No Significant Difference

So, I only lost a pound last week.  One measly pound.  Apparently I did a few things wrong.

I think I just plain old ate too much bread and potatoes last week and two few vegetables.

I also didn’t really do much exercise last week, and I know, for myself, exercise is paramount if I want to lose weight.

So this week is going to be better.    More produce, more exercise!

Victory!

Last night I had my first major victory.  I’m really feeling the junk-food withdrawls (even though I thought I’d weeded out a lot of junk food, there’s still been a few things I haven’t been able to let go of) this week, inspite of my Reese’s Pieces Snack Attack.

Last night, as I was driving home from work, I had the strongest urge to go through the drive-thru at Little Casear’s and order my usual:  2 orders of Italian Cheese bread with their garlic-butter sauce.  YUM! 

I seriously almost did it.  I was driving down the street, salivating over the thought of having one of my very favorite snacks, but I could hear the little Voice in my head screaming away not to do it.

The Voice kept screaming that:

1.  I will never get fit if I continue to eat the same old garbage day in and day out

2.  Eating that kind of crap gives me the most awful heartburn afterwards, and frankly, it’s just not worth it.

So I bargained with myself.  I hate to do that…I’d rather just have the willpower to flat-out say “no.”  But last night I wasn’t strong enough to deny myself, so bargained.  I traded Little Casar’s for my own homemade garlic toast made from all of my whole wheat bread  for the week and the rest of my butter ration.

I have to say, it wasn’t quite as good as Little Caesar’s, but it did the trick.  It nipped the craving in the bud without the heartburn.  The best part is that I kept within my ration allotment to do it!  I probably didn’t need to eat all of my bread at once, or use up the rest of my butter, but I am choosing to look at this as a victory instead of a failure.   While I didn’t make the best possible choice, I made the better possible choice, and that’s something I can feel good about, right?

Vintage-Inspired Clothing

There’s just something so beautiful about vintage clothing.  I particularly like the styles from the 1940′s.  Everything is so feminine, yet not too frilly or unpractical.

I have a desire to start wearing dresses.  When I go out for fun on the town with friends or family, I love to dress up.  I love to work hard on my hair, meticulously apply make-up, and just get dolled up.  I feel so good about myself when I do this.  More and more, I’ve been asking myself why I don’t do this for every day as well.  Wouldn’t wearing nice dresses or skirts for every day  make every day a special occasion?  Wouldn’t I have more pride in myself, if I took more daily care with my apperance?  Wouldn’t this be yet another thing for me to focus on each day besides what I’m going to eat?

Have you ever noticed the courtesy and care shown towards women who are dressed up?  I’ve noticed, even when I’ve been out at a bar or something with friends, that if I’m wearing a dress and everyone else is wearing their jeans and revealing tops, that I am treated drastically differently then they are.  I feel I’m shown more respect, and I enjoy being treated like a lady, rather than a tramp, personally.

What excites me about vintage clothing is that I have the opportunity to wear dresses, to be modest yet lovely without looking frumpy. 

But vintage clothing is difficult to come by, and more often than not, when I see something that I really like, it isn’t in my size.  So, I’ve started investigating stores that offer vintage-inspired clothing. 

One of my very favorite online stores is Unique Vintage.  I absolutely love many of the dresses!  I’ve ordered one dress already, and a bathing suit (based off of past measurements that I know I can easily achieve again), but I won’t be ordering anything else until I’ve reached my goal weight of 160 lbs.  In the meantime, I can look, drool, and dream!

Attack of the Sugar Monster

Sam’s Club is an evil, evil place.   I went there on Tuesday afternoon to buy myself a mop and I ran into a big bag of Reese’s Pieces candy.

I’m pretty sure those aren’t part of my authorized allotment of rations.  Nevertheless, in a big, fat moment of weakness, the Reese’s Pieces went into the cart.  And I’ve been gobbling them up ever since.  It got to the point where this morning, I had to just throw the bag out because I’m sabotaging all my efforts with the insane amount of sugar I’ve consumed this week.

Why is it so hard to just say “goodbye” to junk food?   I want a new body, a new look so much more than I actually want to eat junk food…but yet, when faced with temptation, my resolve just seems to crumble.

I’m so disappointed in myself.  I knew that putting the bag of Reese’s in my cart was bad news.  I knew it was something I shouldn’t do.  I knew I wouldn’t be able to control myself with candy around. 

