Snacking is bad for you - shock

Well, it's not bad for you if you then reduce the amount of food you eat at the meals. In fact, eating many small meals are better for you than a small number of big meals. But the harm is done when the meals are normal, and the snacks are additional. I'm just reviewing my points for today, which came in at 43. I earned 10 activity points today (walked the dog twice for a total of 80 minutes, dance class tonight with about 90 minutes activity). So I spent my daily allowance of 29, my activity earnings of 10, and squandered 4 points from the weekly floating allowance.

If I look back on the scores for the day, I spent 4 points for breakfast, 12 points for lunch, 13 points for dinner, and 13 points on snacks. If I had not eaten the snacks, then I'd have been a more reasonable one point over the daily allowance. (Are you following this?)

Ergo, if one stops snacking, one should lose weight faster. QED.

Mind you, the snack in question was a large latte and a chocolate croissant from the Mayfield Bakery, so they were points well spent.

Dr Mom's Wednesday Weigh-In

Today the scales report that I am 152.2 lbs, a loss of 2.8 lbs this week. Yesterday when I ate dinner, I could hardly eat anything, I was so full. :-)

Keep on Snacking

I haven't eaten anything very extravagent this week, so I am hopeful that there will be a small loss on Wednesday. We did have "smorgasbord" lunch yesterday at a friend's house - involving bagels (sharp intake of breath), salami (ouch) and various other bits and bobs - but this followed a 90 minute walk at Fremont Older, with a lot of uphill.

Anyway, today I wanted to share with you a tale of two chewy bars.


First exhibit, the "Pure Fit" bar, granola crunch flavor. 210 calories. Vegan, gluten free, blah blah. Verdict? Looks like dog poo, tastes like dog poo, smells like dog poo...
Need I say more than that I nibbled the end and then threw it away. Bleugh. I didn't bother to work out the points, as I'll never eat one.






Second exhibit, the KIND fruit and nut bar in apricot and almond flavor. Now that's more like it. Crunchy, chewy, sweet and salty all at once. Alas, it costs 5 weightwatchers points. FIVE. That is the same as two boiled eggs and a slice of toast.

These snack bars are a killer.

Glum Mum

Sorry to abandon you Dr Mom.
I seem unable to stop eating all the time right now.
Stress levels through roof.

Exams loom imminently. Job applications ditto.
Spouse is (sort of) job hunting.
Notsosmall is waiting to hear if he has got into any of his(our) schools of choice and in the meantime seems to have become totally disaffected with education. I don't think the two things are connected.
Neighbours have tonight decided that playing loud and unpleasant thugga-thugga-thud music is the way to spend an agreeable evening.

Am gibbering. And eating. Cheese anyone?

Another startlingly bad beginning to the week

First of all, today is Dr Mom's weigh in day. 155 lbs today, which is half a pound up on last week. Not a big surprise - see previous post.

Today I ended up at the diner for lunch (with Ruby dog) because the cleaners invaded our house and it is impossible to stay in when they are cleaning every room simultaneously. Don't get me wrong, they do a fabulous job and I want them in the house very much; it's just difficult to sit around eating a sandwich when they don't stop to eat anything. (I have the impression that they eat in the car between jobs.) So I had an omelette with bacon, cheese and tomato. Not so low calorie, but very tasty. Ruby shared it with me (a bit). Plus hash browns and wheat toast. Ruby shared those too. She does like her food. We walked it off for an hour at Arasteradero Preserve afterwards.

This afternoon I had a business meeting which always ends with dinner. Twelve of us went out to Estrellita Mexican Restaurant close by our meeting place. I had an Enchilada Azteca, which came with refried beans and rice. I didn't eat all the enchilada or the beans, and didn't eat any of the rice. I did tuck into the home made tortilla chips and salsa rather, but maybe they don't count because of the air inside them...?

I am proud to mention that I have eaten no cake and drunk no coffee today. Such virtue.

Now, where is OEM? I am getting lonely.

Not a Very Successful Week

I have got to the end of another week, and my points score is -2. That means I've eated all the points for each day (29) plus all the points for the week (49) plus all the points I've earned through exercise (16 this week). Not a very good result.

