Day 7 Son of DDDY Challenge: We're moving on DOWN the road...and I must have estimated those date night calories right! The fear of upcoming food cues in certain location with "history"...and itchy eyes suck...oh, and food / water log...including fab dinner out in MiMo with Another Pic of me happy there!

Tanita-San says: 246.2

There we go. Two days showing lower numbers. Muchly pleased.

One-fifth of a pound to no-longer-morbidly-obese territory. Muchly pleased.

Eyes itch like the mother. Not pleased. Allergies still plaguing. We've had some beautiful days and the only thing that keeps me from being OUT THERE enjoying them more is the super-itchiness that results. Oh, well. I should be used to this. A lifetime (and I do mean a whole fricken LIFEtime) of having to carry boxes of tissues and itching and wheezing. Should be used to it. Never fully am. Thank God for the meds that make me function, otherwise I'd be an allergy-respiratory cripple wheezing in bed (and that's no exaggeration, spent 4 years that way in the early 90's). I put in my Patanol drops just now so I could stop rubbing eyes enough to type. Now, I have dark circles from rubbing. Sheesh.

Today I'll be at a hospital down south with family (surgery for nephew). I am fearing the food cues. My mom spent a lot of time in that hospital by the bay. Weekly visits to a hematologist for years. Weekly blood transfusions for years. Me stuffing my face and gaining 35 pounds in 8 months from stress. I was familiar with that cafeteria and snack bar, I can tell you.

Now that I am more familiar with how my brain works/cues/stimuli, I really am afraid what's gonna happen when I walk in and smell the smells and see the landmarks, etc. So, this is mental preparation time. Need to take my snacks. Need to drink water (after I'm out of traffic). Need to chill. Need to believe in myself.

Okay, onto the comida y agua portion of this post:

BREAKFAST:
WS hot cakes with Nature's Hollow sugar-free syrup & cinnamon
2 oz natural applesauce
1/2 cup egg beaters with 1/2 cup mushrooms
2 tsp Smart Balance and 1 slice 2% Cheddar
2 cups coffee
8 glasses water (4 before, 2 during, 2 after)
Calcium, D, Multivitamin, Quercetin, Bromelain, Fiber supplements

SNACK: 2 glasses of water before heading out

Calories so far: 440
Fluids so far: 96 oz

LUNCH:
cup of decaf (12 oz) w Sweet n Low (hospital cafeteria had no Splenda, dangit)
(had to run to bathroom as soon as I entered hospital, went twice more in the next couple hours without drinking extra water).

I took several low-carb snacks and 2 bottles of water, but didn't have them. Had that decaf.

Calories so far: 440
Fluids so far: 108 oz

DINNER: On the way home, had to stop cause I was pissing my pants. Had dinner at a restaurant in the historic MiMo section of Miami that we saw reviewed on tv a few months back. Great dinner outside in the charming patio area. The menu online is not the menu we got, so maybe that's lunch and what we got was the dinner one. There was a boutique upstairs and a mini-art space adjacent. Nice. Some Japanese guy was there checking an installation. I went two times more to the bathroom in the restaurant (Uva 69).

Princess Dieter at Uva69

I had to deconstruct dinner to enter it into Sparkpeople, and I knew I would, so as I was eating, I was looking and examining for how to deconstruct (ie, how much parmesan, how much EVOO, how much wine in the vegetables, which veggies, how many in the mixed veggies, how much filet mignon, etc. I used the same system I used last night: lots of water before starter (4 glasses), order decaf and drink loads (3 cups), had unsweetened iced tea, too. I first ordered a caprese sald, but then switched to a chicken veggie soup starter, as that had fewer caloribes and the liquid would help fill me. Kept carbs minimal, nixed the risotto again--what's with risotto everywhere lately, stop tempting me!--loaded up with extra veggie sides and gave hubby half my steak. No dessert, though a tray went by and I nearly plotzed. No wine, though I really ached for a Pinot Grigio hit with my soup. More water after done eating (1 glass). He was able to have leftovers, since he had my steak half, so his lunch tomorrow is ready for brown-bagging. Lovely eatery. If you come to Miami, definitely hit Uva 69 on a fresh evening for outdoor patio dining.

