February 5, 2010
Back in December I blogged about how I was struggling to get my weight where I wanted it to be and despite a month of primarily being back on the liquid fast I’m here to report that my weight barely budged. While I’m assuming/hoping/praying this will begin to change now that I’m back at the gym and looking forward to the approaching cycling and hiking weather, for the time being I’m finding it a real challenge to balance my weight at any particular number.
As a recap, the lowest weight I reached following surgery was somewhere around 150 pounds and because I hit it once I’ve been feeling like that’s the weight I should be at to be “successful,” but even with a minimal caloric intake, drinking plenty of water, increasing my activity, yadda yadda yadda, the bathroom scales refuse to decrease in number. Unless I have a little extra to eat at a meal or add an extra snack and then those old bathrooms scales don’t hesitate to flash me an upward turn.
So the other day I was again engaged in obsessive thoughts about all this when I remembered that when I began the fast in January 2009 I never entertained the thought of getting to 150 and wearing size 8 jeans. No. The goal I set for myself at the time was to one day weight between 160-165 pounds, to reach a BMI of between 25-27, and I would have been elated to imagine myself in size 12 clothing. Well, guess what? Here are the facts as they stand today. My weight has, for the past few months, been consistently hovering between 158-162, my BMI without exercise has been just above 27, and I’m comfortably wearing size 10-12 jeans (though the one pair of size 8 jeans I bought at 150 still fit though breathing is optional). It took a number of years but finally I reached my goal and now that I’m there…it seems it’s not good enough.
Which leads to the question, do we ever get to a place in our lives where we’re genuinely content with how we look? Can we ever just relax into our bodies, look in the mirror, and say, “Looking good today Sweetheart” and actually mean it? I know I want that and I’m working toward that end but not all that surprisingly sometimes the hardest work we do is between our two ears rather than between the two sides rails of a treadmill. Without going all Oprah, it just seems it would be a whole lot more beneficial and productive to be cheerleaders for ourselves rather than a panel of multiple sneering, cynical Simon Cowles.
And so the work continues….
Posted in Maintaining Weight, Weight Loss 2 Comments »
February 4, 2010
I’ve been chomping at the bits to get back into my regular exercise routine but between recovering from my surgeries and then having everything put on hold due to a suspected hernia it’s been more than six months of being limited to walking and pouting. The first burns calories, the second does not.
After two recent CAT scans, a hernia was finally ruled out in favor of a weakened patch of stomach muscles just above my right hip bone. This may or may not be related to increased strain on that area due to having my stomach muscles tightened in another area but that’s all neither here or there. The end result is that I am now the proud owner of a plum size bulge four inches to the left of my belly button and just as many down that while visually not the look I was going for, at least doesn’t require any surgery or restrictions on my activity level.
So after all this time I’m back to three 50 minutes sessions a week at the gym with my own little version of Jillian (just as gorgeous and nearly as cruel) which feels both achingly sore and wonderful at the same time. During personal training we primarily focus on (re) strengthening my core through work with weights, pilates, and balance work on the Bosu. There’s circuit work on the gym equipment and a whole lot of plain calisthenics including planks, lunges, and groan, squats.
With my personal training back up and rolling I’m now trying to put together a regular cardio routine at home and in the gym to get my heart pumping and up the sweat factor for a solid calorie burn. My goal is to get back to doing an hour or more of cardio 4-5 times a week. Once spring arrives I’ll return to cycling, walking, and hiking but until then I’m getting involved in some of the classes offered at the gym and to that end I’ve been trying out a few. The first up was the currently popular Zumba which proved to be a total exercise in humiliation for the simple reason it requires something I don’t possess, that being rhythm. After 20 minutes of stumbling over my feet I screamed “Uncle!” and ran from the room. I’ve also tried a few classes of Camp 24 that combines step, weights and cardio and for the most part I enjoyed it with the exception of the jumping jacks which I can’t do if there’s so much as a teaspoon of fluid in my bladder but then again neither can I walk and sneeze at the same time. You probably didn’t want to know that, did you?
Aaaaaanyway, over the past few years I’ve noticed how there’s a whole lot of people waiting in line at the counter to sign up and reserve their spot for the next spin class. As a kid who grew up in a house with a stationary bike that was always covered in my dad’s pants, teeshirts, and other assorted laundry, I’ve never been too intrigued by the whole idea of hunkering down onto a bike seat, spinning like crazy, and going nowhere. Whether it was the flashbacks to my childhood or the whole human hamster wheel thing, who can say. I only know I’ve never been all that interested in giving it a try. That was until I noticed the sweat factor. I couldn’t help but notice that at the end of their spinning session all the little human hamsters were dripping in sweat and nothing says calorie burn like a whole lot of sweat. Well, as it turns out I LOVE spin class. To be completely accurate I didn’t love it the second and third time when my derrière felt like it had been polished with coarse grain sandpaper but now that my backside has warmed up to the idea I’m loving it.