I can tell you exactly where the problems arose. First was that hazelnut blackberry muffin at Peet's Coffee on Wednesday: 14 points, more than a whole meal. Then there was the meal out with my friends on Thursday, that I calculated at 29 points all by itself. Saturday lunchtime was also a rather scary 21 points, a result of eating a bacon cheeseburger and a few fries at the cafe near Windy Hill. My excuses for that one are (1) the kids needed to eat at the end of a walk, and (2) the cafe only sells pizza and burgers.

By today I had lost hope. I ate some chocolate and a brownie bite at lunchtime because I knew I had gone over my allowance. For some people, that knowledge would make them stricter with themselves. Doesn't work that way for Dr Willpower.

Exhausted

Little Starlet's bake sale went very well. We raised over $92 in small change. The scene at morning recess was like a mob. I was completely exhausted by the end. Then they did it again at lunchtime, luckily with other mothers in attendance. Little Starlet was thrilled.

Alas, I ate two fairy cakes. Bad dieter, naughty dieter. Of course, on the bright side, they weren't factory processed cake, but items made with my own fair hands in my own kitchen and not an additive in sight. Yum.

Lemonade Recipe

In case you are interested in making lemonade like your chums in Palo Alto, here is the recipe we followed. We made six batches of it.

Layang Layang, Eating Eating

Today has been troublesome. First of all, smallest daughter is running a bake sale at school tomorrow, in support of Pennies for Peace; which meant that I had to spend the whole day baking fairy cakes and cookies. In the afternoon, Little Starlet brought her three co-conspirators home, and they continued the process by making gallons of lemonade (they squeezed 126 lemons), making another set of cookies, and icing the cakes. The house smelt delectable, but I didn't eat any of them.

It was just as well, really, because at lunchtime I went out with five friends to a Malaysian restaurant in Saratoga/San Jose borders called Layang Layang. It wasn't a very beautiful place, but the food was decent enough - a kind of cross between Thai and Indian, fairy spicey but with a curry overtone. We ordered far, far too much and ate far, far too much of it. I ordered three items: Mouse Tail Noodles (just for the name!), Sarang Mango Chicken (which turned out to have a punch, though billed as not spicey), and vegetarian steamed spring rolls. We ate family style. I brought home two boxes of noodles for Hubby to eat for lunch tomorrow. You can tell how naughty we were, lunch took two hours.

We completed the meal with two desserts, a deep fried ice cream with fried bananas, which was just okay; and a sticky rice with coconut milk and something that could in all honesty have been blackberry jam. It wasn't, I think, but we didn't really go for it.

I didn't have too much meat, and I eschewed the fried foods, but I imagine I ate every point available and for most of the rest of the week! This evening Hubby and I were out at a nonprofit event - a panel discussion on new media and high school education - which provided a finger buffet. We managed to eat just small plates of nothing very much. Virtue seemed obligatory.

Further Cake Horror

I was yet again killing time before going to Reading Partners, and I yet again ended up at Peet's Coffee. I had my usual medium nonfat latte (3 points, and a "power food" according to Weightwatchers); but I also yet again succumbed to the temptations of the pastry and cake cabinet.

Today I opted for a Hazlenut and Blackberry Muffin, which was a whole lot tastier than the reduced fat thing I had on Monday. Alas, it cost me as many points as a whole meal - fourteen. Yes, that's 14 points for one muffin. Here's the nutritional breakdown of the item:
500 calories
Fat 26g
Carbs 62g
Fiber 2g
Protein 8g
Sodium 450 mg

Given that I had got into the habit of eating a coffee shop cake or pastry every day, I can see why I was piling on the pounds. I brought home the Peet's nutritional guide and just did the points calculation for all the items I might be tempted to eat. The lowest is the Lemon Poppyseed Muffin, weighing in at 260 calories and 7 points. It turns out that the muffin I ate today is the costliest, tying with Gingerbread Loaf Bread at 500 calories and 14 points. The reduced fat items tend to come in around 11 points, because the reduction in fat is made up by an increase in sugar, in an attempt to get the product to taste decent.

