Freakin' Friday

Or, "The Saturday Morning Weigh-In: A Love Story"

Portions reprinted without permission from Grandma Florida, who received something very similar on her last birthday.

Dare to be a Freak about your Weight Loss.

On average, Americans gain 7 pounds a year. Do you know how many extra daily calories it takes to do that? Sixty-seven.

Sixty-seven calories is nothing. It’s 2.25 ounces of lean chicken breast, seven-eights of an egg, or three-quarters of a Weight Watchers snack cake. It’s barely a whisper of extra food. And yet, when you add it up every day for a year, there’s 7 extra pounds on your frame. For most women, that’s nearly a full size. Stretch that out over 5 years, and then switch out the low fat bread for regular, add some preserves to the muffin and plunk a sausage next to your egg, and suddenly, 7 pounds is thirty-five. Or forty. Or more.

Nobody talks about diet or eating in sixty-seven calorie increments. Moreover, nobody really talks about weight loss in terms reasonable to women, and we are by far the larger group interested in, and in need of, serious weight loss advice. Weight loss and ‘normal’ diets are all based around a 150-pound man. Nutrition information, exercise and calories burned, and percentages of protein, carbs, fat, and fiber all kowtow to that elusive male who really does not need to lose weight, since how short would a man have to be, in order to be overweight at 150 pounds?

Any woman who can’t maintain her body weight eating 2,000 calories a day (RDA recommended) must ignore all the ‘nutritional information’ and ‘dietary guidelines’ on standard foodstuffs. We have to be freaks about everything that we put in front of us, and everything that goes into our mouths. We must battle away the temptations designed to line our tummies (and eventually, our hips) with foods that are rich, filling, and devoid of everything but the ability to make us fat.

In truth, there are lots of people in WW who eat ‘normally’. They eat pizza, ice cream, and cookies, and only some of them are the low-fat varieties. They drink at cocktail hours, they indulge in the meals that they prepare for their families, and their exercise program consists of going to the bathroom during commercial breaks. They lose weight, slowly, and the line charting their progress across the calendar looks like a series of teeny ‘w’s. Sometimes up, sometimes down, and sometimes ‘y’, as in, ‘Why did I eat all those meatballs when I knew I had to weigh in this morning?’

I can’t stomach that kind of “progress”, and so for me, chocolate, peanut butter, and refined sugar are Off Limits. Of course, there are good and bad weeks, even when one is virtuous, but I haven’t figured out a way to be Zen about the gains, and so I’ve worked my program so the likelihood of a gain is about as small as the size of my desserts: teeny.

It’s hard. Unbearably hard sometimes. I know it. You want to be thin and you want to be healthy, and yet, that pizza just looks so good. You try to create a compromise, where you cut back on your favorites, figuring that you can stand a slower loss. And maybe it works for a while. But from what I’ve seen, the closer you are to eating normally, the more likely you are to look normal, which, for an American woman, is overweight. If you want to get thin and stay thin, you’re going to have to become a Freak.

Cher once said, “If it came in a bottle, everyone would have a perfect body.” Okay, she didn’t actually ‘say’ it. She was featured on a Bally’s poster that had those words. She also ‘said’ that “Excuses are not going to lift up your butt.” I happen to like that one better, because, even now at 154.50 pounds, I have a mushy tushy.

My God. I’m quoting Cher. Anyway…

It’s easy to eat normally; that food is everywhere. It’s hard to turn your back on the delicious alternatives filling the table. It’s hard, and it’s frustrating, and it’s wildly stressful. But it’s so very, very worth it.

My old WW leader gave us a mantra to say every morning: I look good, I feel great, I’m eating right, and I believe I’m becoming thin for life. We are what we repeat. I do look good, I do feel great, I am eating right, and on my life, I swear I’m becoming thin for life.

Positive self-talk works. It’s one of the cornerstones of the program. Believe it. Be it. Commit to this every day. It’s a thing we do for ourselves, and it’s more important than almost everything in our lives. Good food and activity are paramount to feeling good and living well. Chuck normal. Dare to be Freaky!

Weight Watchers has made huge strides since I joined them the first time in the 90s. I remember reading one of the early books, and it talked about the importance of water. Everything they wrote in that little brochure was accurate: water curbs the appetite, it acts as a natural diuretic, and it’s the only real thirst quencher. But they ‘marketed’ water in the worst way. “Jazz it up with lots of ice”, the pamphlet read. Oooh, cold water! Now that’s a tasty treat! Luckily, they don’t do that any more. The program is grounded and sensible, and successful. This works. Make it your own, and then make your way.