So why did I do it?  Is it just habit?  Would I really have felt deprived if I hadn’t bought the candy?  And if I would have, is a little deprivation such a bad thing considering what I’m undertaking?

I had to remind myself, this morning, that back in the war years, the luxery of candy wouldn’t have been so readily available.  Even if it was available for purchase in the store, families might not have been able to purchase it due to lake of ration coupons, or even lack of money. 

In our society of abundance, and instant-gratification, it has become all to easy to just pluck whatever strikes our fancy off the shelves.  No wonder so many of us are struggling with our weight.  Add in the fact that so many of these junk foods contain harmful, addictive chemicals, and our dependency on them becomes even more dangerous. 

So I guess it comes down to breaking addictions.  How exactly does one go about doing that?

Cankles

I laughed out loud (and not in a good way) when I saw this add.  It reminded me of the bit from the movie “Shallow Hal” when the horror of “cankles” was thouroughly discussed.  (For those of you who never saw the movie, “cankles” are when your calf and your ankle are indistinguishable.)

In this day and age, there’s so much emphasis placed on a woman’s need to be “thin.”  Often, this message is pegged as a sign of the times. 

Apparently, the message is timeless. 

Today women worry about the size of their breasts or their rear-ends.  I wonder, if during the 1940′s,  the size of one’s ankles was really an issue?  Or did ads like this create a problem where there really wasn’t one?

One of my biggest pet-peeves is when I see a normal-sized woman complaining about how “fat” she thinks she is.  It ticks me off.  I realize that a lot of people have  self-perceptions different than how the world sees them, but I think people need to make an honest hard look at themselves in determining whether or not their weight is truly a problem.

Maybe this is something that’s been easier for me to accept as I’ve gotten older.  And maybe it’s because my entire perception has completely changed since gaining as much weight as I have.  I can’t imagine ever again complaining about how “fat” I am when I’m a normal weight.   I have friends who have never been overweight in their lives who complain about their “fat” and it just irritates me.  Worse, I hear them making fun of people who ARE overweight, and it ticks me off even more.

One thing I’ve realized over the course of my weight gain is that people don’t set out with the intention of getting fat.  I certainly didn’t.  I was depressed and struggling with PTSD, and cookies, and chips and butter with sandwiches were my only real comfort.  It happened in the blink of an eye it seems. 

My “ah-ha” moment came when I ripped my last pair of jeans that fit (and when I say “fit” I mean that I could stuff myself into them and button them by laying on the bed and battling for a half an hour).  I found myself in Lane Bryant buying “Big Girl Jeans.”   Looking in the mirror, knowing that (as much as jeans that fit were more flattering than the sausage casings I had been wearing)  I was going to drop $60 on a pair of pants that didn’t leave me looking good was so depressing.  I finally had to face the fact that I had become fat.  And it’s like something inside of me just shriveled up and died.

Suddenly I felt ashamed in my own skin.  It became hard for me to go out with my girlfriends and watch guys flirt with them and ask for their numbers because I was invisible.  One day I was in the library looking through the books when I saw a little kid pointing at me and asking his mom why “that lady’s butt is so big?”   So I’ve put my life on hold.  I’ve told myself that “Someday I’ll be ready to get fit again.”  And, “Someday I’ll want to date and have a social life again.”  But meanwhile “I’ll just stuff myself with Every Kind of Junkfood Known to Man and let that be my friends, my life.”

Frankly, I’m tired of it.  I’m tired of feeling ashamed of my own skin.  But I’m also tired of the messages we’re constantly bombarded with as women that we have to look a certain way, that we have to be a certain size to be worthwhile. 

It’s time for me to start believing that I’m worthwhile no matter what shape or size I am, no matter if I have cankles or not.  It’s time for me to start believing that the reason I need to loose weight is to be healthy, so I can move again (and let’s face it, so shopping isn’t a total nightmare).  Unfortunately, saying all of this is much easier than actually believing it.  But I have confidence that, as I take steps to better care for myself, those feelings of belief will accompany the sure knowledge of truth.

That’s A Lot of Food!