If you try to lose weight by eating reduced fat sweet items, you are clearly just kidding yourself.

Dr Mom's Wednesday Weigh In

The scales say I am 154.4 lbs this morning, a loss of 2lbs from last week, which is what WeighWatchers wants you to do. Gosh, I am so virtuous.

Cake Horror

This morning I had 45 minutes to kill between dropping off Little Starlet at school and getting to my volunteering gig in Mountain View. It was also perishingly cold - I even had to scrape the car before setting off from home. So the temptation to head to a cosy coffee shop was strong.

I ended up in Peet's Coffee - http://www.peets.com/ - which is a locally based chain. I had a nonfat latte, so far so good; but then I succumbed to the baked goods counter. Oh woe is me.

I now know that a slice of Peet's Reduced Fat Chocolate Cherry Cranberry Bread is worth 11 Weightwatchers points. It contains 70g of carbohydrate! And it didn't even taste that good.

I made up for it by eating a cheese sandwich for dinner.

How to Bake a Potato

I took a poll of family members - Deep Thought, sitting at the computer playing Civilization V - and we decided to have baked potatoes. I'm going to follow the instructions on this website and I'll let you know how they come out.

http://howtobakeapotato.com/

I Like Weightwatchers' Recipes

Weekends are definitely harder. I've only managed 30 minutes out with the dog today, because this morning I had to supervise Little Starlet and two friends organizing themselves for a bake sale (the torture - I have to bake cake for it) on Friday in support of Pennies for Peace (www.penniesforpeace,org), so Hubby took Ruby and himself out without me.

Then Deep Thought arrived back from her soccer practice bearing chocolate chip cookies from Peet's Coffee. She had, for the very first time, taken herself off to Peet's after practice to buy a hot chocolate - how the babies grow - and her altruistic impulses insisted that she not return empty handed. Cookies were duly stowed for dessert after lunch.

For lunch we had tilapia with boiled potatoes, asparagus (which the children pretty much refused to eat) and home made hollandaise sauce, courtesy of the Weightwatchers website. I have always avoided making hollandaise sauce, despite it being a critical ingredient of Eggs Benedict, which is one of my favorite meals, as the story goes that it is very hard to make. Poppycock, I say, it turned out to be very easy. The Weightwatchers recipe was: 1/3 cup butter, 2 egg yolks, 2 tbsp water, dash of salt, lemon juice to taste. Whisk the egg and water together till frothy. Then put over a double burner and continue whisking. As the mixture begins to firm up, pour in the butter (already melted in the microwave) and whisk some more. Remove from the heat and whisk in the lemon juice and salt to taste. It worked really well and was worth only one point.

Then we had half a cookie each, which was five points. Yikes.

I think the main thing about the points system is the way it makes you size up your food choices. Will I get as much satisfaction from the 4oz pot of yoghurt for four points or the seven crisps (yes, I mean individual crisps)? For five points I can have two boiled eggs and a slice of toast - or half a cookie. Of course, you don't always want to be eating egg etc, and sometimes the craving for sweet is almost overwhelming. Tonight's experiment in snack food is going to be cottage cheese with strawberries, in a 100 calorie pot courtesy of Kraft.

Now all I have to decide is what's for dinner: cottage pie or baked potatoes?

Our Manifesto - A Reminder

At the start of this enterprise in 2010, Over-Educated Mother and I drew up our ten point weight loss manifesto. We didn't do too well at sticking with it, so maybe we need to remind ourselves...:

1. Eat less food.
2. But eat everything we want to in moderation.
3. No deprivation allowed.
4. Eat slower and with more thought.
5. Don't think about food all the time: Menu plan at the start of the week.
6. Limit daily calorie intake to 2,200 in the first four weeks. Reduce to 2,000 daily in second four weeks; then 1,800 in last four weeks. See what happens.
7. Good breakfast is essential.
8. No more than one visit to a coffee shop per day.
9. Stick to a proper time table for meals: No late lunches or dinners. No snacks between snacks.
10. Exercise once a week at first rising to three times a week.

OEM, How would you say you are doing on these points right now?

Weekends are Hard

Not having such a successful day today, though not for lack of portion control or not over-eating. The problem today is that the options have been too calorific.