With that in mind, and with a thank-you nod to my WW buddy “Blonde”, I’m posting today’s food intake, to show you what Freakin’ Eating looks like. You are welcomed to declare or decry my style, as you prefer. Keep these things in mind as you read:

1. I make it a point to eat lean protein at every meal.

2. I consider carbs, even the handsome ones, to be Spawn of the Devil, so I barely eat them.

3. Without Howard in the kitchen, I would be eating hard-boiled egg whites and cottage cheese all day long. Or, I might still be fat.

4. Almost everything I eat gets stuffed with what I call ZPE-Zero POINTS Extravaganza. That’s code for any food that’s zero POINTS and also acts as filler. Examples include mushroom, onions, peppers, tomatoes, or any vegetable--except the starchy ones like corn or potatoes.

Breakfast (7am):

3 slices low-fat Canadian bacon (60 calories, 1 g fat)
3 egg whites, and 1 egg yolk, all completely loaded with ZPE
1 c fresh fruit (berries or melon), or 1 serving WW yogurt
POINTS Total: 5.0

Snack #1 (10am):
1 granny smith apple, skin on
POINTS: 1, Running Total: 6.0

Lunch (1pm):
4 oz lean, skinless turkey breast, grilled with ZPE
1/2 c fat free hummus to use as a ‘glue’ in the wrap
2 small high fiber wraps
Salad with strawberry tomatoes, red peppers, cucumbers and jardinière and/or salsa (salsa makes salad dressing completely irrelevant.)
POINTS: 5.5, Running Total: 11.5

Snack #2 (4:30pm):
½ bag 94% fat free Kettle Corn
POINTS: 1.5, Running Total: 13.0

Dinner (7pm):
6 oz grilled tiger prawns on skewers with whole water chestnuts and red peppers
½ c couscous, to act as a ‘bed’
A ton (okay, a cup) of grilled yellow squash
POINTS: 5, Running Total: 18.0

Snack #3 (10pm):
½ bag 94% fat free Kettle Corn
1 apple, shared with Howard.
POINTS: 2, Daily Total 20.0

We eat more turkey than seafood during the week, and there’s likely to be a salad full of chicken breast during the day. Plus, Howard and I just discovered that ostrich meat is wildly lean and very delicious, so I think we’ll be eating more of that now. He made us tacos this week with ground ostrich, and using the Trader Joe’s Greek fat-free yogurt as our sour cream (try it. Seriously.), and it was so good, I nearly cried. Howard is so great. I think I’ll marry him.

Wait a second….

Sometimes I will supplement this with a protein shake in the mornings, depending on how I’m feeling. I tend to be fine until about mid-afternoon, so I save my snacking until then. I drink a lot of coffee (and not enough water), and so that helps to curb my appetite in the mornings. But I get busy in the afternoon and my works tires me, so I’m more prone to scavenging in the pm, so that’s when I have the fiber-rich popcorn. It’s hot, it smells yummy, and it’s filling.

Not always, though, and sometimes I have a second bag. It’s completely worth it. After all, I can have two full bags of reduced-fat popcorn OR I can have 4 teeny Snicker’s minis. When I look at it that way, I choose the popcorn every time. Unless of course I’m PMSing, in which case I have both. Don’t tell Howard. :)

One more thing of note is that I don’t eat processed food anymore. I used to, all the time. Especially when I was dieting. I shoveled the Lean Cuisine and the Weight Watchers entrees into my freezer, thawed them obediently in front of the Reheating Altar (the microwave) at meal time, and then did my best to take more than 3 minutes to finish them off. Then I would pretend to be satisfied for at least an hour before I dove into the freezer and grabbed (the whole box of) WW chocolate éclairs. Guess how much weight I lost? I’ll give you a hint. It’s the first word in ZPE.

I have a number of friends who are alcoholics. When I listen to them talk about their battles in social situations, the language rings familiar. We face the same demons, even though they come in different packages. We need something external to satisfy something that’s missing inside of us, and that need is real.

I’m a food junkie. I will probably always have to duke it out with the Sugared Angels. I don’t believe in the 12 steps, and I certainly take full responsibility for all of my actions, past and present. But still, there is something in me that acknowledges the need for Bad Foods, even when (especially when?) I know they won’t help me. They won’t solve my problems, they will often add to whatever stress I’m feeling, and they tax my body.

Did you know, by the way, that the human body cannot digest refined sugar? We can’t digest it, because the body does not recognize it as food. It’s a drug, and a poison, and I’d give my right foot to be able to eat it every day, with no consequences. Note that I wouldn’t give my right hand: I need that for typing. :)

We are not given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. Weight loss goals are the hardest, because you can never give up food. At the same time, though, they are the easiest, because they are common, and they are shared. We feast together, we fast together, and when it’s all over, we celebrate. We just don’t do it with chocolate.

Well, maybe if it’s Splenda-sweetened.

See you on the Freakin’ scales.