And loving it is important. Sure. There are times you just go to the gym or head out on a walk or run because it’s the thing you know you need to do rather than the thing you want to do, but the chances of being able to keep motivated to do it day in and day out is made easier a world easier if it’s something you enjoy and that provides you with a sense of satisfaction. Here are a couple things I’ve cranked up the fun-0-meter around physical activity.
- I love taking digital photos and so when I’m hiking I’ve always got my camera with me.
- The only time I allow myself to listen to my favorite podcasts (Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, and Splendid Table) are when I’m out walking.
- I bought a couple favorite workout tops and pants that are reserved just for the gym.
- I’ve measured the mileage for a variety of routes that all begin and end at our front door so that I never walk or ride my bike on the same route two days in a row, and most of the loops have a Starbucks at mid-point so I have a rest break to look forward to just down the road.
- I set attainable goals for myself (walking to a particular destination a little farther than the day before, walking at a steeper incline on the treadmill than I did the last time, estimating a specific time it will take me to go a particular distance that requires I push myself a little to achieve it) because every time I meet my goal I gain a sense of satisfaction that makes me feel good.
- When I spend time on my Wii FitPlus I intentionally think of it as play instead of exercise and focus on the enjoyment factor rather than about getting my exercise in that day.
- I keep a few inexpensive workout DVD’s (The Biggest Loser has some awesome ones!) and a couple pieces of equipment (exercise bands, a step, and a fitness ball) on hand at home so I have a variety of choices of ways to be physical whether for an hour or for a 15-minute fitness break.
And that leads me to always remembering that doing something is better than doing nothing. Five minutes of walking is better than zero minutes. Walk to the end of your block and back. Every time you need to get something upstairs at home go up and down the stairs two times first. Park as far from the entrance to the store entrance as you can. Walk in place every time a TV commercial comes on. Pace back and forth whenever you talk on the phone. Set a goal of going on a walking exploration of every city park in your local area.
Begin just by being mindful of the 3 S’s.
Sit. Stand. Step.
Standing burns more calories than sitting. Stepping burns more calories than standing.
Studies have shown that one of the differences between obese people and thin people is that thin people are more physically active. That doesn’t necessarily mean they exercise more, it simply means they move more during the course of an average day. They stand more and step more and that overall increased activity level ends up burning more calories than a sedentary day spent sitting all day long.
That is of course unless you’re sitting on a stationary bike.
Posted in Fitness and Exercise 4 Comments »
January 7, 2010
So how are those New Year’s Resolutions working out for you? If you’re still keeping them with a full week of 2010 under your belt then a tip of my hat in your direction. If I wore hats that is which I don’t because I look silly and slightly deranged in them. For myself, I gave up making New Year’s Resolutions as a New Year’s Resolution a few years ago and that’s about the only one I’ve managed to keep.
I spent a whole lot of years in churches that would traditionally hold a New Years Eve service that included a time when everyone would write out what they wanted to see God do in the coming year (a religious version of New Year’s Resolutions) and then we’d seal our note in a self-addressed envelope that the church secretary would drop in the mail to us six months later so we could see how God had answered our prayers and how we had followed through on the commitments we’d made to Him.
By the time I was in young adulthood the arrival of that envelope, addressed to myself in my own handwriting, was like a slap across the face, a literary reminder that once again I hadn’t done what I had been so earnest about doing six months earlier. Once again I was reminded that I’d failed to make any headway on the first item on every single New Year’s Resolution list I ever written during my lifetime. The wording was different from year to year but the intent was always the same.
- I want to lose weight.
- This year I will lost 50 pounds.
- By next year at this time I will have lost 100 pounds.
- I commit to losing weight in the coming year.
- I promise that with God’s help I will get my weight and my eating under control.
One year I’d had enough of making New Year’s Resolutions that I knew I could never keep and so while everyone else was in church writing out their resolutions and commitments for the coming year, I was scratching out another kind of message to myself. Six months later when it arrived I tore open the envelope and read,
So, it’s now six months later and I bet anything you weigh more today than you did on New Year’s Eve, don’t you? When are you ever going to just accept that you’re always going to be fat? You’re such a failure.
No small amount of self-loathing in that little note to self. Ya think?
But it wasn’t just once a year I’d failed to live up to the word I made to myself. Every Monday was going to be the start of a new diet and this time I was going to stick with it, and sometimes I did stick with it. At least until Tuesday afternoon. Every night after I’d eaten Chinese take-out for four or a deluxe double-thick pizza with extra cheese and a half gallon of ice cream as a chaser and I was stuffed sick I’d swear to myself I was never going to eat like that again, and just to prove how serious I was I’d storm (or waddle as it were) into the kitchen and throw any food that remained (if any did) into the garbage can. But by the next day, after a small breakfast or no breakfast at all, and eating little more than a salad and a Diet Coke for lunch, I’d head to the fast food district of town and fill up the back seat of my car: a six pack of tacos from Taco Bell, two orders of onion rings from BurgerKing, and a half dozen Dilly Bars from Dairy Queen. Then I’d go home, eat it all, and feeling stuffed sick with self-loathing and food once again I’d swear I’d never eat like that again. But I would. Again and again and again. All the way to 325 pounds.
