Change of Scenery...

Does this new background look okay, or is it too reminiscent of giant boobs? I can't tell yet.

So, since I've last posted, and since starting this whole "pay attention to your food" endeavor, I am happy to report that as of today, I am down 6lbs! Of course, losing those 6lbs still keeps me right around where I was the last time I mustered the courage to post my weight. AND I know that my weight can fluctuate up to 5lbs on any given day. BUT I am going to take it as a victory and a sign that being more mindful of the food I eat and how I eat it is the path for me to find a healthy and happy weight.

I've got a little extra motivation this month, as I am planning on attending BlogHer towards the end of the month. I know there will be women there of all shapes and sizes, but the couple of women I know I'm going to be hanging out with are petite and cute. I am so not petite and cute--"football player-esque" is the modifier I'd use to describe myself. So if I could trim down a few more pounds this month so that I don't look like I belong quite as much on the defensive line of the New England Patriots, that would be cool.

So lets' see--what have I been eating lately? Admittedly, I've fallen out of the habit of photographing everything, but I will get back into it.

One of the keys I'm finding is portion control. Husband and I split this fennel and something else pizza a couple weeks ago at a restaurant downtown called BoHo. It was delicious, but I only had 2 pieces, when I would normally have, um, eaten half of it and fought Husband for the last piece.

Husband's soup @ the same restaurant--potato & leek, I want to say--was delicious. A couple spoonfuls did the trick.

Same restaurant--ginormous salad of fresh beets and goat cheese. I was sad to see them take this away from me only 1/2 eaten, but it was just too massive (it doesn't look so huge in this picture, but it could have been an entree). Working on portion control is opening up for me a realization that I have tremendous guilt about not finishing food. But I don't know why--no one ever gave me the "starving kids in Africa" line when I was growing up. But still...

Yogurt and toasted, milled flax seed from Trader Joes. Delicious

Beef and guacamole tacos from Loteria @ the Farmer's Market. Should have put my hand down for some perspective--they're tiny, but delicious.

Love. This.

www.operationbeautiful.com

How often do we as women, especially women who are carrying extra weight, find looking in the mirror to be painful reminders of all the ways in which we find ourselves to be imperfect? How many times do we leaf through fashion and health magazines and wistfully sigh, "if only (fill in your poison here--for me it's "If only I weighed 30 pounds less than I do now")? How many times do we not take a chance or try something new because we feel like putting ourselves out there for the world to see will be an embarrassment or humiliation?

This site, and it's message, is so empowering and affirming. I love that, even though the little notes are on mirrors, it's not about how you look. It's about the fact that you are beautiful on the inside, you are a beautiful person. In the past few weeks, I've really worked on changing my perception about weight-loss to be one of health and longevity rather than "oooooh, I want to wear skinny jeans!" (which are so out now anyway, right? right? honestly, I have no idea. Maybe that's just wishful thinking). So the reminder that the best of me is who I am, not how I look, and that that's how it really should be, is refreshing and motivating.

I love that it's women reminding other women. We are taught from such a young age to tear each other down. If she is self-confident and sure of herself, she might get what I want. I'd better make her feel at least as shitty about herself as I feel about myself. Believe me, I went to an all-girl high school. I know. I've been on the giving and receiving end of that nasty little dynamic more times than I care to remember.

I just wanted to pass that link along. I'll be carting around my own little post-it note pad & pen from here on out. I plan to spread a little Operation Beauty around myself.

Nothing side-tracks an emotional eater like infertility

Sure, probably just another in a long line of excuses as to why I practically found myself face down in a banana split yesterday afternoon. A banana split I told my 3 year old we were getting for him because he'd been so good at the doctor's office. You know, for the appointment I went to to find out there was no chance I was going to be pregnant this month. AGAIN. gah!!!!

Anyway, this has been a particularly interesting experience for me in terms of understanding how my brain works when it comes to food, and realizing that I can actually take some control over it. Yeah, I ate 1/2 the banana split (and when I say 1/2, I really mean two-thirds), but later on in the evening, when the glum was settling back in, I went to the gym and ran. Oh. my. god. So, so, so much better than stuffing my face.

