Tag Archives: food

A Moment for Healing

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Friday nights, quite possibly the single best night of the week for me now.  The end to a 50-plus hour work week, the prospect of 2 glorious days without an alarm clock to go to work. As bad as a Friday at work can be, it can be over when I shut the door to the office look up and the sky take a deep breath and walk to my car.

This past Friday was a shining example to me of a life I never thought I would have.  After work I headed off to the store to scoop up things for a dinner party, but not a party at my house… not yet. We were celebrating change in the life of a woman dear to me.  A very close friend had just finished a grueling course schedule, along with a super demanding job, and is getting ready to move! Talk about a reason to party.  I loaded the car with all kinds of stuff, chicken, cake, tons of veggies, booze, flowers, and hit the road windows down!

I sang and danced in my car in traffic, yes I am THAT person.  I sang loudly, I laughed at the people getting angry as people did the zipper merge, I felt the sun on my skin through the open windows.  Life was good.  I pulled up to Manda’s place with the radio cranked up singing.  We laughed at the amount of stuff piled in my car… Kelly was there, she helped by steadying the shopping cart as we loaded it full of stuff… As I parked my car I smiled, this is my life.  Friends.  As we unloaded the stuff and I situated things around the place, I got a call wanting to know if I was still going to need help… friends… people who help when you are in need… My heart was heavy, one of my very best friends was too ill too attend.  I respect her need to be home, I was happy to have shared a chat on the phone with her earlier in the night.  I busied myself in the kitchen, everyone was hungry.  We were going to eat in stages on this night.  Diving into food it was so funny to watch everyone laugh and chat and come together as a group.

We are all so different, from all over the country really, some native to MN, some have been here since they were kids, brought here from the west coast others landed here from the east coast.  All different strengths and weaknesses, so different yet so much the same.  We all walk the same path, we all struggle, and lift one another up in our time of need.  This is family, friendship, love, and strength.  This is what community is about.  When they say it takes a village to raise a child… this is what they are speaking of.

I watched Sean dance with a young girl, Manda give horsey rides, and I watched newer friends meet older friends.  I did what fills me with so much fulfillment, and cooked with love for my family.  Served up with love!  I think it made Manda a bit uncomfortable that I was serving people but it is what I do!  Advice, discussions, silliness, and sincerity continued late into the night.  I hated to leave at the end of the night.

I was the last one to leave.  I lingered in the parking lot talking to Manda long after everyone left.  I didn’t want the night to end. There was a time when my weekend nights involved sitting home playing xbox live… those people were my friends.  They knew I laughed loudly, and flirted outrageously, and had a big personality… and a heart to match. They didn’t have to see me, I never had to see them… I was protected, I was safe.

I don’t have to live that way anymore, I shouldn’t have had to feel like that was the only way to live before.  I am so blessed to have so many freakin amazing people in my life right now, and I know I would never have found them without going through all of the crap that I did.  I am so thankful for each and every friend I have, I wish there was some way for me to show, or tell those in my life ow much they mean to me, but there isn’t. There are no words to tell those that you love, you changed my life, gave me hope and make me a better person to the degree that my friends have made me.

My friends are my family, and I would lay down my life for them.  I never thought I would find so many people that I could love like this, but I wouldn’t trade them in for all the money in the world.  This is who I am… I do not recognize myself, my heart is healing from the hurt and I am finding that I am okay with that.

Running on Decaf…

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Hop in the time machine with me! Let’s navigate back again all the way to second grade and lets watch for a moment.  There I sit at the kitchen table, grumpy and groggy, sad, not wanting to go to school.  This is the year I cut my hair at school, lied about it, got into trouble for it.  I refuse to eat breakfast and it is the morning of the CTBS test, this is the standardized testing for the state.  This is the morning I get a small Peter Rabbit mug full of the blood of life, coffee.

Wayne’s World wavy lines, fast forward…. by the end of high school I would drink a cup before school, take one with me, and continue to fill my coffee mug throughout the day from the faculty pot.  I was downing something like 17 cups a day.  Water… what does that mean I existed on coffee and caffeine free diet coke.  I was forced off coffee, or moreover caffeine when I had my nervous breakdown and went into treatment for my depression in the hospital.  Caffeine is a drug and I was abusing it.

I had a coffee pot next to my bed when I lived with my now ex husband, there was pretty much constantly coffee available I drank it he didn’t.  He was into Mountain Dew and Southern Comfort.  When I saw the bad habits and behavioral patterns emerging that reminded me of how I was back in high school I went off coffee again, cold turkey.

