Wednesday Weigh In

Dr Mom weighs in at 154.8 lbs this morning. We've been on a vegetarian diet since last Friday. The kids are at a residential camp, so there is no one to complain about the salad and lack of meat or desserts. I think it has helped with overall sense of bloat and, ahem, gassiness; which is quite surprising considering I have "issues" with fiber. I presume it is the reduction in fat intake which is responsible for that.

A Magic Sprinkle to Melt Away Appetite?

My delightful elder daughter has started looking out for useful websites on weight loss. I guess it was only a matter of time before my proto-teenager started trying to improve me. Causing the abandonment of Mom Jeans must be on the cards soon. Anyway, here is today's interesting little nugget, on a food supplement called SENSA. Apparently this tasteless, scentless food supplement is sprinkled on other food, causing a suppression of appetite in eaters that, according to the product website, caused an average weight loss of 30.5 lbs among 1, 436 men and women who used it over a 6 month period.

Hmm. No dieting or exercise required. If it is so effective, why isn't everyone talking about it? Why isn't everyone using it? Why isn't Oprah Winfrey promoting it?

One alternative weight loss website notes that the main ingredient in Sensa's "tastants" (i.e. the sprinkly stuff) is maltodextrin (i.e. sugar derived from corn). The effect of that will be to give bland foods more flavor which, it speculates, may have the opposite effect of making diners want more of them, not less. Way back in 2008, the ABC news show 20/20 exposed the failings of the science underpinning this supposed breakthrough.

I remain sceptical of any product that claims seemingly miraculous results. I'd rather stick with the tried and trusted methods of portion control, good food choices, and a moderate exercise plan to promote all round health.

More Sinned Against Than Sinning

Little Starlet and I went up to the city today to the Sundance Kabuki Theatre see the National Theatre live broadcast of the Donmar Warehouse production "King Lear" with Derek Jacobi. He was outstanding. In fact the whole play was fabulous, there wasn't a block of wood attempting to act on the stage at all. A fine avoidance of teapot Shakespeare. Little Starlet more or less followed the play - I had forgotten, and so didn't explain, the Gloucester/Edgar/Edmund sub-plot - though she thought that Derek Jacobi had been replaced by another actor in the final scene. Quite why, I have no idea. There you are, the mind of a 9 year old.

The relevance of all this to this blog is that it meant I had a rather odd eating day. I began with a bowl of granola. We headed out at 9am. The play/broadcast started at 12:30pm and ended at 4pm, which meant that lunch would not be happening. So we stopped at the Fillmore Street Cafe for a breakfast bagel at 10:30am. I had a latte and the 49ers, consisting of ham, egg, and cheddar cheese on a plain bagel. Little Starlet had the Fillmore Special, with sausage, egg and cheese. Very hot and tasty.

We then headed up to the Japantown shopping area. It was freezing cold, icy wind blasting poor Little Starlet's uncovered legs (she never will listen when I tell her to put more clothes on), so we went inside to look at the stores. After walking though the Japanese language bookstore and admiring the plastic dolls with penises, we found ourselves at the Anderson Bakery. Little Starlet had a slice of chocolate ganache cake, while I toyed with a light, fluffy, delicious slice of coffee creme cake. As I always say to the girls, if you MUST eat food that's bad for you, at least make sure it is high quality. This certainly was worth every calorie.

We went into the theatre food-free, but once the intermission came along, it was clear that Little Starlet required yet more sustenance. So we went to the Peet's Coffee concession in the theatre and bought bags of popcorn (and yet another latte for me).

Hubby and Deep Thought have spent the week in Bear Valley. They got back this afternoon just before Little Starlet and I returned from the city. We were all exhausted and lacking imagination, so we tucked into Whole Foods' frozen pizza for dinner: pepperoni, hawaiian, and chicken quesadilla (note, three pizzas between four of us, so a small concession to thinness there).

All in all, a very fun day, but a bit peculiar on the dietary front.

Dr Mom's Wednesday Weigh-In

Apologies for radio silence this week, I've been having a crazy busy week. This morning I weighed in at 151.8 lbs, which is a loss of a princely 0.4 lbs this week, but 10 lbs since the start of January. I reckon that is some kind of milestone.

