Thursday, December 20, 2012

Week 4, late again.

Unlike most projects of this kind that start out with a bang and trickle off, this one started with a trickle and will hopefully start banging soon.  The weeks between Thanksgiving and the end of the year are the busiest of all for college professors; to misquote T. S. Eliot misquoting Chaucer, "December is the cruelest month / bringing shadows out of the dead land /  mixing memory with desire."  So accomplishments have to be viewed in a different light.  Most days, I managed to do some exercise.  Some days it was my usual thing, some days less, some days I was glad to have a walk to the train because at least it provided a break from sitting and staring at piles of papers.  Today I should get in my usual exercise, plus a little extra walking--75 minutes of Yoga, 1 hour of Zumba, plus the walks to and from the Y where I do these things, and a little extra en route to Physical Therapy.  But there are still about 40 exams to grade and a lot of math to do . . .

And then the "Holiday Season" kicks into high gear.  The combination of a mixed-up schedule, the Y not having classes, the pool where I like to swim when I'm not at school closed, my trainer on vacation, and extra eating isn't ideal to any of the goals.  So the challenge is to be creative and make sure I get out and do something, instead of staying in an doing nothing, except eat.

On 12/26, I have to return to the "Induction" phase of the Dropping Acid diet, in anticipation of going off Prilosec (after 9 months of 2x per day and 3 months of 1x per day), finally.  This will probably last about a month or more.  It's very restrictive and very boring.  However, probabaly good for me; a kind of enforced "detox" if you will.  I'm not sure I entirely believe in de-toxing or cleansing, certainly not in the kinds that involve eating nothing and only drinking lemon juice with cayenne pepper for a month.  (That would certainly send my Reflux to the skies!)  But having a plan to start breaking bad habits is a good thing; the craziness of the end of the semester, plus the general tendencies of winter, plus all those holiday goodies around makes it hard to eat well or responsibly.  I've been very bad about chocolate, which I'm supposed to restrict, and weirdly, bad about not avoiding onions or garlic.  Also, not being carefully low fat.  And while I haven't had any heartburn, I also have been feeling "acidy."  So knowing I have to change these habits, and having some enforced dates by which to do it, is a good thing.  I will have to renew my affection for graham crackers.

So in terms of resolutions for this week--they will be the same.  Next week, the true test of the year begins.

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Weeks Two and Three, Put Together

This is the time of year when it's entirely possible to say, "I don't know what happened to last week," and mean it.  If I have been succeeding in any of those aforementioned goals, I'm not sure I noticed.

I've read repeatedly that after a "certain age" (please say with your best French accent) that one can no longer eat carbohydrates with the same impunity, so from the 26th of November until the 6th of December, I tried very hard to readuce carbohydrates and eat larger quantities of protein.  This was helped along by two factors; my husband, who is a carb-fiend vegetarian, was away, and I had lots of leftover Thanksgiving turkey.  Between leftover turkey, turkey soup, salmon, some eggs, and other additions, I shifted my eating for several days.  To what effect, I'm not sure; people claim to feel less hungry while eating a lot of protein, but I'm not sure that happened, really.  Although the week was not without a somewhat alarming moment that probably meant something--one day, discovering that my turkey leftovers were no longer edible, I had to supplement the lunch with something else, and ended up inhaling half a box of cereal.  I think there may be something to the whole carbohydrate thing, although I can't put my finger on what it is.  To use a phrase a friend of mine introduced me to, "they're more-ish."  It's harder to stop eating them than it is to stop eating other things.  This counts for both the simple and complex kind; the cereal was a very nice high-protein, high-fiber, low-sugar, whole-grain type, but there was something kind of demented about how it felt to eat it--or not to be able to stop eating it.  And of course, the same thing happens with sugary foods, for me, especially chocolate, which is emphatically NOT on the reflux diet. 

Although all that said, if I eat a lot of animal protein, I kind of start to feel hung over.  Red meat more than poultry or fish, but they all can do it to me, even dairy.

I did decide I had to weigh myself, which I wasn't planning on.  The first weigh in (152lbs) was better than I expected.  This week, having returned to my more typical diet, who knows.  I did wear a pair of pants yesterday that I thought fit, but was falling off me, but I think they probably never fit; I just forgot that they were this baggy.  Still, although they looked a bit ridiculous, there was something kind of nice about that too-large feeling.  Except that they're new, and now I'm out a pair of pants.  Sigh.