I haven’t lost 170 pounds because one year I made a New Years Resolution to myself to lose 170 pounds. There wasn’t a single ginormous last supper that made me so violently sick in body and spirit that I swore that was the last time and then I followed through from that moment on. My weight loss journey didn’t start on a Monday or on the 1st of the month or the 1st day of a new year. It began on a Saturday. May 8, 1999. I didn’t wake up that morning knowing I would always remember that date. I didn’t know that between then and the beginning of 2010 I would never again gorge on a fast-food progressive dinner, never order Chinese take-out for four for a party of one, or never lose myself in a half-gallon of ice cream or a two pound bowl of pasta and butter. When I backed my car out of the driveway that morning I didn’t know I would never be that heavy again. I didn’t know the next time I’d buy a car I wouldn’t have to have the driver’s seat soldered in place to keep my weight from breaking the steel joints. I didn’t know the time was coming when I’d stop waking up in the middle of night gasping for breath or fearing the pains that occasionally ripped through my chest. I didn’t know in a few short months I’d be wearing pants that zipped all the way up rather than being held in place with jumbo diaper pins and prayer. And I sure couldn’t have imagined that in a few years from that day I’d be wearing size 10 jeans and medium size shirts, walking a half-marathon, hiking through the Redwoods, or hearing my doctor say, “Anita, you are in more than excellent health.”
May 8, 1999 was the day that led to where I am today but I didn’t know it at the time. I just knew I was going to go to a morning meeting of *Overeaters Anonymous that happened to be held in the back room of my favorite Mexican restaurant in town. I figured I’d sit and listen to a bunch of fat people talk about the diet they were on and whine about how much they missed eating ice cream and cake and cookies, and then at the end of the meeting I’d slip into the main room of the restaurant and order my usual double cheese enchilada plate with a side of chips and guacamole to go. Instead I went to the meeting and listened to thin and heavy people talk about having spent their lives eating like I thought only I ate and that they were grateful that for today they no longer had to eat like that. And at the end of the meeting, rather than leaving with the smell of a greasy plate of Mexican food covered in foil on the passenger seat beside me, I left with hope that at least for that day, I stood a chance of going to bed without being stuffed sick and ashamed. And I did.
That was the beginning for me. And there’s a beginning for you too. You just might know when the journey begins. But then again, maybe your journey already has started and you don’t even know it has or can’t believe it has.
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*Overeater’s Anonymous is part of my story but it might be part of yours. Instead it may be Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig or private therapy or a plan of eating that you find in a magazine that works best for you.
Posted in Compulsive Overeating, Weight Loss, body image No Comments »
December 30, 2009
Fruit Soup!
I know. I wouldn’t have believed it myself but this traditional Swedish food received nothing but rave reviews from everyone! Swedes, non-Swedes and most impressively children of all ages who had no idea what it was, tasted a scant smidgen of it with frowning suspicion and then came back for more!
I originally stumbled on this recipe when RuthAnn, a facebook friend of Scandinavian heritage mentioned preparing it for her family holiday gathering. I was intrigued by the idea since the Lutheran Church D and I attend has a number of Swedes in the congregation, several of whom moved to the States in their lifetime and return regularly to visit their homeland. Since everyone enjoys a taste of home at Christmas I thought I’d give Fruit Soup a try even though I’m not a fan of dried fruit and prunes in particular. Prunes. Seriously, I’ve always considered them the food of Grandparents, consumed more for their miraculous powers of regularly than for flavor but I’m not too proud to admit when I’m wrong. Or regular for that matter but that’s a post for another day and another blog.
I found about a dozen recipes online for Fruit Soup, all a little different and so I took what I thought was the best from every recipe and then gathering some additional input from RuthAnn threw the ingredients in the massive seven quart Le Creuset Doufeu D gave me for my birthday and magic happened! The next day I took more than 2 gallons of fruit soup to church along with a table full of other holiday treats and the soup was the first thing to go and was sooooo good and soooooo easy I knew I wanted to share it with you! The problem was when I had made my first original batch I didn’t follow any written measurements but just kept tweaking by tossing in a few more lemon slices, another scoop of brown sugar, another splash of cranberry juice. And so when I remembered that our next door neighbors were going to be having their annual Swedish Christmas Eve dinner in a couple days I used the opportunity to not only do a neighborly thing and take them a pot of the soup but to write down the recipe as I tossed it altogether.
