of life don't feel that they need to control what they eat. They don't have diverticulitis and can eat nuts, seeds, pecan pie and they don't care. Their waists enlarge and it doesn't seem to bother them. I fight it and they mock me with their food.

I am not fucking giving up.