a new love affair

I have a new obsession.  A new love.  I think about it all the time.

No, it’s not Bejeweled Blitz (a terribly addicting game on Facebook).  It’s this:

Whole Foods.

I love it there.

The produce is beautiful and delicious.  The meat counter – Heavens to Betsy! – is unrivaled by our local grocery chain.  The cheese stand – oh, if only cheese did not wreck havoc on my digestive system – I would’ve eaten the whole stand. The. Whole. Stand. The gelato isn’t just gelato – it’s sexy gelato.  This gelato romances me from across the bakery, glowing all hot and sultry-like.  This gelato says, “Emily, please, just take a look.  Just a little look.”

And then there’s the nut butter.  Fresh ground nut butter.  Nut butter the way that God intended.  Pure, unadulturated nut butter.

Heaven help me.

And let me tell you – this is true love.  I know a few of Whole Food’s faults already.  I know it is pricey.  I know the take-and-bake pizza is terrible.  I know that Annie’s Rice Pasta and Cheddar Mac & Cheese is nothing like Kraft’s.  Nothing.  Not even in the same ballpark.  It is sacrilege that they put this Mac & Cheese in a blue box as if to suggest that they are comparable to Kraft’s neon orange bliss.  Consider yourselves warned.

But these few faults are like finding out your husband is leaves the seat up.  You still love him, you just know to check before you sit in the middle of the night.

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help!!!

Sooo.

We went nearly 3 months without sugar.

THREE WHOLE MONTHS.

Then we hosted a cocktail and dessert party.

Sounds harmless, right?

But the problem was that we made/bought TOO many desserts.  Even with 40 people attending, we have SO much left over.  I brought most of the extra desserts into work and pawned the rest off on anyone who had arms to carry them.  And STILL I have a 1/4 of a chocolate cake and a 1/4 of a berry cobbler and a 1/4 of an apple pie.

And all of them seduce me.

“Emmmmmily!”

“Yes?”

“I am a delicious pie/cake/cobbler.  You can give up sweets TOMORROW.  But right now, how about a slice/scoop?”

And I am weak.

So tomorrow, it’s game on.  No more sugar again.

It’s not like I feel good eating this sugar.  I feel TERRIBLE eating it.  My teeth feel sugary – I brushed them 3 times after the party and STIL felt icky.

Ok.  The clock starts up again.

I just wish broccoli spent as much time seducing me…

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so much to say!

Ok, in no particular order:

1.  I am running again.  Well, jogging.  Very, very, very slowly.  At this point, it’s as much for my physical health as it is for my emotional health.  I find that when I run, I am able to process things better and have more energy.  So I am committed to running/jogging/moving my booty every other day.

2.  For anyone wondering about my sugarless lifestyle, yes, we are still sugarless in the K House.  I have to say, there have been quite a few moments of weakness, but we are proud that we haven’t caved.  The only sweets we had were for FK’s 30th birthday.  Hey, that’s a pretty special occasion, right?  So we busted out some cinnamon bread pudding and homemade whipped cream.  Soooo good.  I was worried that it would become some kind of gateway drug – you know, leading to other sugary delights – but we stayed the course and did not venture any further into Candyland.

3. There have been lots of different themes floating around in my life.  I want to write extensively on every single theme, but right now is not the time.  Here are some highlights:

a. Definitions.  I’ve been wondering a lot about how to take control about how I’m defined, both by others and more importantly by myself.  This concern is on a personal and professional level.  Personally, I’m not afraid of being defined as someone who has had a very difficult time having children, but I AM afraid of being defined as ONLY that.  And maybe “afraid” is the wrong word.  I think if people only saw me for this trial, that would be a very limited way of looking at me and that I, and others, would miss out on the bigger picture of what God is doing in my life.  I also think about this a lot professionally, too – the woman who did my job previously really only focused on one particular area, whereas I’ve branched out and brought an entirely different skill set to the game.  I’m concerned that my success is being defined only based on area, without taking into consideration all of the other things I’m bringing to the table.  I have ideas on how to resolve my professional dilemma, but it’s a little bit more difficult to resolve the personal side of things.

b. Attitude. I’ve been battling attitude a lot lately.  For a great many reasons, it’s been particularly difficult for me to keep my attitude in check.  The running is helping with cleaning out any emotional overload, allowing me to refocus my energies when I feel myself slipping into a swirling vortex of sadness.  I think it’s a difficult one to balance, though, because I do believe that I need to be where I am, and not rush through it.  Said another way, I’ve spent a lot of my life checking things off of lists.  I like to do that.  But living a life of checking things off of lists sometimes means that I rush through things to just to get through the list.  A conversation I had tonight reminded me that life is really a series of processes and experiences, not a neat and tidy notebook of lists with check marks next to each item. Discontentment is being in one place, but believing that I should be somewhere else.  I kind of wonder if I would be more content if I just said, “Ok, this is where I am today, and that is ok” – with an understanding that I would not be in this same emotional place forever.  What does it look like to live a more contented life?  Hm.