Before giving you the recipe I should probably tell you how to actually serve Fruit Soup. Traditionally Fruit Soup is served either cold or warm as a dessert. You can serve it just as it is or crank it up with a dollop of softly whipped whipping cream. I beg of you, use real whipping cream that comes from a cow rather than someone’s chemistry set. Do NOT allow Cool Whip or any other wannabe whipped topping to defile this amazing treat! It just isn’t the same, no matter what you say.
So yes, serve it in the traditional way as a dessert at the end of a meal but here’s a few other ideas I came up with because I love this stuff and have nothing better to do than obsess about all the ways it can be consumed.
- Reheat it in the morning and serve it over pancakes or french toast with a sprinkle of powdered sugar.
- Serve it cold at lunch over a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
- Make a stunning dessert at dinner by ladling it warm over a slice of homemade pound cake, angel food cake or a hard meringue shell and top with whipped whipping cream and a sprinkle of cinnamon.
People. I’m talking deeeee-licious. I’m talking show-stopper. I’m talking impress your friends and woo your enemies. Trust me on this. I know you questioned my passion for roasted brussel sprouts in the past and raised your eyebrows at my recipes for Kale Krisps and Cauliflower Candy but this is heaven in a bowl. I promise. Make it, enjoy it, and sing my praises as you bow gratefully in the direction of Stockholm.
And after you make it, let me know what you think. If you can stop eating the Fruit Soup long enough to type that is.
Fruit Soup
Difficulty: Easy Peasy
Time: 30 minutes
Serves: This recipe makes one generous gallon of fruit soup which will serve approximately 16 people one cup each which is a generous portion given the sweetness and richness of the dried fruit.
Calories Per Serving: You don’t even want to know. Really.
Storing Leftovers: There won’t be any but hypothetically, if there were leftovers they should be stored in the refrigerator.
Ingredients:
- 1 1/2 – 2 …pounds of dried fruit – (I use a combination of prunes, apricots, and pineapple), chopped into bite-size pieces
- 2 ..cups small pearl tapioca
- 1…64-ounce bottles of cranapple juice (you may substitute half the juice with water)
- 4-5 ..cinnamon sticks
- 1…teaspoon ground cinnamon*
- 2…lemons, thickly sliced*
- 1/2…cup Brown Sugar*
- 1…cup raisins
- 1/2…cup currants
- 2-3…apples (tart variety like Granny Smiths), cored and diced into bite-size pieces
Directions:
- Add the dried fruit, cranapple juice and pearl tapioca to a 5-6 quart saucepan and stirring occasionally, bring to a gentle boil over medium high heat. The soup will quickly thicken as the tapioca pearls release their starch. As long as the soup remains on the stove top be sure to stir regularly to prevent the sugars from sticking and burning to the bottom of the pot.
- When the soup begins to boil immediately reduce the heat to maintain a low simmer. Stir in all the remaining ingredients.
- Continue to simmer for another 10 minutes and then turn the heat source to the lowest setting.
- Now comes the time to tweak the soup to your personal preference in terms of thickness and taste. Served as a soup the thickness should be similar to a cream soup such as New England Clam Chowder and thicker when served over other foods. Additional water or juice can be added to thin and turning up the head slightly to reduce the liquids will thicken the soup. The soup is best when there’s a balance of tart, sweet, and spicy so level out the flavor with additional cinnamon, brown sugar or lemon to taste.
- Remove the lemon slices and cinnamon sticks prior to serving.
* The amounts listed in these ingredients are the base quantity to begin with so have a little extra of each for tweaking.
Posted in Anita Cooks, Desserts, Recipes 1 Comment »
December 29, 2009
This photo could have been taken just about anytime during the month of December but as it was, it was taken a couple days before Christmas with only two cooking projects remaining before I entered the “I’m so done with being in this kitchen” zone. 
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Even my furry sous chef sensed my growing weariness and kept at a safe distance from flying dough shrapnel but as it turned out my two last recipes, after all the pans of pumpkin pie bars and lemon cakes, muffin tins of tiny lemon tarts, jars of lemon curd and more cookies than I care to recount or relive, were the best above all the rest and here’s one of them. You have to wait until tomorrow for the last and the best!
A Lemonized Version of
Paula Deen’s Sour Cream Pound Cake
See Paula’s original recipe here
Ingredients:
1 sticks butter, room temperature
1 ½ cups sugar
½ cup sour cream
¼ teaspoon baking soda
1 ½ cups flour
3 large eggs
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
- In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar together. Add the sour cream and mix until incorporated. Sift the baking soda and flour together. Add to the creamed mixture alternating with eggs, beating in each egg 1 at a time. Add vanilla.
- Pour the mixture into a greased and floured loaf pan. Bake for 40 minutes to 1 hour or until toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.