Now, I'm not saying I won't find solace in food ever again or that I"m going to run a marathon next week to heal my broken heart. I'm just saying that it was nice to realize that I have other options than a bowl of ice cream the size of my head or a slab of ice cream. And that's got to be good, right?

Back on Track...

It's been a long few days. I've been wallowing in self-pity (and, not so coincidentally, cake) for the past few days. It's amazing how cake just seems to find me (har har) when I am so down.

But I've managed today not to let any cake break down my front door and force me to eat it. I did my oatmeal, sandwich wrap, healthy snack routine. I'm not hungry, which is a good thing to sit with and realize. But I"m still miserable. And it's hard to keep myself from going to the kitchen to find some reasonable substitute for cake, or cakey-like foods.

If you are a "recovering" emotional eater, WHAT do you do when the pull to the pantry is so strong it takes everything in you to fight it?

Lost Weekend...

Well, not really. But I do often struggle with exactly how to go about eating during the weekend. I guess it is the dieting mindset that I've lived with for so long--the idea that if you are "good" all week, you can treat yourself during the weekend. Well, I've been trying to work my way out of that way of looking at eating--but it does leave me wondering how to go about eating Friday night through Sunday. Which really? Sounds weird now that I see it in writing.

I've not been good about carting my camera around everywhere with me. Which is a shame, because a couple of nights ago, I ate at one of my favorite sandwich and pastry shops and split a slice of something called "princess cake" with a girlfriend. Dear god. I found this picture, online, of what a traditional princess cake looks like:

Lemon cream, raspberry cream and fondant icing? Dear baby Jesus, that stuff is good. Thankfully I asked for a small slice, and shared it with a friend who was equally as excited by the prospect of just flopping her face right into the cake. Still, very indulgent. But so worth it. I'm trying to find a new relationship with foods like this, too. I'd rather save up the "junk" food for something impressive and special like this than have something like ice cream every night, just for the sake of eating it. So this was actually one of the first sugary treats I've had in a long time that didn't come with the invisible but suffocating side 'o guilt.

Last night, Husband and I took Ethan and a good friend of ours to our favorite sushi restaurant.

watermelon and cucumber mojito. For real.

This bowl of edemame was as big as my head. Maybe bigger. And delicious.

I wish I was a good photographer so you could really see how vibrant that masago is. It was gorgeous. California rolls are possibly the world's yummiest food.

Sunset roll (eel and avocado--where have you been all of my life?) and a spicy yellowtail roll.

So, okay. No Luna bars or fruit. Not the most healthy foray into the culinary world, but it's all good. I did have a delicious bowl of Starbucks oatmeal this morning with nuts, brown sugar and dried fruit (yes, I ask for all the toppings--old habits die hard).

With my tall decaf skinny vanilla latte, the perfect breakfast...

Wednesday Wobble...

Okay, so it wasn't a banner day. Husband got home a bit late and I just didn't have it in me to go out for a run. Probably because of the, erm, chocolate chip and coconut cookies Ethan and I made this afternoon.

Yeah, I know. But actually, it's kind of a good thing that I feel like crap. I ate too many cookies and it just doesn't feel good. Tasted awesome. Feels yucky. That's a serious lesson for me because I tend not to listen to my body---I eat when I'm bored, freaked out, pissed off, sad or any other emotion you can think of---eating is a huge mental thing for me. Need to calm down? Grab a bite. Need to take my mind off of something that's bugging me? Grab a bite to eat.

I'm trying very hard to move away from the mindset that food is comfort or a replacement for dealing with emotional needs and recognizing it as a fuel for my body. The past few days have been a good step in that direction, but how realistic is it to think that I'd just POOF! suddenly be able to turn off years of conditioning?

Today I found out that my body didn't respond any better to the higher dose of clomid and that our chances of conceiving this month are no better than they were last month, or any of the other sixteen months that we've been trying. So I guess it's actually pretty impressive that I only ate 3-4 small chocolate chip cookies instead of all of them, or instead of grazing all day long on whatever I could find in the kitchen. Food has an incredible emotion-numbing power for me that is very hard to shake. I'm finding though, that for the most part, I am really enjoying the more healthful foods I've been eating over the past several days and that running clears my head in a way that stuffing my face never has.