c. Fluidity. In 2004/2005, I was working a lot of hours.  A lot of hours.  Even when I was not at work, I was mentally at work.  My brain was constantly thinking about things going on at the office; looking for solutions to problems I was having.  It doesn’t help that I worked in advertising and our world is inundated with ad messages.  Even if I didn’t want to take work home with me, it was everywhere.  But when I look back at that time and remember trips we took or things we did, I don’t remember the pervasiveness of work.  I just remember the fun things.  It’s amazing how my brain can edit out work and make my memories into a nice, clean 30 minute montage.  So why do I bring that up and what does it have to do with being more fluid?  Well, I realize that I have a selective way of remembering things.  I remember the joys of the simplicity of life being young when I feel overwhelmed.  But when I really remember what it was like to be me in second grade, I also have to remember that I was totally overwhelmed by simple things then (which were not so simple to me at the time).  I remember lying in bed one night, tossing and turning because I forgot to bring a worksheet home from school.  I knew I would get a “zero” for the assignment.  I finally went into my parents room really late at night (probably 10 p.m.) and told my mom what I was thinking about.  She laughed and told me about times when she felt the same way. The adrenaline from worrying about that worksheet left a bitter, metallic taste in my mouth.  The same taste I get even now when I realize I forgot something or am on a tight deadline.  We edit our memories.  Things do seem better in the past and more hopeful in the future.  Life is constant change.  People are born, people die, people move away, people move in… The sooner that I am comfortable with the idea that nothing is permanent in this life, the easier it is to roll with the punches.  I was not born as a person who is comfortable with being fluid, but over time I’ve come to be better with it.  I think being married to a pilot has expedited my personal growth in this area.  Let’s not go crazy though – I have hardly mastered being fluid and I still love a good check list, but in the realm of things I cannot control, learning to be fluid has been an excessively helpful trait.

So yeah.  Just a few thoughts.  No particular order.  More on some of them later.  Or maybe not.  Well, you can be 100% assured that I will likely talk about running and sugar again.  I’m predictable like that.

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stomach whiplash

I love my nutritionist because I learn new stuff all the time when I meet with her.

For example, I told her that I generally am not hungry before lunch – unless I eat a large dinner the night before.  Which is kind of curious because you would think the opposite would happen – that I would be full from the night before – but it doesn’t.

This really intrigued my nutritionist.

You always want to be able to intrigue your nutritionist.

She told me that there has been some research that indicated that this was a more common occurance than not.  (awesome!)

She said that there is a theory that a big meal the night before stretches your stomach and your body works to fill that larger stomach space.

So yeah, there you have it!

I have to say, despite the amazing amount of food that my mom had at Thanksgiving – I didn’t go too nuts.  I was definitely full, but I didn’t have stomach whiplash today.  Small victories!

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“honoring my hunger”

or “praying: dear God, please help me find my collar bones. amen”

or “keeping my beach ball under water”

So I had a follow up appointment with the nutritionist. We are working on answering my prayer to find my collar bones, which is excellent.  But more importantly, we are working on me making better, more thoughtful food choices.

See, my old job was fun and exciting at times, but it often required me to eat many meals (sometimes 3) at my desk.  Food became my reward and the primary source of joy during my day (since seeing the sunshine was often not possible).  Oh yeah, and the dark chocolate Dove bars brought a lot of joy.  Yeah. Those were good, too.

So now that I have a job that is a little bit more reasonable in terms of time demands (although it has been a bit hairy recently), we don’t have a lot of food available to graze on, which is awesome.  The only tricky things are Monday nights when we have food catered in… sigh, but hey, you can’t win them all.

That all being said, I’m having an easier time managing what I eat.  I need to keep going to the grocery store on a regular basis and buying healthy snacks and foods.

Interesting (somewhat common sense) insights from the nutritionist:

eat breakfast – it helps boost your metabolism and prevents you from getting over-hungry and making bad decisions.

weigh yourself regularly – studies show people maintaining their weight did the best job when they were weighing themselves regularly.  It helped them keep from back-sliding.

honor your hunger – don’t let yourself get too hungry.  if you are hungry an hour before lunch, eat an apple to tide you over.  if you are hungry two hours before lunch, try eating both a carb and a fat/protein (like an apple and string cheese) to help keep you sustained to lunch.

meal mix – try to make each meal part carb, part protein and part fat keep you from getting hungry too quickly after eating.  a carb heavy meal can often lead to a sugar spike and a corresponding crash, leaving you hungry before it’s time to eat.

sleep!! – lack of sleep correlates to weight gain.  people who work overnight shifts or have inconsistent sleeping patterns are shown to gain weight dramatically.

 

… so speaking of that – it’s late and I need to sleep.    I did lose a little bit of weight on this new eating plan, so I’m going to keep doing it.

Oh, and the nutritionist described losing and maintaining weight like trying to hold a beach ball under water.  And I thought that was pretty accurate.  If I’m not careful, the beach ball might pop back up… which it did… so here’s to getting the darn beach ball back under water… during the holidays… yeah… awesome.

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