Today I attempted to caputure on camera the amount of food I have for my weekly “rations.”  Funny thing was that I forgot to include the potatoes and the oatmeal, and you can barely see the bag of carrots or the bag of celery.  Those blue cartons are mushrooms, by the way.  The green cup contains olive oil, and the white stuff surrounding the cup is bacon grease.  Anyway, the point is, I was amazed by the amount of food I have to eat this week.  It seems like a HUGE amound of food.  I guess that’s because most of it is produce. 

I’m not used to eating so much produce, but this way, I’m practically guarenteed to get my five fruits and vegetables each day!

I’m a little nervous about the lack of junk food.  Even though I’ve been weeding it out of my life, I’m having a hard time coming to grips that–this is it!  There’s no more processed junk food to be purchased.

My only comfort is that I CAN have junk food if I make it myself, and if it comes from my weekly allotment of rations.  This way, it really isn’t “junk food” is it?

Anyway, I think my biggest challenges this week are going to be adjusting to filling my meals with more vegetables and less junk, actually having to cook my food, and limiting my portions so that I have enough food to last me the entire week!

So it begins.

The Ration Book Diet

Today I ordered a book.  It’s being shipped all the way from Great Britian, and I’m beyond excited to receive it!

The book’s called The Ration Book Diet, by Mike Brown and Carol Harris.

“The Wartime diet that our parents and grandparents had to endure during the dark days of the Second World War may seem unappealing to modern tastes, but its low fat, high fibre and sensibly sized portions meant that the British population enjoyed a level of health and fitness unsurpassed since 1945. Using the wartime diet as a model, sixty recipes have been specially created to enable you and your family to eat more healthily. Some are taken straight from Second World War cookery books, with only minor adjustments to suit the 21st century palate. For the most part, however, new dishes have been created to use the same range of rationed ingredients available to housewives during the war. These original recipes and variations have been combined to produce a day-by-day meal plan for a week. Added to this basic diet plan are recipes for treats and special occasions, not forgetting food for children and some helpful advice on what to do with leftovers.“

In the past few days, I’ve been doing a lot of online searching for information about rationing in America during the war.  Suprisingly, there isn’t a lot of information out there.  It seems one can find plenty of information about rationing in Britian during the war, but very little about America.

From what I can gather, rationing in America was less severe than in Britain.  Apparently, Americans felt the hurt more in their gas tanks than in their iceboxes.

The lack of information about America’s homefront during World War II is a little disconcerting to me.  There’s plenty of information about how America rallied and went to work, cranking out planes and bullets and bombs, but so little about the daily lives of Americans during this time period.

I think about what it must have been like living in Europe during the war.  I wonder if, the lack of bombing and actual physical danger, experienced by Americans at home influences how we look at history.   Our biggest “sacrifice” or “contribution” to the war (besides the blood of our servicemembers) was to send women from the home into the workplace.  It appears that, in the nature of capitalism, that’s where the emphasis on our position in history during this time is placed. 

While I admire the industrial approach Americans took to winning the war, I admire the personal sacrifices people made during this time even more.  What a challenge to undertake in the face of such uncertainty!

I’m very, very excited for Sunday, the official “start” date for implementing this lifestyle, and I think I might just have to make some changes to my current ration list to make things more authentic.  I sort of feel I “owe” it to the people who actually made these sacrifices–so I could live the life of freedom and choice that I live today–to walk a while in their shoes, and in this way, honor them and what they did for us.

Tomato Basil Soup

Hot and savory…kind of tastes like pizza, and eases the craving.

4 c. crushed tomatoes (28 oz. can)

4 c. tomato juice or 2 c. tomato juice plus 2 c. chicken broth

1/8 c. crushed, dried basil                    

1 c. whole milk  

1/2 c. (1stick) butter   

salt & pepper to taste 

garlic powder to taste   

                                                                                                                                                                            Mix tomatoes and juice together, add basil and simmer 30 min.  Stir in half and half and butter.  Season to taste, heat through.  Serve with cracker, croutons or crusty bread.

• I like to blend the crushed tomatos in a food processor or blender until they’re smooth because I don’t like the texture of “chunks” in my food.
• I like having this with a slice of garlic toast…yum!
• Substituting V8 juice for tomato juice gives it a little extra “zing.”
• You can use less milk and less butter and just simmer the soup longer to maintain a thicker consistency.

Motivation

Where does motivation come from?  Why is it, the minute we vow to change our ways, to takle the distant mountain, we sputter to a halt before we even get to the foothills?