I only achieved this loss by eating almost nothing on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. On Sunday I wasn't well and spent much of the day in bed at the mercy of mysterious vertigo that left as suddenly as it arrived, but which had the virtue of making me feel nauseous and so not want to eat. For the rest, plates of salad greens dressed in vinegar. Banana for snack. That kind of thing. Yesterday I was visiting a friend at home and refused a biscuit. These are the lengths you have to go to in order to lose weight when you are 42. Bleugh.

Marked Up, In All Senses

This morning I took Ruby for a 50 minute walk at Windy Hill which is, as the name suggests, a hill and thus pretty good exercise. After I took her home, I went shopping. Of course, I hadn't taken the precaution of eating anything at home after my walk, so by the time I got to the pet food store I was feeling hungry. Ah, I think, I can feel a coffee at that Starbucks right there coming on. So I buy my nonfat decaf latte (nicknamed the "Why Bother?" by the staff in our local Starbucks) and add to it a Fruit, Nut and Cheese Platter (460 calories) as that is the only thing available to eat that isn't cake.

It consists of half an apple, a small wedge of brie, a little cube of gouda, and a slice of cheddar, accompanied by two wholewheat crackers and what appears to be a quarter cup of unsalted almonds with dried cranberries. It was actually pretty tasty and filling, and generally just what the doctor ordered.

The breakdown of nutrition reveals 29g fat, 34g carbs, 6g fiber, and 19g protein. I'm not really sure where all that carbohydrate is coming from, but there you are. Plug it into the WeightWatchers calculator and get out 12 points spent. Yikes! I guess I can see where it is coming from now I reflect upon it... The apple would count as zero points. The almonds and cranberries can't be more than 4 points, and the crackers surely no more than 2. So the cheese must be the remaining 6 points, which makes sense when you consider that one ounce of brie is 3 points all by itself.

The other thing I wanted to comment on was the price. It cost $4.95. I reckon that, even on a generous calculation - given that Starbucks can buy everything wholesale - the contents can't cost more than around $2.50 (cheese $1, apple $0.50, crackers $0.25, almonds and cranberries $0.50, packaging $0.30). So the markup is around 100%. Not a bad way to make a profit, eh?

Mmmm, Bacon's Up.

It's Wednesday, and that means cleaners at our house. They take over the entire house and clean every room simultaneously for a total of four hours. That might make it seem like we live in some kind of mansion, but we don't. We do have a nice house, but the main factor is their obsessive need to clean every surface, move every piece of furniture, and even tidy up inside drawers and cupboards. My usual strategy is to go out for lunch as it is impossible to eat while other people are working so hard.

Generally on a Wednesday, the diner at Stanford - the Palo Alto Creamery, Fountain and Grill, to give it its proper name - calls to me. And Ruby. We typically go for lunch, or brunch, or whatever you want to call it, and Ruby enjoys a little under-the-table treat, before we head off for a walk. The wait staff often bring her out a bowl of water and a dog biscuit, which she never eats as she doesn't like "milk bones" as they are called. Today lunch was two poached eggs, hash browns, four slices of crisply cooked bacon, and a slice of cracked wheat toast with raspberry jam, plus decaf coffee. This comes to a princely 14 Weightwatchers points, and worth every one of them. Ruby enjoyed her morsels of bacon and potato. In the past I have bought a side of bacon just for her, but I think we need to watch her weight too... and having an extra side of bacon on the table is no inducement to good behavior for Dr Mom!!

We rounded off our lunch with a 50 minute walk at the Palo Alto Baylands (worth 3 points).

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Death by Lunch

Hubby has given up paid employment - for the time being - and so is available for lunch. And coffee. And snacks. Though he protests the need to stay slim and lovely, he always seems to be up for a meal out. Honestly, I am too, because eating at home just get so dull. However, I can't see that this will be good for our collective waistlines.

Lunch today: A 1/3 lb beefburger on a multigrain bun with blue cheese and bacon, lettuce, tomatoe and mayo; and a side of skinny fries.