So that’s where Paula’s recipe ends but then Paula apparently didn’t spend November and December haunted by a bottomless bowl of lemons on her kitchen counter, so while the cake is baking away, make a simple lemon sugar syrup by combining 1/2 cup of sugar and 1/2 cup of fresh lemon juice in a saucepan, heating over medium high until the sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat. When the cake has been removed from the oven, allow it to cool for 10 minutes and then poke a dozen toothpick holes into the surface. Spoon the lemon simple syrup over the top. (Option: Replace the lemon simple syrup with Italian Lemoncella, a refreshing lemon liqueur)
Wait! We aren’t done yet. Once the cake is completely cool, drizzle with a glaze made from mixing 1 cup of powdered sugar with 2 tablespoons of fresh lemon juice. Allow the cake to cool completely before slicing.
Now, is that enough lemon for you? No? Okay. Fine.
How about serving the cake with some homemade lemon curd. Oh. Yum. Moist. Light. Buttery. Creamy. Lemony. Par-a-dise in a loaf pan.
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Posted in Anita Cooks, Desserts, Recipes 2 Comments »
December 22, 2009
I noticed the other day that I have a lot of coats and the sight of them hanging in row made me cry. Normally, outerwear isn’t a significantly emotional event in my life. I don’t break into tears and snot at the sight of a parka or sob uncontrollably with every windbreaker that passes by. The reason I felt emotional looking at a few jackets and coats hanging in my closet was because I flashed back on all the years of my life when I never had a coat, not because I couldn’t afford one but because I refused to buy one for myself until I lost weight. I lived with the fantasy and endless hope that tomorrow I’d lose weight and I didn’t want to invest money into getting a coat that wouldn’t last all season. The only problem with this plan was I never lost the weight and so I never bought a coat. The spring rains would come and go, the winter chill would settle in and slowly leave and through it all I had no coat. I can’t count the times I ran through the rain from a building to my car getting soaked to the bone or the times I shuffled through freezing temperatures and sleet and snow to get from one place to the other.
I had my reasons, logical reasons or so I thought for not buying a coat but in the end the answer for why I never did is as simple as I never thought I deserved one. I’m not saying that was ever a conscious thought but that’s really what my actions were saying. I was willing to freeze and get drenched in the rain because I was fat and until I wasn’t fat I refused to buy myself an essential piece of clothing that would have protected me and kept me warm against the elements. Had I deprived a child of a coat in winter I would have been called negligent or seen someone freezing in the cold and said, “I’ll get you a coat but only if you do this and that,” I would have been considered cruel, but I had no problem punishing myself year after year by simply not buying a coat for myself.
I doubt I’m the only person in the world who punished, deprived, and mistreated myself because I was obese and thought I deserved no less. Anyone who feels like a failure in one area of their life tends to see their whole life as flawed. If I can’t fix this one thing about myself then nothing else I do well matters. The scales always tip toward our weaknesses rather than our strengths. An obese person who struggles with their weight (I leave room for those round folks who are perfectly content as they are) could find the cure to cancer and in receiving world fame and accolades all through the day, would go to bed at night thinking of themselves, “….if I could just lose the weight….” Enough is never enough as long as the extra pounds remain.
For years I called myself names I would never consider utterly toward another human being. I would never have looked at another person with the kind of disgusted disdain I could muster for myself when gazing in the mirror.
We would never consider calling another person the names we call ourselves. We would never look at another person with the disgusted disdain reflected in our gaze when seeing ourselves in the mirror. I abused my body and jeopardized my health by eating the most unhealthy foods ever conceived in the commercial mass-production marketplace. I ignored the mysterious pains and racing heart. I neglected to get enough rest. I put everyone first in the world before me, not because I was so loving and compassionate and giving but because I felt through and through that no one deserved less than I. Not because I had intentionally tripped a blind person. Not because I had tortured a cat. Not because I had been a disrespectful daughter. Not because I threw trash out my car window when no one was looking. No. I deserved to be considered last and to be cared for least simply because I was obese.
It’s remembering how I once saw myself and treated myself that made me feel emotion over the glimpse of a few coats in our hall closet. That was who I was and how I saw myself and it’s so far from who I now am that I can hardly believe it and at the same time I never want to forget that’s where I came from and that’s where some people still are today; still filled with self-loathing and wrestling with the idea that if they just weigh less they’ll be more worthy of being cared for by themselves and by others. What a tragedy that anyone would waste a single day of their life living under such a lie because that’s all it is. There’s not a soul in this world who deserves any less than any other because beyond our physical appearance or talents or intelligent we are the beloved and you just don’t get more worthy than that.
