Day 5
So the routine has pretty much set in. The temptations have lessened a bit. I doubt they'll ever go away but I can handle the dull roar. I've been sticking to my mental approach. "I don't have the win the war, I just have the win each battle and the war will win itself." Small battles I can do. Taking each temptation on as it comes is mentally less strenuous then worrying about the diet as a whole. I don't have to say no to food as a whole, I just have to say it to that Oreo cookie or that shrimp curry. This is assisted b the fact that I'm almost never hungry if I keep to the schedule. I'm told after the first week or two the hunger sense turns off all together. Neat!
All that said, next week I get to start soups. I’m looking forward to this as it's a) something hot and b) salty. While the potassium pill is salty it's not a good kind of salty and outside that everything is sweet. I don't hate this of course, but it'll be nice to have a variety of tastes and not just various kinds of sweet.
Additionally, I've begun to experiment a little with texture. I'm a very texture oriented person and having a shake all the time is a tab monotonous. So far I've mixed the shakes with carbonated water for a fizzy drink (makes the Metamucil MUCH better, almost an orange soda). I've used less water to make a sort of pudding. Next I'm going to try blending ice into the drink and making the pudding and freezing it. I'm thinking ice cream! I can live on an ice cream diet for sure.
Also as those Safeway Select flavored waters are allowed (no sodium, 0 calories) there is some mixing am matching to do there. M graciously picked me up an assortment on her last trip. So far Chocolate shake mix in wild cherry water is the winner. Wild Berry shake in Strawberry/Kiwi is a close second.
I had my first on-diet visit yesterday, it wasn't as great as the first time but the key factor was easy to pinpoint. Due to some scheduling difficulties they had to pull in a replacement doctor that used to work with the practice YEARS ago. Let's just say no one was happy with this guy, not me, not the other patients, not the office staff. For my own experience after 30 minutes in the same exam room waiting for him (he just went room to room instead of following any order and skipped me several times, probably because I was on the end) I went looking for someone to tell me what was up. The exasperated medical assistant apologized and directed me to just attend the session (that started 15 minutes ago.) On my way back to the room to get my stuff, he showed up and made some quip about not being able to help me because I wasn't in the exam room. I was about to call into question his mental state but just let it slip in the interest of cosmic harmony. The session to follow just proved that he was off his rocker in various ways that I won't go into here.
After that enjoyment, I caught the last half of group session. I missed most of the interactive portions of it but caught the lecture. The topic was Calories: Meats. The gist of it was raising awareness on where, within the average standard, various meats fell. Apparently almost all meats fall within a 25-125 calories per ounce scale. At the 25 cal/oz end you have white and shell fish and on the 125 side you have sausage and prime rib. For those playing at home, it's all about fat content... duh.
There was some good information there. Most of it was obvious but the modifiers were new to me and in retrospect pretty logical, I just never thought about it. Such as, the more fat something has in it the less fat it can absorb (eg frying bacon isn't going affect its rating). So if you have a flank steak (100) and fry it, you’re staying about the same, maybe a little more. However, if you bread and fry shrimp (25) it's x4 or 100. So both are in the same ballpark. Or the act of grinding beef lowers it's fat content such that lean ground beef is about the same calorically as say a dark poultry meat (like duck). The purpose of all of this was to enable the making of small changes to your day to day. The instructor mentioned that if one were to take 1 serving of fatty red meat (125) and replaced it with chicken (75-100) 1 day a week, at the end of a year that would save in the neighborhood of 14 pounds. Interesting stuff.
In other news... filet mignon is still the best tasting thing on the planet. :p
All that said, next week I get to start soups. I’m looking forward to this as it's a) something hot and b) salty. While the potassium pill is salty it's not a good kind of salty and outside that everything is sweet. I don't hate this of course, but it'll be nice to have a variety of tastes and not just various kinds of sweet.
Additionally, I've begun to experiment a little with texture. I'm a very texture oriented person and having a shake all the time is a tab monotonous. So far I've mixed the shakes with carbonated water for a fizzy drink (makes the Metamucil MUCH better, almost an orange soda). I've used less water to make a sort of pudding. Next I'm going to try blending ice into the drink and making the pudding and freezing it. I'm thinking ice cream! I can live on an ice cream diet for sure.
Also as those Safeway Select flavored waters are allowed (no sodium, 0 calories) there is some mixing am matching to do there. M graciously picked me up an assortment on her last trip. So far Chocolate shake mix in wild cherry water is the winner. Wild Berry shake in Strawberry/Kiwi is a close second.
I had my first on-diet visit yesterday, it wasn't as great as the first time but the key factor was easy to pinpoint. Due to some scheduling difficulties they had to pull in a replacement doctor that used to work with the practice YEARS ago. Let's just say no one was happy with this guy, not me, not the other patients, not the office staff. For my own experience after 30 minutes in the same exam room waiting for him (he just went room to room instead of following any order and skipped me several times, probably because I was on the end) I went looking for someone to tell me what was up. The exasperated medical assistant apologized and directed me to just attend the session (that started 15 minutes ago.) On my way back to the room to get my stuff, he showed up and made some quip about not being able to help me because I wasn't in the exam room. I was about to call into question his mental state but just let it slip in the interest of cosmic harmony. The session to follow just proved that he was off his rocker in various ways that I won't go into here.
After that enjoyment, I caught the last half of group session. I missed most of the interactive portions of it but caught the lecture. The topic was Calories: Meats. The gist of it was raising awareness on where, within the average standard, various meats fell. Apparently almost all meats fall within a 25-125 calories per ounce scale. At the 25 cal/oz end you have white and shell fish and on the 125 side you have sausage and prime rib. For those playing at home, it's all about fat content... duh.
There was some good information there. Most of it was obvious but the modifiers were new to me and in retrospect pretty logical, I just never thought about it. Such as, the more fat something has in it the less fat it can absorb (eg frying bacon isn't going affect its rating). So if you have a flank steak (100) and fry it, you’re staying about the same, maybe a little more. However, if you bread and fry shrimp (25) it's x4 or 100. So both are in the same ballpark. Or the act of grinding beef lowers it's fat content such that lean ground beef is about the same calorically as say a dark poultry meat (like duck). The purpose of all of this was to enable the making of small changes to your day to day. The instructor mentioned that if one were to take 1 serving of fatty red meat (125) and replaced it with chicken (75-100) 1 day a week, at the end of a year that would save in the neighborhood of 14 pounds. Interesting stuff.
In other news... filet mignon is still the best tasting thing on the planet. :p