Positively health food. (Well, there's a vegetable...)

Getting the Lungs Going Again

I am still battling the stupid cough, which feels like it will never go away. I'm now able to sleep on one pillow, which is a step forward, and I no longer have a permanent crick in my neck, but it would be hard to say that I wake each morning refreshed and ready to meet the day.

On the positive side, Ruby is taking me for a walk two or three times each day. We usually go out for about 45 minutes, which is her maximum. I have been taking her to walk at the local nature reserve parks, Arasteradero or the Bay Lands, but we're currently keeping away from those while Ruby recovers from a wound in her behind caused by a nasty grass seed called a foxtail. So our daily regime of walking is around the streets, to the local neighborhood park, and back again. Ruby is now at her target weight, 20 lbs, so our goal is not to let her get any fatter. Do you think that feeding her bits of my chocolate croissant (not the chocolate part, which is bad for dogs) will have a negative impact on that goal?

I think that feeding myself chocolate croissants may be having a negative impact on my goal... I do try to tell myself that I don't need a little something at 10am, but my insides tell me otherwise. I guess I am trained to eat in the middle of the morning - something I blame on my childhood, naturally, when our family ate every two hours to accommodate the needs of my diabetic brother - and so it's a hard habit to shake. I also eat when I'm bored and sometimes I simply defiantly eat because I know I shouldn't. Maybe I should see a shrink. You'll note that I never get tempted to snack on fruit or veggies. I have a bad relationship with them.

Another positive note: I attended my Scottish Dance class for the first time this year. I did the sign-ins (I'm the class manager) in the first week, but didn't dance; then wasn't able to go last week. This week I stuck with the beginners' class, not because I am a beginner (after six years, I am most definitely not!) but because in these early weeks of the year the class involves a lot more walking than dancing, as the newbies learn the formations. That worked out fine until we did the social dance at the end with the experienced class - Kendall's Hornpipe - and I almost died at the end...cough...cough...cough. Some of my classmates were quite alarmed. "Don't...worry..." I gasped, as I waved them away.

What's for dinner? Oh yes, lovely calorific quiche.

Happy Independence Day

Today is the Fourth of July, so of course we had a barbecue. Our new outdoor kitchen is finished. We decided to use today as an excuse to get some people over and try out our new grills. I thought we'd try an ambitious menu, drawn from a new cook book: "Planet Barbecue" by Steven Raichlen.

The menu included:
- Santa Maria Tri-Tip (beef)= Californian recipe
- Ginger, Garlic and Honey Grilled Back Ribs (pork) = Cambodian recipe
- Grilled Tofu with Chile Peanut Sauce = Malaysian recipe
- Grilled Bananas = Colombian recipe
- Caramelized Grilled Pineapple = Brazilian recipe
- Rotisserie Onions = Brazilian recipe

And there were various other things, including a summer pudding made by Deep Thought. We were inspired by OEM saying she had made one a couple of days ago. We'd never made one before and were pretty pleased by how it turned out. Like OEM's, ours went onto the plate without falling apart! One of our young friends had also made dessert: decorated cupcakes laid out in the pattern of the US flag (see photo). There were many left over at the end of the meal, and I cruelly made her mother take them all home. Good for me!

The grilling was reasonably successful. The best dish of those listed above was the ribs. Hubby burned them a bit, but it didn't seem to matter too much. The beef was a bit tough, though not sure why. The tofu was fine, but was an incredible faff to make, with an ingredient list as long as your arm that would have been longer if I'd bothered to buy every item called for. I think Hubby learned that both grills get hotter than he expected - and certainly hotter than our old kettle grill, which was consigned to the recycling center yesterday - and so everything is even more inclined to burn than before.

We'll be grilling for 26 people next weekend, and I'm sure there will be even more men around willing to offer their expert advice. It really is a guy thing.

I guess this isn't the path to weight loss

Um, a chocolate croissant, piece of gingerbread (home made by a friend) and a slice of hazlenut mousse probably doesn't qualify as the path to weight loss - but it is still a diet!