So now I am a real adult, not that I wasn’t when I was married, but seriously I was still a child, I was still too young.  I live in the big city, I know I LOVE coffee.  I have used coffee as a crutch since I moved here.  When I would stay up for 2 or 3 days at a time working nights and trying to have some kind of life, swapping shifts to make social events, I would drink coffee like no one should.  I enjoy the flavor, the subtle differences in different blends, I enjoy savoring a cup of coffee.

Coffee cupI was bringing a mug (5cup home-brewed pot) with me every day to work in the morning, when you get up at 3am to work a 10 hour shift, plus prep time for your shift, and then have someone who isn’t quite on time EVER that is your relief it turns into a 10.5 hour day 5 times a week, coffee seems like it should be a part of the day.  I recently decided, about the time I gave up gluten and my stomach was being so horrible, that perhaps that much coffee was not a good idea.  I have been cutting back my coffee consumption significantly.  No more caffeine, and also no coffee until I have had a liter of water in the morning.  It is supposed to be really good for your skin to have water first thing in the morning, Can’t hurt to start the day with water right?

Have I noticed a change in the no caffeine role in my life yet?  Well, truth is I still have had a bit of caffeine here and there.  There is a small pack of 7.5 ounce cans of coke zero in my work fridge for the simple reason that on occasion my headaches are bad enough that I need the caffeine to make the pills work better.  I want to not be dependent on the caffeine, and while I know a decaf Americano still has a small amount of caffeine in it, I am certain that it is significantly less than what the quad shot tall had.  I still plan on drinking coffee, but only in moderation, not every day.  Like I said I enjoy the flavor, and that is what I am going to focus on, enjoying the flavor of the coffee, sipping not gulping, swirling not chugging.

Is it realistic to think I will never have caffeine, absolutely not, I do not live in a world of absolutes.  I want to go long enough without a significant amount of it in my system that I can feel what kind of effect it has on my body.  So here I sit with my decaf Americano with heavy cream. YUM!

Quitting Weight Watchers

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So since July I have been doing Weight Watchers.  I have done as I promised myself, I gave into the plan.  I followed the weird math, I did the plan as it was intended.  I didn’t use my weekly points, I used my weekly points.  I used all, I used some, I worked out a lot, I worked out a little.  I ate my target daily points, I ate less than my target points and here I sit, fluxing the same 15 lbs up and down.

Now there is something to be said about staying close to the same weight for a long period of time after having regained a bunch of weight, however I am not happy with this.  I wrote, I believe last time, maybe the time before, about how I am switching to VERY low carb, and gluten-free eating.  I would love to continue my Weight Watchers membership to get the meetings and the weigh in’s (I prefer to weigh in on someone else’s scale that doesn’t move around as opposed to mine that gets tossed in the closet after I weigh) however almost $50.00 a month is not worth getting on the scale 4 times.  I will miss seeing the excitement and progress others are making on their journeys, and I haven’t told anyone goodbye or why I am leaving.  I know my leader will be sad to see me go, but it isn’t working for me.

That after all is what this whole process is about. Finding what works for you, not what works for everyone else.  I can’t sit here and say, oh such and such worked for Emma and blah blah worked for Joe, because when it comes to these things, I am not them I am myself.  I have never been one to follow the crowd, actually that is something I pride myself on.  I may have my f2fpack, but I never run with the pack.  I follow my own drum and listen to what my body tells me is right.  I did far too much damage to my body when I was young by not eating enough thinking that was the only way.  Now with the wealth of knowledge available to me I know there are hundreds of ways to do things and I need to find what works for me.

I do know that tracking is the answer, however I think that tracking calories isn’t my answer. That led to a very dangerous world for me.  I know that when I track calories I become so hyper-focused on tracking every crumb and every morsel that it becomes a sickness.  I start to lose my grip on reality after a while.  It didn’t happen luckily when I was tracking points as much, but it was still there.  I think somewhere in my mind I just want so badly to succeed that I cannot let anything go.

I know that it takes time to get where I am going, and like everything worth doing it is worth doing well, and the right way.  So I bump along, wondering how anyone ever loses weight working full-time (50 hours a week minimum), squeezing in working out, and trying to maintain a relationship with loved ones, and friends.  It truly is no wonder I feel like I can’t ever catch up sometimes.