Posted in body image 4 Comments »
December 19, 2009
I now have an experiential understanding of what it is to joyfully anticipate the first-fruits of the harvest and the fatigued “enough already of a good thing” when the harvest keeps on giving and giving. That one little lemon tree just around the corner from our house will not stop handing over lemon after lemon. Even now, despite squeezing more lemon juice and zesting more peel than I have in my entire life collectively, there remains a half full bowl of lemons sitting on our kitchen counter taunting me and my prayer at this moment, while the rest of the world is occupied with Christmas thoughts and activities is “Please, let one more ridiculously huge batch of lemon curd end this nightmare.” I fear it will be a prayer unanswered for weeks to come.
And so until that day comes I continue to juice and zest, cook and bake. While there actually is another batch of lemon curd in my immediate future (to be consumed by unwary congregants following the Christmas Eve service along with scones, warm buttered cinnamon bread, and wassail) on Monday I made 1o mini-loaves of Lemon-Poppy Seed Cake spiked with rum, and 10 mini-loaves of Ina Gardner’s Lemon Cake. I gift packaged a third of the baked goods and distributed them to our neighbors that evening, another third my beloved took to the lunch room at her work place, and the remaining loaves will find their place on the after church hospitality table along side the pumpkin pie bars I’m making this afternoon. The reviews so far have been mixed. Everyone LOVES the Ina Gardner Lemon Cake and understandably so. It’s real lemony. Three layers of lemony. The light lemon cake is soaked with simple syrup infused with lemon and then topped with a lemony sugar glaze. In my book the sign that people truly like what you’ve made is when they ask, or rather demand, the recipe and without exception, everyone has asked, or rather demanded, this one. Now, the Lemon-Poppy Seed Cake spiked with Rum….not so much. Okay, not at all. It’s not that it’s terrible. There’s just too much rum, too little lemon, and was overshadowed by the grand citrus splendor of its companion cake.
So if you have some extra lemons just hanging around in a bowl on your counter threatening to over-ripen if you don’t do something quick, go with Ina.
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Posted in Anita Cooks, Desserts, Recipes 1 Comment »
December 14, 2009
After more than a week on my bare-bones plan of eating, which averaged between 1300-1450 calories my weight actually went up a couple more pounds. It makes no sense. I step on the scales, tell D what the numbers are and both of us just scratch our heads. In case you’re wondering my thyroid is just fine and I’m being accurate on my caloric intake, courtesy of weighing and measuring my food and then entering it into an online database that calculates calories and nutritional information. There’s no logic to what’s going on here aside from the fact that this is something I’ve struggled with for years. My body simply does what it will do and seems to be tenaciously resistant to releasing weight. To say I’ve been experiencing some frustration the last few days would be an understatement.
There’s a theory that’s bantered around that after years of yo-yo dieting, and I have about 40 years of up and down and up, that we actually cause change to our metabolism which makes our bodies resistant to losing weight and it’s the only thing I’m able to come up with that explains what’s going on.
Here’s how the theory goes: Our body takes in calories as energy and metabolism is the process by which those calories are burned to keep our body fully functioning. The calories that aren’t burned as energy are either expended as waste or stored as fat; fat being the body’s warehouse supply for backup energy. In case you’re sent to Mars in a space ship and forget to pack lunch as a for instance. When we reduce our calories through dieting our body isn’t getting enough energy in and so it turns to the back up supply, burning stored fat which leads to weight loss. When we stop dieting and raise the calories we’re taking in again, the body stops tapping from the stored fat and returns to it’s usual process of processing all the energy from what’s incoming and then sending the extra to storage or waste.
It’s a good system. The problem is that when the amount of incoming calories radically fluctuates from scarcity to abundance repeatedly as it does through dieting and binging, dieting and binging, at some point the body makes the calculated decision to reset the metabolic rate to burn fewer calories permanently so it can continue to function consistently regardless of the unpredictability of the incoming energy supply. The effect that has is that to lose weight it takes eating fewer calories to lose the same amount of weight that could have been lost years earlier with more calories and the only way left to raise the reduced rate of energy (calorie) burn is to increase physical activity, forcing the body to convert more incoming calories and stored fat (reserve calories) into energy.
Thus concludes all I know about metabolism 101.
So this is my best guess as to what I’m currently experiencing in terms of my weight. Through years of yo-yo dieting my metabolism has been reset to function at a much lower rate that it once was and because my physical activity has been severely reduced as a result of my surgical recovery time and now that physical limitations are again in place to not aggravate my hernia until it’s repair in another month, my body is needing very few calories to keep going. That leaves me with three options.
- Feel sorry for myself, throw in the towel and hurry down the street to In-N-Out for a double-double animal style burger. Not an option.
- Stay with my bare-bones food plan and accept where my weight goes until I can return to my full activity level, allowing me to gradually lose any increase that’s occurred in my weight. While this seems the most sensible route to take, my weight is so unstable that I have genuine concerns as to where my weight would be by the first of March when I would be back to my full activity level.