Breakfast - rice chex and milk (while I cooked the kids a cheese omelette with beans)
Lunch - whole wheat bread stick with sunflower seeds (9 points!), cheese, and one slice of ham
Snack - Starbucks nonfat milk latte and a biscotti (which was 5 points all on its own!!)
Dinner - Quesadilla, for which the tortilla came in at 5 points too.

So today (so far) I have eaten my daily allowance, plus exchanged all my activity points, and eaten one point off my weekly allowance of 49. (For those who don't know, the Weightwatchers system gives you a daily allowance of "points", in my case 29, plus a weekly allowance, which I think is 49 for everyone; and you can earn points from doing exercise which you are then allowed to exchange for food points. You can either save your activity points and spend them at the end of the week, or you can exchange them on a daily basis. I chose the latter, as it seems more honest.)

Despite this discouraging total, I have to express some satisfaction at my willpower in Starbucks. They had holiday gingerbread for sale, which I really like. 440 calories per slice, with 74g of carbohydrate, adding up to a mighty 12 points according to the Weightwatchers calculator. That is more points than I have been eating for either lunch or dinner this week.

Given that I'd got into the habit of eating a cake or pastry every day, no wonder I had hit 160 lbs.

Return of the Settled Insides

Not quite so vegetarian today, though still not a fully fledged meat eater. Today's food:

Breakfast - rice chex and milk.
Lunch - 2 egg omelette with a bit of cheddar cheese, and a side of baked beans. Fat free yoghurt.
Afternoon - Starbucks latte with fat free milk. Resisted cake.
Dinner - Angel hair pasta with a small piece of tilapia (a flat white fish), in lemon juice and capers.

Today I am feeling pretty hungry, but the insides have settled down considerably. You will notice that there is not so much as one lettuce leaf on the food list for today. Lemon juice can be risky, as acid can play havoc with my innards, but so far so good since dinner. (I keep mistyping "good" as "food" which I presume is deeply Freudian in some way.)

I walked Ruby Dog for an hour this morning and consequently have five points saved up for a little something in front of the telly after the kids have gone to bed. Mm, could it be a quarter cup of trail mix? And, yes, that is as small a quantity as it sounds.

Gurgle Gurgle

Bad luck, OEM, on the wonky back; though it does sound like a pretty good strategy for being unable to get at the snack food. Are you taking it to the doctor, or are you actually showing stiff upper lip and just soldiering on?

Yesterday I had another vegetarian day - that's three in a row - but with all the consequences you might expect for someone with insides like mine. As a person with Crohn's, fiber has an interesting effect on the innards. By bedtime, mine were protesting severely.

I did persuade Hubby to go out for dinner last night (on our date night) before going to the movies. We went to a Turkish restaurant in downtown Palo Alto called Baklava. I had a starter made of potatoes, peppers and eggplant with yoghurt, and then my main course was yet more vegetables in a tomato sauce with cheese. We also had warm pitta bread and their special dip. Drank water. It was tasty but, as I indicate, possibly too fibrous as a choice given that I'd had beans on toast for lunch. I should also note that I only ate a few spoonfuls of the rice that accompanied the main course. I actually felt TOO FULL to eat it.

I also managed an 1 hr 45 mins walking yesterday with the dog - we went with Hubby to Windy Hill in the afternoon - so overall a pretty good day. Exercise-wise, having a dog is a good thing, as it makes you go out every day.

Back-sliding

Not as dramatic as nearly being run over, but my back is out again and I am hobbling around like an ancient very grumpy hobgoblin. And I'm not doing it with a stiff upper lip, either.

On the plus side, all the food cupboards in this house are low down and I can't bend down to find random snacks.

Will now try to remember what I ate yesterday (unlikely to be complete). Breakfast - can't remember even slightly - Notsosmall went back to school and I had to get up in the dark and get out of the house while the streetlights were still on. Possibly I didn't have anything except the compulsory cup of tea. I do remember eating a crumpet sometime yesterday - that might have been breakfast. At lunch I ate a small bowl of leftover Indian takeaway (Wednesday was first day back at college and therefore cooking was impossible).