I find my center as I close my eyes, my bedtime is my time.  It is the commitment I make to myself.  It is the way I show myself respect, to let myself have rest.  When someone asks me how much sleep I got the night before I like to be able to answer 7 or 8 hours. I could take time from that to keep up with everyone else… but it is not worth the expense. I am doing what I need to do for me… and in the end, no one else can do this for me, or do it like me.

Cleaning House

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So in getting myself set up for success I am slowly cleaning all the crap out of my pantry.  I am coming to terms with the fact that I am better for listening to my body.  Fighting the transition is silly, embracing the change is the only logical and rational thing to do.  As I dump boxes of Fiber One bars into a Target bag, and throw 100 calorie packs, and 2-point weight watchers bars into bags to give away I am faced with a dilemma.

Is it better to throw this stuff out, or give it away? I sent some of my Weight Watchers products to new homes already.  Friends that I know like the products, but won’t likely over indulge in them.  I have some bars left in my car back in the trunk where I can’t just grab one peel it and shove it into my mouth without thinking about the consequences.

I bring bags of my stuff to the office, spread them out on the snack table and watch and people snatch things from it like it were a magical wonderland! Skittles, Special K Crackers, granola things, reduced fat peanut butter, cookies, all dumped there sitting there like a treasure trove.  All the things that I adore, all the things that I like because they came from my home.

The torture only lasts about a day or so per bag, In general free food won’t last long in my office.  I purged the pantry of the jar of biscoff cookie spread today… it is still sitting on the table… no one knows what to do with it… if noone eats it or takes it by tomorrow I will throw it away.  Am I doing the wrong thing by bringing these things to my office?  I can’t donate open packages to a food shelf so my other option really is to just throw them out.

I feel like I am feeding/enabling people to binge on food by bringing all of this stuff to the office.  I know there is one gentleman who works for us who can use the food, and always asks if it is okay for him to take an extra one for later.  He knows where all the free meals in the city are, he has had a hard life.  I feel for him, he is why I bring the food here… but I wonder if on some level I am not trying to make everyone else fat?  I know that isn’t my intention… but could it be??

I guess in the end I know I am doing what is best for me, and that is something I keep doing.  I am not going to force anyone to eat the snacks on the table, and I am content to toss them in the dumpster at the end of the day.  I am slowly setting up my home environment for success as things change.  Next step is to finish setting my work environment up.  I dug out my extra Brita pitcher, that will be coming here to work this week.  I don’t like the taste of city tap water, and my Bobble Bottle is great, but once it’s empty I have no cold water left.

I guess the phrase adapt or die comes to mind when I think about where I am on my path right now.  I certainly don’t want to go back to feeling like I did when I was 430 pounds, and I certainly know I don’t want to feel like crap.  So we put our heads down and push through and find the upside.  Bacon and dippy eggs for breakfast with a side of asparagus? Sounds like a silver lining to me!

Now I just have to finish the cabinet purge, get the community snack table cleared and I will be in the clear :D

Pepperidge farm still remembers that you can numb your feelings with food

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So last night I was headed to bed, and I was watching a bit of TV and a commercial came on and something clicked inside of my head, proof that I am much more aware and awake about the subtext and subtle cues around me of food and it’s influence in our world.  You can view the commercial <a href=”http://ispot.tv/a/7IcC”>here</a&gt;, and I suggest that you do so you know what I am talking about.

For those of you that can’t view this commercial it is a husband and wife having a conversation getting ready to go out for the night.  The husband is prodding his wife along about not being quite ready to go yet.  She is half in frame with a glass talking about how she has to spend the night with the bosses wife.  Haha it is a big joke we are supposed to laugh at booze being used to lubricate her senses for the night.  skip forward just a bit and we come to find out she is medicateing herself not with a cocktail, (because alcohol is not the answer) but the more socially acceptable form of medication, FOOD!  Now I get it, it is just a commercial, but I actually literally cocked my head to the side and grabbed my bedside table and wrote down Pepperidge farm still remembers… that you can numb your feelings with food.

There is a stigma that ataches itself to an addiction to alcohol and drugs, but somehow the idea that food being used as therapy, and comfort, and hidden eating and being an addiction is somehow ignored and disordered eating being trivialized, joked about and ridiculed is really making me mad.  There is a Sonic commercial where the husband is hiding his eating from his wife, (I believe he is out to eat with his best friend and says Don’t tell my wife).  Is the obesity epidemic and poor nutrition habits of this country a joke to everyone?  Are the skyrocketing numbers of body image issues among not just girls but boys as well resulting in eating disorders not a big enough clue to anyone that this should not be a joke?