I'm getting into the habit of asking for lots of water, no ice, so I can gauge quantities better an drink it FAST without "brain freeze". :D

I calculated my dinner calories on SparkPeople at 1038. That's a lot for one meal, but it didn't send me over.

On the way home, we stopped at Target, and I peed TWICE in the hour we were there. Geesh. See what I said about having to figure out where the toilets are around town, the nicer ones? Target is NOT a nicer one. ; )

calories so far: 1478
fluids so far:  172 oz (not counting soup, exceed accelerated amount)

Snack: (clearly should have had more water, cause I got hungry at Midnight)
2 cups watermelon, 1 small pear, and 1 WS vanilla protein shake (made with 8 oz waer)
4 glasses of water
1 cup decaf with sucralose

calories for snack: 281
fluids with snack: 48 oz


Total Calories:  1759
Total Fluids:   220 oz

Day 6 Son of DDDY Challenge: Yes, Tanita-San likes me again! And looking to an end to my "morbid obesity" by midweek....and food/water log, sure

246.4

(Starting weight for Son of DDDY was sent in last Sunday as 248.2)

Oh, man. How great did seeing that number feel? Yay! Finally loss is showing. Tanita-san is no longer miffed with me and showing icky upticks. Back on goal-ly track.  52.6 pounds down now.

Once I'm under 246, which I hope will be by mid-week, I'll officially stop being MORBIDLY obese. I will be SEVERELY obese. Still sucks, but sucks less.

Not much else to say. I'm glad my talk about cues helped someone. :)  I really do think that unless we get to the core of our eating habits--cues, stimulus, automatic behavior--and understand that our brain is both enemy and ally in this fight, we simply won't lose successfully--and by successfully is lose it and keep it off. Behavioral modification is necessary. Not helpful. Necessary. Vital. Essential. New thought paterns are essential. New coping mechanisms. Self-awareness.

Support is nice, too. I mentioned to hubby how I have missed pizza (we used to have it 2 to 3 times a week for years, then once a week once I began weight loss blogging, lately, much less often). I mentioned I'd go to the store and get some whole wheat pitas and make me one at home with sauce and cheese to satisfy the craving. I mentioned I needed some natural (no sugar added) applesauce for my hotcakes, as sometimes I liked to add dollops of applesauce for an appie-pie vibe (with cinnamon, mmmm).

Well, I woke up and went to get the paper (he always wakes up first and puts the paper in the kitchen for me). Well, there on the counter was a bag of mini whole wheat pitas and a six-pack of natural applesauce. The man loves me. :)

Now, back to our regularly scheduled boring food and fluid log:

BREAKFAST: (I was craving artichokes. So, I had a lot.)
1 cup egg beaters omelette with one chopped tomato and
2 slices Kraft 2% Deli Select Sharp Cheddar slices (cooked in nonstick pan with Pam)
1 can artichoke hearts (150 cals worth) sauteed with 2 tsp olive oil and garlic
2 cups coffee and 1/2 bag of Kay's Naturals Sweet BBQ mix protein snack (lower carb)
8 glasses water (4 before eating, 1 during, 3 after)

calories:  626
fluids:  80 oz


LUNCH:
none
2 glasses of water

SNACK:
none, having a date night out

DINNER:--date night. Chose a restaurant where I know the menu is limited (mostly seafood, which I can't eat) and they put grilled chicken breast on the menu for me (since I hate dark meat and all they used to carry was half a roast chicken). Hubby likes the pork and burger. Was planning on broccolini and carrots on the side. Whoops. They went and changed the menu. No more chicken. No more of the appetizers I used to order. Had to recalculate. Was so tempted to have veggie orzo, but I recovered. ; )  Caved a bit to bread/butter basket, but minimally, thank God.