I’ve had major issues with motivation for the past 5 or 6 years.  At some point in the not-so-distant future, I will be sharing more of my story with you all, but for right now, the important thing to know is that my motivation level has been a 2 on a scale of 1-1o. 

I’m hoping that’s about to change.

I have my rationing plan in order.  The “launch date” I’ve set for myself is Sunday, February 28, 2010 (I want to start on a Sunday).  This week, I’ve been trying to “gear up” as they say.  I’m busy plotting, scheming, thinking about how “easy” it’s going to be to complete the journey this time. 

And then I come back to reality.  It’s not going to be easy.

So this week is my practice run.  I didn’t go out and buy my rations list (I plan to do that, though this weekend), but I’ve been using up what I currently have.  I can already tell its going to be challenging to me to just go shopping once a week and to make due with my allottments or do without.

I’ve also been dilibarating about whether or not to cut my meat and wheat allotments in half.   I’m afraid that if I don’t, I’ll end up going over my weekly calorie limit.  I guess I’m going to try the first week with the rations I’ve already decided on and make cuts after the first week if necessary.   Part of me wants to make this more authentic to American rations (as the author of the 194o’s Experiement is doing with British rations), but right this moment I’m not there yet.  Perhaps I’ll get there!  But what I’m doing now is taking the first step!  Authenticity can come later…the main thing, now, that needs to develop is sustainability!

The thing is, that for the first time, I feel pretty excited about the prospect of losing weight, of being on a “diet.”  To me, this concept of rationing, of pulling the 1940′s aspect into things is generating some interest.  Even more interesting is that I’m going to document my progress in this blog.

I can’t tell you all how excited I am to go shopping this weekend for my first set of “rations” and to document that!  This week, instead of focusing on my next “snack,” I’ve been focusing on future ideas for this blog!

I’m hoping that this blog will be the “distraction” I need to wean me away from a focus on food.  Even more, I’m hoping that you, dear readers, (and you’re own blogs) will provide me with a sense of support and solidarity.

The Rations

Rationing is going to be quite interesting.  I’m going to have to be organized.  I’m going to have to be frugal.  I’m going to have to be disciplined. 

It’s going to be interesting.

I’m going to list the approximate calorie count for the food item.  However, I’m not going to count the calories in each item of produce, at least, not right away.  While I will be keeping track of the amount of produce I buy each week, I feel the calories are fairly negligent, and so I won’t start worrying about those until later.  It’s possible that I won’t consume the entire amount of each item, but the point is, I cannot consume more than the ration amount.

Weekly Rations

approximately 10,500 cal/week diet

1 whole chicken (max 3.5 lbs), 468 cal per lb or

1  lb beef, free of hormones/anti-biotics, 1200 cal or

4 oz bacon, 2615 cal or                                                  

4 oz ham, 826 cal                                          

3 eggs, pastured if possible, 225 cal                

4 c wheat, entire grain, 2528 cal

2 c steel-cut oats, 1120 cal                                           

4 oz (1 stick) butter, organic, 810 cal               

4 oz cooking fat (olive, coconut or animal oil), 1020 cal

1 qt whole milk, 600 cal                      

1 pint buttermilk, 200 cal                        

8 oz cheese, free of hormones/anti-biotics, 914 cal

8 oz honey, 688 cal                        

1 bag of celery, ?? cal                   

2 bags of carrots, ?? cal                             

1-2 onions, ?? cal                                                

1-2 bulbs of garlic, ?? cal

4 bags of green beans, ?? cal                                

4 bags broccoli, ?? cal                                  

7 apples, 560 cal                                                          

7 citrus fruits (orange, grapfruit, etc.), 602 cal

4 potatoes, 1112 cal                                            

4 cartons of mushrooms, ?? cal

2 bags of mixed berries, 340 cal

The maximum amount of calories, if I chose bacon for the week, ate all the allotted honey, and ate everything else would be about 14,000 calories per week.  That would make my daily calorie average about 2,000 calories a day.  I doubt I’ll be choosing bacon often as my meat–I prefer chicken and beef over pork–and I don’t eat much sugar and/or honey nowadays.  Regardless, at my weight, anywhere from 1, 500 -2,000 calories per day is still going to result in a weight-loss.  But just to ensure my success, I will be tracking the actual amount of food I use for the first few weeks, and if necessary, I will adjust these amounts accordingly.