I think the fact that the moment i saw what was really going on in this commercial and my mind clicked over and felt it in my mind, and my gut I could tell that there was and is something deeper going on in my life.  I talked briefly in my last post about my cupcake issue.  And how I found a solution to that with making my own.  I don’t want to be swayed by fancy packaging or advertising.  Fruits and veggies are bright and vibrant, and will be coming into season, center isles are full of crap.  The tables have turned marketing professionals you need to change your game!

The answer is to turn off the tv right?  Turn off the tv and go to bed, or for a walk, or 100 other things.  I can only fight for what I know is right for me or my own family, but seriously I understand they are looking for some humor, but this hit a sour and bitter note with me.

What do you think?

Excitement

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So what makes my little bradycardic heart go pitter patter? When I find something new and

Lemon Plum, ripening

Lemon Plum, ripening

fun at the grocery store! Anything from a new product on the shelves or a new recipe I get excited! However it seems rare-er and rare-er these days that I find new fruits and veggies these days that I have never seen or heard of before.

This week I nearly lept over a few people to learn what this pictured fruit was.  More than the “Next great potato chip flavor” from Lays, or the latest new burger combo from Burger King I am googling to learn about this fruit!  I cannot wait to feel the flesh burst under my teeth and the juices flow into my mouth.  Perhaps it is more that I miss summer, and the juicy fruits and wealth of produce that it brings.  The wait to try this fruit is killing me!

I have had so much underwhelming produce lately it nearly breaks my heart.  The other night I ate some starchy bananas, that left my tongue sore. My grapes have been small and sour, my apples are mediocre and the ones I like, expensive.  I spend more money buying the better apples so that I will enjoy them, the Opal apples the Lady Alice apples even honey crisp apples, but they just aren’t up to snuff.  Strawberries and blueberries are okay, but not as good as can be, the quality is just so hit and miss with them.

I am ready for summer, farmers markets, the warm sunshine on my skin.  I am ready for the smell of fresh tomatoes, and … dirt. I am hopeful perhaps some of my friends with larger kitchen space will share their spaces this summer and let me come cook for them.  Let me amaze them with me culinary capabilities to wow everyone.  *shruggs*

Have you tried anything new lately? Is there something in season that I shouldn’t miss?  Do you have a favorite produce gem this time of year that I should be trying?  Frozen and canned seems to be the way to go in the winter… but I am Freezer Burnt here in Minnesota.

Struggle

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When there is no struggle there can be no progress. 

*Sigh*

Since last Friday my body has been in a mode I like to call, the hunger train.  I want to eat everything in sight!  I am fighting with all my might to not inhale everything I see.  When I went to brunch with my friends, as I posted here on the blog, I custom ordered to find something that would hit on exactly what I thought I needed and wanted, some fat, some greens, and here I sit almost a week later and the metaphorical train barrels on.

I believe that it is hormone related, I am due for that wonderful flux in the next few days, however the fact that this is now on a week of struggle I am just so very tired of this.  The week prior to this I didn’t eat all my Weight Watchers points, in fact most days I had to force myself to get close to my goals.  This week I am eating into my “weeklies”  I find myself not wanting to track my extra points to that I have enough extras left in-case I get hungry… which is silly because all I would be doing is telling myself lies. Track honestly, or you aren’t doing yourself any favors.  Eat the right foods if you are hungry.

So I am trying to cut out the unnatural carbohydrates from my diet over the next few days.  I am thinking perhaps what I am experiencing is almost a sugar detox.  Last week I ate a LOT of carbs.  Not really good carbs either, and in my world I don’t view carbohydrates as the enemy, however I do have two different divisions of them in my mind.  Natural, and unnatural where the natural ones come from veggies, fruits, dairy etc, natural sugars and starches, and the unnatural ones are the ones that come from pasta and things like that.  I ate vegetarian Pad Thai (homemade) 5 times last week.  All were within my daily points totals, reasonable serving sizes however that much pasta, even though it was rice noodles, sweetened with honey, and veggies.  The amount of carbohydrates consumed may be exactly what has triggered me into this mega food rage.

This week I have been eating chicken salad for lunch, 4 ounces of chicken, with celery puree, and some good fat mixed in to keep it  together.  Breakfast has stayed the same, my breakfast sandwich (Special K Veggie Flatbread or Jimmy Dean Delight spinach sandwich) and yogurt and I think I need more protein.  I am guessing that I am in need of more protein.  Last night I had breakfast for dinner, egg beaters, ham and mushrooms (natural carb).  Today for breakfast I am swapping out my flat-bread for egg beaters with ham and mushrooms and laughing cow, and a Greek yogurt.  Coffee with half & half, and maybe some fruit.