Grilled Pork Chop with cranberries on side (I ate almost none of the cranberries). Chop was listed as 10 oz, I removed the loin part from the bones, cut away the fatty circle, was left with approximately 8 oz of loin. I ate half.
Steamed broccoli (the menu only listed butter poached, but I requested steamed, no butter)
few olives
1/3 cup or less of hummus with 1/2 pita (appetizer)
1 very small piece of French Bread with 1 tsp butter 
salad of about 1 cup mesclun and onion with about 3 tbsp of gorgonzola with vinaigrette
3 cups decaf
6 glasses of water (3 before food, 2 during, 1 after)
Went to D'Lites: a cup of low-cal frozen chocolate dairy treat
fiber supplements, magnesium, Calcium, D, multivitamin

Allan's water trick works. I ate less than half of what I'd normally eat at that place. I had half a chop's loin left over. I had bread left over hubby took for his breakfast. Hummus left over, though it was a small appetizer and hubby and I both ate from it. Even some pita left over. Nice. Was very, very full. I still had to mentally work the saying "no." I really did. I kept wanting some of the raisin bread, French bread, hummus, hubby's potato croquette. But kept drinking water and saying no. No . No. I had more than maybe was ideal at one sitting, but still very happy not to have forgotten water and gone nuts on the fatty pre-entree stuff. The decaf helped, too. Normally, I'd have espresso AFTER. But I figured MORE fluids was in order. THANKS, ALLAN, for the water gorging.

estimated calories for dinner: 969
fluids with dinner: 72 oz

calories so far: 1595
fluids so far: 152 oz

Total Calories:
Total Fluids:

Day 5 Son of DDDY Challenge: Some bloat loss, still not additional loss, and the crazy hard job of establishing new habits re portions, fighting stimuli, strategies that may be nuts-sounding but necessary, and naysaying cues that lead to overeating...plus food/water log, natch.

247.8

Down at last. Yay. But...Still half a pound over where I think I should be considering what I've been eating and drinking.

Not discouraged. Not giving up. Just wondering what the hell is up with my body is all. I was moving nicely along and then not so much. Female bodies are weirder about this stuff then men's it seems (at least from my experience as a female in a family with males and a reader of both male and female blogs).

Weird shit happens. And you just stay the course or make corrections. You do not give up. Ever. Period. No giving up.

I know I'm being accountable. I'm not bullshitting the world or myself with my food log. I had bought shiny new measuring spoons, measuring cups, smaller serving plates and small serving bowls, all in the goal of constraining, containing, and quantifying. I'll even take apart restaurant meals IN THE RESTAURANT (or ask them to take it apart for me, literally, before serving), so I can eyeball measure the ingredients.

I brought a salad home yesterday, all prettily put together, threw out their dressing, took apart the components measured them before reassembling on a plate. Just so I could KNOW. I post at my SparkPeople nutrition tracker to get the calories per weights/measures before I log here on my blog. So I KNOW.

I even measured out where 2 cups of water is on a patterned glass (ie, 2 cups measured comes up to the tip of a particular leaf in the etched pattern). That way, I don't have to measure out two cups each time. I know where to pour up to.

These are all new habits I'm establishing. These are all breaking the cues: Eat at once. It looks good and smells good and you know it tastes good, so just go for it. Just grab the food, toss in in the plate, eat it. Don't measure it, just dig in.

So, I know I'm not cheating on calories (though nothing short of a laboratory is absolutely precise). My body is just not cooperating. Plateau?

I can wait and let it do its thing. I can cut calories. I can move more. Those are pretty much my options.

Right now, I"m going to keep things the same for a couple days and see. If things don't budge, then I will consider the readjusting calories. Patience for now.

I was reading THE END OF OVEREATING in the john (and all of you with weight/overeating issues need, need, need to read this), because I am clearly still in the hard work of establishing new habits. New habits about the size of meals, about the quantity of water, etc. I am looking at my cues and learning to self-talk myself out of the stimulus-response.

And trust me, there's a lot of stimulus in my life/city/world. Some things are easier to do:Tell hubby to take his snacks and crap away from any place I can SEE them FIND them --literally out of here, like to his music room where I rarely go or to his office at work, where I never go.