Dinner, on the other hand, I do remember. It was scallops and chorizo, with chickpeas and spinach. It is very good. The recipes are in Nigella Express, and it really does only take ten minutes to make, start to finish, while having the appearance and taste of something that you've slaved over for hours. I think it is also probably quite good for you. The steamed fruit pudding with cream (the end of the Christmas stuff) on the other hand,definitely had enough calories for a month. And there's some left over for tonight, which we shall eat defiantly.

I feel sure there must have been delinquent snack-eating as well, but I can't (won't?) remember. I do know there have been no snacks today but only because I can't find anything at eye-level.

Tomorrow is another day...

Today, I have had a crumpet for breakfast, a ham sandwich for lunch, and we will be eating salmon and rice and some sort of greenery (and the aforementioned pudding) for dinner.

Don't Have a Night Light

"After-hours brightness could even affect your weight. In a study published in October, researchers at Ohio State University exposed one group of mice to a dim light at night, while another group was allowed to experience a standard day-night cycle. Over two months, the first group gained 50 percent more weight than the second group—even though both ate the same amount of food and had similar activity levels. The only difference was that the first group began eating at unnatural times—when their digestive systems were not keyed to metabolize food."

http://www.oprah.com/health/The-Negative-Effects-of-Sleep-Loss/1

Dr Mom's Wednesday Weigh-In

According to the scales, I am now 156.4 lbs, which is a near miraculous loss of five pounds since Sunday. Either crisps make you very fat - and not eating them for three days has this kind of extreme result - or there is something a bit off about one or other of the weights taken. I feel like I must be following some kind of extreme magazine diet.

Life and Death Adventures

I went off to my San Jose meeting this morning sustained by nothing more than a bowl of rice chex and a cup of chamomile tea. By leaving the house ten minutes later than I intended, I prevented myself from stopping off at the Starbucks next to my meeting place. Of such confluences of unintended actions are diets made, methinks.

After that meeting I headed back to Palo Alto for my lunch meeting at Lavanda, on University Avenue. My host was already there, so we got straight into business and ordering. After he chose a club sandwich, I felt compelled to order from that part of the menu too - and my eye alighted on the croque monsieur. I am very partial to croque monsieur, and I was awfully hungry. It was tasty too. (For those who do not know, a croque monsieur is a grilled sandwich with ham in the middle and cheese melted on the top. A croque madam is the same, but with the addition of a soft-yolked fried egg on top. Extra yummy.) My concession to health was to reject the side of French fries in favor of mixed salad leaves. I drank fizzy water and a filter coffee sweetened with Splenda (bleugh).

Alas, Weightwatchers thinks that the average croque monsieur comes in at a hefty 12 points, so maybe it wasn't the best choice. Cheese rarely is. But it was worth it!

After lunch, I was almost run over. For real. I waited at the lights at the crossing. The lights changed, and I had the walk signal. i stepped out into the road - at the same moment that a large mom-mobile hurtled towards me, screeching its brakes, and ending up in the middle of the intersection with cars coming at it along the road that was on green. I just stood there, somewhat surprised. It literally missed me by a foot or so. If I had been walking slightly faster, I'd have been in hospital now. It turns out that a woman I know was actually in one of the other cars at the intersection, and when I saw her later in the day she commented on how impressed she was by my cool reaction: No banging on the offending car, swearing or anything. Well, it's that famous British stiff upper lip, isn't it?

Soooo Hunnnnggggrrrryyyyy

Yesterday I ate 43 points on Weightwatchers, largely due to the homemade chocolate chip cookies that Little Starlet insisted we make in the afternoon. Each cookie turned out to be worth 7 points. (Seven!!) Today, so far, I've eaten 22 points, and the food diary is thus:
Breakfast - rice chex and milk
Lunch - wholewheat pasta with mushrooms, onion, and tomato sauce
Afternoon snack - two cups of popcorn
Dinner - ground beef with tomato and kidney beans, on quinoa

And I'm hungry....huuuunnngggggrrrrryyyyy.....