I am dropping the triscuits from my lunch in favor of string cheese, and an extra few snow peas and I am currently unsure as to what dinner will hold as it is my takeout night as I will be hitting the pool right after work.  Maybe an unwich from Jimmy John’s.    I don’t like that I am struggling so much, I don’t like that I am waking up during the night wanting to empty the fridge.  I don’t like that no matter how much water I drink, or how many good choices I am making the hunger keeps coming back.

I am frustrated but I am putting my faith in the program, one choice at a time is all I can make.  I will stumble, I will fall, I will get up, brush myself off, and continue along.

Taking Charge

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Yesterday I attended a brunch with some lovely ladies. I adore my friends, they will give support when asked, or not asked. They will give to you what ever it is that you need, guidance without judgement. If you want to order healthy and need a push for one thing over another they will gladly give you a suggestion, if you want to split something, you can usually find a buddy to split a dish. They will also not judge you for ordering something from the naughty list.
Yesterday as I sat at the cafe with 9 amazing ladies around me I looked over the menu and while so many things sounded good, like blueberry pancakes, or chocolate chip cookies and milk, nothing was really hitting on all the cylinders for me. Cheese fries and a burger were an option, but really even that wasn’t sounding good because if I had that I would want cookie too and that just ends with me feeling like a human dumpster. There were all sorts of things like eggs Benedict, and omelets with avocado, everything sounded good, but wasn’t quite what I wanted.
One of the things that I love about Minnesota, that I never had the opportunity to experience elsewhere, is that we have so many nice local eateries here. In these smaller establishments I don’t feel bad about asking to create my own dishes off the menu. There was a Mixed greens side salad with a balsamic vinaigrette dressing that caught my eye, but knowing full well that a side salad was not going to fill me up, and that it lacked any kind of protein I asked kindly if there was any way for me to get things switched up a bit. I cannot envision a chain restaurant doing this, mostly because those places are packet city. So the wonderful girl that was taking care of our table said it was no problem. I had two poached eggs added to my double mixed green side salads.
I was super pleased when my food arrived and I had an amazingly huge plate of greens to munch on, with two lovely poached eggs to use as topping for my salad. I had a few drops of the dressing dripped onto the salad, but it really didn’t need it, salt pepper and egg makes an amazing combo on mixed greens. I am finding more and more that if I really listen to my body it will tell me what I want to eat, and I NEED to listen to it, or I will just fill it with a bunch of junk that I don’t really enjoy anyway.
Story here is, eat local! Ask for what you want and think outside of the box! You might just amaze yourself, and your friends. And be the envy of everyone at the table when you have something special from the kitchen. ;)

2012 the year that the world Ended… A lookback.

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So by now we all have learned that 2012 would not bring about the end of the world, contrary to what some of my coworkers deeply believed.  It would not bring about the apocalypse despite all the snow being dumped just south of my home here in Minneapolis.  What did 2012 bring about… the death of Twinkies, which were never a food  I ate but was often accused of eating too many of… I am glad to see them go.  It was also the year my gym membership was basically “life tuition” as I developed new heath problems, from my feet to my back, hips and knees problems seemed to be the order of things.  Physical therapy replaced the gym for the later part of 2012 and even that has been replaced with no activity as I sit here in a coffee shop on a Saturday morning evaluating what is to come for 2013.

I have been in my job now for almost a year.  Each day I wake at 3am and head to work, I am on from 4am until 2pm Monday through Friday.   My job is extremely high stress and extremely critical.  This week I took my 2 vacation days and I ended up having to go into work to fix a crisis at 5pm on Tuesday.  My job allows no flexibility for me to sneak in things like a quick walk around the block for exercise.  The most working out I get in at work is running into the warehouse to grab parts off the shelves for people when we are super busy, all this while I am doing other things.  It is crazy, and it sucks a lot at times because I feel like a punching bag when things go wrong.  Generally when anything goes wrong, from anyone elses shift, because I am there during primetime it becomes my fault, and my problems and I am the punching bag.  I have not taken to eating my feelings, but I have identified (again) that I know why i never thought I ate my feelings in the past.  It was simply because I wasn’t in touch with anything.  Not the feelings themselves nor the feelings of hunger.  You cannot satisfy that which you do not know.