Others are trickier. The boulevards we drive on the way to places and on the way home are chockablock with cues. I always, always get the urge to go in x and y drive-thrus. Always. It's like Pavlov hit me with a taco or fried chicken stick while I was driving this road.

So, I've been driving down OTHER roads. I mean, there are times when I take some really convoluted back roads to my house to avoid triggers.

Other times, when I'm rushed, I'll have to self-talk: No, you don't want a burrito. No, you don't want a hamburger. No, you don't want pizza. No, you're not getting pastrami at the deli.No, you will not stop for X. You will not stop. It's not an option. It's not worth it. You'll regret it. You will NOT.

I feel a great sense of success when I do not follow the cue to behavior: ie, stopping or driving through. Scarfing up everything in the bag.

Sometimes, the cue is a menu. Seriously. Sometimes, all I have to do is come upon a take-out menu and I want it all. I want to order  6 things, 7 things, I want to eat 10 things. This happened to me at the Thai Place. I wanted something salty, but I wanted to get veggies, not just chow down on cheese and crackers. Thai gives you salt and spice and veggies. I wanted so much suddenly. I felt that weird binge urge. It was STRONG. I thought, "Shit, I need to stop now and forget about the Thai food."

But I held that menu for like 30 minutes fighting the urges. One by One. The one for fried egg rolls. The one for curry chicken. The one for fried dumplings. The one for ..... One by one. No, no, no. Won't have that. What can I have that has fewer cals and more veggies.

I had what I put in my food log. Pretty much the  most taste-but-lowest cal options I could find. (Yes, steamed veggies would have been the rock bottom, but that wouldn't cut it, salt or tastewise).

It could easily have been Waterloo and Napoleon. Instead, it was more Wellingtonian. :)

But menus are definitely bad, bad cue-instigators. Menus from places I've eaten and know what's tasty.

One way to get around that is not to have menus: Make your own. Get a Word Document going, add each restaurant you frequent, add only the names/prices of the foods you SHOULD order (and the ones maybe a spouse orders). And ditch the takeout menus. Use only the "safe" non-cue menus. I need to do this.

Okay, back to the challenge:

I was super great on water yesterday. I was pretty good on food. I was crap on sodium, and I can't work up too much of a righteous indignation about that.  If I can't have the super indulgences of the past, I decided I'm still having the salty thrill. For now, at least. I may have to reconsider that, too.

Yesterday's challenge stats have me under calorie limit and way over fluid optimum:


Total Calories:  1594 (c39/f37/p24)
Total Fluids:  248 oz

Woke up thirsty again. Water will be huge on the agenda. Again. :)

Have a great and healthful weekend, people!

BREAKFAST:
2 slices Ezekiel Bread
1/4 cup sharp cheddar shreds
2 eggs fried in tsp Smart Balance
1 cup papaya chunks
1 cup raspberries
2 cups coffee (16 oz fluid)
10 glasses water (6 before eating, 2 during, 2 after) : 80 oz

bkfst calories: 576
bkfst fluids: 96 oz

(feel very full)

LUNCH:
homemade lower-cal, lower-fat, lower-sugar Pastrami Reuben
(3oz turkey pastrami, 1 oz lower-fat Swiss Cheese, sauerkraut, and dressing made
from 1 tbsp lite mayo, 1 tbsp low-carb ketchup, 2 tsp sugar-free sweet relish)
1 cup mixed strawberries and pineapple, 2 cups watermelon chunks
2 cups decaf with sucralose
6 glasses water
assorted supplements

lunch calories: 596
lunch fluids: 64 oz

calories so far: 1172
fluids so far: 160 oz

SNACK:
2 glasses water (16 oz)
1 bag Kay's Natural honey almond protein cereal

calories so far: 1272
fluids so far:  176 oz

DINNER:
WS Vanilla protein shake (made with 6 oz water and 1/3 cup milk) (128 cals)
1/3 cup skim milk
(total fluids for above about 8.7 oz)
2 glasses water (16 oz)


Total Calories:  1400 (c48/f27/p25)
Total fluids: 200.7 oz