- Return to the full liquid fast until I can bring my weight back to the range where I feel it needs to be for optimal health and to achieve a 25 BMI I should weigh between 145-152 pounds. I decided a couple days ago to go with option 3 which reduces my caloric intake to well under 1000 calories and has already caused my body to release about four pounds.
Obviously I don’t want to be fasting. It’s not fun and I don’t like it. Call me crazy but I enjoy eating food. I like sitting down at the table with my adorable little portions of chicken, veggies and rice and spending a few minutes together. But the honest truth is, that after the surgeries I’ve had to remove the excess skin and the new shape that came with them, the anxiety level around shifts in my weight has been heightened off the charts. You know how it is after you’ve worked really hard to stick with a diet that you’ve had some success with and then to come off that diet and see the pounds slowly start to add up again? Multiple your feelings by five and you have some idea of how this feels.
So for now, until the weight settles back down (hopefully within a couple weeks) and I can get my crazy head together (I suspect that might take a little longer), I’m back on the fast. Aside from my whining in this post, I realize there are just some things I’m going to need to learn how to accept in terms of my body, how it responds, how it looks, and where it will ultimately end up leveling off poundage wise. I can only do what I can do and then leave the rest to God and my metabolism to work out together.
Posted in Food Plan, Liquid Fast, Maintaining Weight, Reconstructive Surgery, Weight Loss 9 Comments »
December 11, 2009
From gingerbread houses and sugar icing to green salads in the span of one post! How’s that for a smooth transition!
But more than I love gingerbread I love salad. I’ve probably spent the better part of four years accumulated time grazing over the grocery store salad bar in my life time, and being a certified, card-carrying overeater (a little is fine, more is always better) I can go overboard even when it comes to munching greens.
Case in point. For about six years my food plan included three weighed and measured meals a day with no snacks (similar to what I’m doing now but with two 100-calorie snacks added), and dinner consisted of 4 ounces of protein and 16 ounces of vegetables. A couple times a week D and I would head to the nearby grocery store salad bar and since there wasn’t a food scale nearby I’d create a salad masterpiece that I thought looked like it was around 16 ounces. Well, we came home one night from the store after doing this for months and just for fun I put my container of salad on the kitchen scales to see how close I was in my visual calculations. The answer? Not too close. Instead of weighing somewhere, anywhere, in the ballpark of 16 ounces I had managed to stuff 33 ounces of veggies into one of those little cardboard boxes. That’s right! I was eating over two pounds of salad in one sitting which when you think about it would be an ample bowl of salad to take to a church potluck.
Just another example of the power of my self-denial that basically got me up to 325 pounds in the first place. “Oh yeh, that looks like 16 ounces,” I’d tell myself as I used a construction crane lift or a support brace on my back to hoist it from the salad bar to my dining room table!
But I’m learning. I’m learning that 16 ounces of salad is a loosely packed, as opposed to jam-packed, salad in the salad take-home container. Oh, and I’ve learned that the last 1/4 of the salad bar located near the salad dressing is not for me. For me, those are just inedible decorations on the salad bar but not food for my salad box. You know what I’m talking about….the bowls of cheese, raisins, nuts, cheese, olives, croutons, cheese, crunchy carb thingies, and did I mention cheese?
Let’s do the math.
A tossed mixed vegetable salad has less than 100 calories in 16 ounces. That’s a good deal people when you think that a bowl of salad (lettuce, mushrooms, sprouts, tomatoes, green beans, carrots, radishes, pepperoncini, onions, cucumbers, jicama, celery…) has less calories than 2 Oreos and we’re not even talking Double-Stuff Oreos.
So take that bargain basement 100 calorie sweet deal and add just 1 ounce of crumbled blue cheese, 1 ounce of cheddar cheese, and a small spoonful each of raisins, dried cranberries, walnuts, pumpkin seeds and olives and the salad, without dressing, climbs to 781 calories. If that sound like an excessive amount of extras to you, it’s really not. In fact I’ve watched people at the salad bar who make the majority of their salad from the last quarter of the salad bar than from the first 3/4 ’s of it.
And salad dressing? Depending on which dressing you choose on the salad bar, from their low-fat offering to the full deal Caesar or Blue Cheese, that healthy vegetable salad easily breaks through the 1000 calorie ceiling, unless you opted for the balsamic vinegar but you didn’t did you? I never did. And by the way, that’s based on using 4 tablespoons of salad dressing which in often the equivalent of one of the salad bar salad dressing ladles. Am I the only person on the planet who has been known to double-ladle? Oh. I’m the only one? Really?
So I love my salads even when with my self-imposed ban on the last 1/4 of the salad bar but the dilemma has continued to be what to do about the salad dressing especially when I’m focusing on reducing my added fats. I tried the spray salad dressings but I might as well have been hosing water on my salad for the little flavor they offered. I’ve used a scant amount of the name brand low-fat, reduced-calorie dressings and tried to stretch them for a little more salad coverage with apple cider vinegar but after a week or so grew tired of the acidity of the vinegar.