This year after regaining a portion of my weight, due to lack of exercise I joined WeightWatchers.  Call it denial, whatever.  I don’t like to talk about the gain, but my clothes don’t fit right, I don’t feel good, and I can see it, that “bloated look” is FAT. I LOVE my meetings.  I look forward to Saturday mornings getting to go and share with people.  My leader, Judy, who I didn’t like the first time I love now.  Her passion and enthusiasm is awesome! She is also trying to groom me so to speak to be a WW leader once I hit goal.  It will be a long road from now but she thinks I will be perfect for it.  She is always asking for my imput on the topic and what I have to share, as if I were a lifetime member.  I like the earliest meeting of the day best, it is full of lifetime members, the other meetings of the day are great too, but there is something about the first meeting of the day that is so full of energy that feels like home.

I’ve struggled a lot with the #WW program lately, having not been exercising because of my health I track some days I  don’t track others.  This week I posted a 7 pound loss after the last probably 6 weeks all being small, but steady gains.  Go figure the week full of cookies and treats at every turn I could ignore.  I guess I need the temptation everywhere in overload to be able to ignore it.

HolidayStrategyMeeting

Above is an example of the Holiday strategy session we had this morning on ways to cope with all of the temptations we face around the holidays.  It is great to have a weekly support group meeting.

So really I am heading into 2012, a little wiser, a little wider, and with a lot more support behind me.  Do I grieve for the me that I was in 2011, It would be a lie if I said no, I miss the freedom that I had in my old job.  The ability to just go to the gym for hours, the ability to meet up with my friends and share support and stories and laughter at all hours of the night and day.  However the fact that I now have a routine should work to my benefit, should.  Now if we could just sort out the soft tissue damage in my back, and the issues with my feet… if only if only if only.  I am taking it a day at a time.  I am doing what I can control.  I can make the decision to have the small or medium skim latte instead of the large, I can choose to buy the cut up fresh fruit salad  to save myself a little time at home if it means I will have fruit for work instead of junk.  I used to think that our choices defined us.  I am beginning to rethink that.  I think choices REFINE us.

2013 the year of choice. I choose ME.  What will you choose?

Sharing Circle

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So in going to my meetings at Weight Watchers I have been forcing myself to talk, or rather, perhaps a better way to phrase it is that I have found myself opening up to the groups I have been with.  Offering suggestions tips and tricks of what has helped me along the way so far.  In my mind I can feel the members that have been there a while rolling their eyes at me, because I am new to their program, but I have been at this a while and have seen measurable success on my own.

I have been going, on average to two meetings a week.  The leader I didn’t care for at first has grown on me, I think it was more the people at that first meeting I didn’t click with, and I think that had more to do with the weather, and the bad parking that weekend in the are around the location, and the fact that I was kind-of ignored and dismissed while I sat there.

I guess one of the things I am really enjoying about the program is actually the meetings.  I like going, and interacting with other people that are trying to do the same thing I am.  It isn’t that I feel alone, or lonely in the battle to get this weight off, I have concluded that there are very few people in the world that have never struggled with weight in one way or another, I just like hearing what others have to say.  I like that it gives me a feeling of community, it sparks my thought process for things like lunches and dinners, even if I don’t take the ideas and use them that week, I know they are planting seeds in the back of my mind for the future.  I also hope that what I have to share, in insight or past stumbling blocks for myself can help someone else there.  For example we were talking about tracking food last week, and how a “3 month tracker” which is a paper tracker shouldn’t last more than 3 months.  I use an electronic tracker now.  When I first started I used paper.  I liked paper, it was safe, I could erase things, I could reward myself on the paper with stickers if I was under my caloric goal for the day.  I had a whole system that I used, and it worked for me.  Eventually I went electronic because it was faster, and easier… and easier meant I could be lazier! Eventually I stopped tracking and I was one of those people who could have made that 3 month tracker last a year! I am bring very diligent and deliberate now with my tracking, and I know if one isn’t working I need to switch to the other.  I offered the hint/tip that I learned from a PriorFatGirl event about recording life events, special occasions, thoughts and feelings in the margins of your tracker.  It helps when you look back to identify patterns and stumbling blocks.  Everyone seemed to really like that idea, so I know that I am offering the group something not just taking.

However I can’t help but feel like I am playing teachers pet when I talk.  I am certainly not trying to be, but I want to be helpful to others where I can be.  So I hush myself, until I know that I have something that is truly helpful and applicable to everyone in the room, or a goodly majority and then I go from there.

Do you go to meetings? Do you talk?  Do you feel like you talk too much? How do you strike a balance with it? I would love to know what you think!