The kids are tucking into ice cream. Luckily ice cream isn't one of the food stuffs that shakes my world, and I don't even feel like I'm craving something sweet (despite the box of yesterday's cookies sitting on the countertop). But I do feel like I could eat dinner again.

Over Christmas, one of the books I read was "Sacred Hearts" by Sarah Dunant, in which one of the characters embarks on a self-imposed anorexia; and she talks about so-called 'Holy Anorexia' in which members of religious orders, or religious hermits, would starve themselves to make visions appear. I'm not quite there yet, but give me a couple of days.

Mind you, I have a lunch date at a fancy Palo Alto restaurant tomorrow. Do I really have to eat leaves? It's unseasonal, even for California.

I did OK today - until this evening

Filled with virtuous intention, I started the day with a bowl of bird food. Well, muesli, but I've been feeding it to the birds this winter as we ran out of the echt stuff and the poor things needed food in all the snow. I hope it filled them up more than it did me.

However, I survived without snackage until lunch time, when I ate four pieces of sushi, two slices of ham and some leaves. Then I felt deprived and still hungry so I ate 2/3 of the bread bun I had actively decided not to make into a sandwich with the ham and leaves.

The afternoon was long and dark and involved reading about the duties of a solicitor in a police station, thus compelling me to eat a piece of stollen cake (that's nearly a joke!). Dinner was a pre-prepared Bigham's ready meal, the calories of which could be readily calculated if I could find the packet, with rice and peas and corn. That was ok, and tasty, and David made it so it was even better.

Evening involved watching Goldeneye, eating ONE long AfterEight matchmaker-style choco-snack, one ricciarelli (Sienese almond biscuit), and rather a lot of Goldfish. Dr Mom, did you know the Festive Goldfish you brought me were not all fish at all, but 1/3 Christmas Trees and 1/3 Stockings! And scrummy. I seem to remember last year that a small dish of them worked out to a reasonable quantity of calories - I will have to look them up again.

The moral of this story would seem to be: don't watch Bond films.

And by the way...

... why is it when I click on the 'Next Blog' button, I get a series of blogs from people writing about cupcakes and other forms of foodie obsession? Is this helpful? I don't think so!

New Year, New Blog, New Bleurgh...

I'm with you Dr Mom! Even without the photographic evidence, the need for reviving the quest is clear. Not least because I put my back out before Christmas and it is still wonky. Being exactly the same weight I was this time last year is not going to help it get better.

On which, I'm not sure whether to be happy (and surprised) that over all I have not gained weight, or depressed and grumpy that I failed to change the habits of a lifetime with any lasting success last year.

However, I am going Back to the Swimming Pool on Thursday morning - Notsosmall will be back at school, I will have gone back to college, and no excuses will be permitted. (David says I have to be fitter or he won't let me go to Italy - and I'm inspiring myself by looking at the steepness of the hills that will need to be climbed!)

We've nearly eaten up all the Christmas food, and to be honest I'm looking forward to a week or two of lettuce and thin soup. I might even go vegetarian for a few days - I don't want any slabs of meat for a while now. Or chocolate. The cheese will be trickier.

Here's to a thinner '11!

New Year, New Start

Hello again. It's been a while.

Dr Mom weighed in this morning at 160.6 lbs, again a record for heaviness. The first day of the year didn't go so well, food-wise, involving as it did a cooked breakfast, a burger for lunch, three mince pies, a Flake, pasta with cream for dinner, and a bowl of trail mix. But against that I have to mention the five hours sleep of the night before, and in such circumstances it is essential to keep eating tasty junk food in order to stay awake.

But today is the start of a brave new world. Again.

I was just watching some video of myself dancing on New Year's Eve. Tummy. Large boobies. Expansive bottom. And did I mention the tummy? Oh dear, really got to do something about that.

First step is to re-awake Weightwatchers. I logged in and discovered it had changed in my absence. It's like some perverse version of the supermarkets moving all the food around to make you spend more. Turns out that they have recalibrated all the foods so that I now have a higher point availability for each day and extra for the week (29 and 49 respectively). So it must mean that one point no longer roughly equals 100 calories - some more subtle algorithm is in play. Bah.

Hungry. Must drink tea.