So, let's see what today looked like.

I didn't get a chance to have breakfast this morning because I had to be at the reproductive endocrinologist's office @ 8:30 am and I chose showering over eating (as would any sane woman who knows she's going to hear "take off everything from the waste down and cover up with that paper" at some point during her morning). So on the way to the office, I grabbed a sugar-free chai tea latte @ Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. But when I got home, I enjoyed a cup of yogurt and a crushed up Kashi TLC bar--delicious.

For lunch, I made my standard wrap, but I added cucumber spears to it--crunchy! I finished the snap peas from the farmer's market, too. The problem with farmer's market produce is you have to eat it almost immediately or it's mushy and gross. The tomatoes? The 3-year old ate them all. Thanks, bud.


Also the grapes? I think I ate 3 of them. Ethan is a freak for the grapes. I would have to take the bowl into a closet somewhere in the house if I wanted them to myself. So instead, I had a LUNA bar, but forgot to take a picture of it.

These are the cookies we made--nothing fancy, but a perfect distraction towards the end of the day.

Ethan helped with the pouring and stirring. I wish I weren't such a freak about salmonella or I'd have let him taste the cookie dough, but alas, I am terrified of food poisoning, so I'm a mean-mommy when it comes to licking the beaters when mixing batter or the cookie dough spatula. He can deal with it in therapy later in his life...


We added coconut to the dough. I thought of adding crushed almonds, but my food processor was still soaking after last night's avocado topping and I didn't have the motivation to scrub it.


He's a stirring fool.


Aaaaand after making cookies, he opts for a strawberry. He'll be starting his own blog on healthy eating any day now....

I made the cookies tiny and packed most of them away in tupperware for Husband to take to work with him tomorrow. But I kept a tiny stash for us, and promptly ate half of them. Tasty, but tummy-ache-inducing.


This is what dinner was supposed to look like, according to Rachael Freaking Ray.


But I used lean ground turkey instead of ground beef, so it looked a little...um, paler.

I have yet to eat any. Husband has downed a good portion, so it must not suck (or he's being really nice). But it's really nice not to feel like I have to eat if I'm not actually hungry.

Farmers Market Day

One of the best things about living in Los Angeles is the fact that you can barely walk down the street without finding yourself strolling through a farmer's market of some kind. On Sunday mornings, we go to the one 3 blocks away from us, which takes over a city block, complete with fresh produce, flowers, baked goods, fresh honey, artisan crafts and bounce-houses and pony rides. On Tuesday afternoons, Ethan and I jump in the car and drive a couple miles to another one, which pops up in an auxiliary parking lot of a local mall at 3pm, and features fresh eggs (and the rooster, to boot), a climbing wall, the best shave-ice this side of Hawaii and an assortment of produce and yummy baked stuff.

File this one under "you learn something every day," I had NO idea that artichokes flowered.

How freaking gorgeous is that?! And I'm a lousy photographer and this is on my lousy little digital, so you know they are 100% spectacular looking in person.

These are my delicious farmer's market buys:

The strawberries are insanely juicy and the snap peas may as well be made of sugar. Being more mindful of food made me really appreciate the farmer's market today. I sampled more fruits and vegetables today than the baked goods, although I did sample on baker's sweetbean pie. I have no idea what is in that stuff, but sweet fancy Moses, that stuff was BEYOND heaven. It was everything in me not to buy a whole slice (or, erm, pie). I promised myself that if I was still fantasizing about it by next week, I'd let myself have a slice. :-)

Today's menu:

Old-fashioned oatmeal (not instant---wayyy too much sodium), brown sugar, almonds and bananas.


coffee

lunch was a turkey and cheese wrap (yes, there's mayo in there, but please, people, it is the condiment of the gods, so don't expect me to give it up any time soon).

Dinner was another experiment. This one went better than the cardboard and paste (chick pea patty) disaster of last night. This is a beef and black bean burger with a lime, avocado, onion and light sour cream topping, on a whole wheat bun. It wasn't a ton of work, but the taste-to-effort ratio wasn't really that worth it. But at least it was busting with protein.

Thanks for the advice on getting enough protein. If I ruled the world, foods high in protein wouldn't also be so high in fat.