And then about a month ago it happened. A miracle at the end of aisle 6 between the pickles and mustard.
I saw these new salad dressings by Galeos on the shelf, checked out the back label and when I saw that the calories were between 14-22 calories per tablespoon I bought a bottle of each to try out and, word to your mother, they are AWESOME! There’s Caesar, Ginger and Wasabi, Dijonnaise, and Toasted Sesame Seed and Honey. The favors are so intense I never use more than 2-3 tablespoons at a time and if I choose to stretch them with apple or rice wine vinegar the acidity doesn’t overpower the taste. My favorite is probably the Toasted Sesame Seed dressing because it’s sweet, smoky and is wonderful on a salad that includes apples, but I’m still experimenting. Tonight’s chicken was marinated in the Dijonnaise with a little non-fat sour cream. Oh. Yum.
Posted in Eating In, Food Products and Gizmos 3 Comments »
December 3, 2009
Over at Savouring where I blog about the snippets of our daily life there’s been a few posts on our neighborhood lemon tree and my obsessive pursuit of gettin’ me some, and when the first of the harvest arrived I had so many lemons that I was able to make a double batch of lemon curd and candied lemon peels.
Zest and and then juice 8 lemons. Be sure to remove any seeds. Crunchy isn’t considered a good thing in the world of lemon curd.
Place the zest and juice to the side. We’ll get back to them in a minute.
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Take one cup cold butter (2 cubes) and cut into 16-20 chunks and then return to refrigerator.
.Make yourself a double-boiler by paring one of your metal mixing bowls with a sauce pan. You should be able to put two inches of water in the saucepan and the bowl shouldn’t touch the water when you rest it on the top.
Remove the bowl and bring the water in the saucepan to a rapid simmer. While the water’s heating whisk 2 cups of sugar and 10 egg yolks in the metal bowl until thoroughly blended. Write a note for yourself so you don’t forget to have an egg-white omelet for breakfast.
To the blended sugar and yolk mixture add in the lemon zest and juice and mix thoroughly. Once the water in the saucepan has a fast simmer going on, turn it down to medium high, set the bowl on top and whisk continually for about 8-10 minutes or until the mixture thickens and you begin to notice bright yellow streaks showing up. Remove from the heat and still whisking, add the butter one piece at a time. Be sure that you don’t add more butter until the last addition is completely melted into the curd.
I made two batches and my arm was so tired from the first batch (time for a little more strength-training at the gym!) that I transferred the second batch directly from the stovetop to my standing mixer and let my little friend Kitchen Aid do the whisking while incorporating the butter.
Transfer the lemon curd to the refrigerator to cool, covering with a layer of plastic wrap directly on the curd surface to prevent it from developing a gummy skin. The lemon curd will last refrigerated for 10-14 days.
So now that you have lemon curd, what do you do with it? You can start with sticking your finger in the jar and licking it but if you have a little more style than that….schmear some on a breakfast scone or biscuit, drop a dollop on the center of a thumbprint cookie, spackle it between two meringue cookies or ginger snaps, or put a spoonful on top of fresh berries and if you must with a drizzle of chocolate. For a super easy lemon pie, fold a cup of lemon curd into a pint of whipped whipping cream and spread in a pre-baked pie crust. Add a thin layer of plain whipped whipping cream to the top and decorate with a sprinkle of lemon zest or better yet, with candied lemon peels!
To make candied lemon peels (orange works too!), use a vegetable peeler to peel thin lemon strips. Take care to peel lightly so that you don’t pick up too much of the white flesh underneath but don’t worry, a little is fine. Once you have a saucepan of water boiling on the stove top drop the peels in and let them jacuzzi at an easy boil for about 15-20 minutes. Remove the saucepan from heat, tossing out the water and leaving the peels to drain on a stack of paper towels or in a colander. [The hot water bath softens the peels while removing some of the bitterness from the taste]
Bring two cups of sugar and one cup of water to a boil. If you use the same saucepan you just boiled the peels in either wash it first or at least wipe out the inside of the pan to remove the bitter oils that clung to the sides. Continue boiling the sugar water until it reaches 230 degrees on a candy thermometer. If you don’t have a candy thermometer, get one. If they don’t have candy thermometers in the Land of Oz where you apparently live you’ll know it’s ready when you can drop a little into a cup of really cold water and then form it into a soft little ball. If you can, you’re at the soft candy stage and all systems go! With the sugar water still on the heat add the peels and let them simmer in the hot goo for about 5 minutes before removing and draining.
To finish the candied zest, put a cup of white sugar into any small container you have with a lid. Toss in about one third of the now sticky peels and shake them in the container of sugar until they’re thoroughly coated. Remove and separate. Repeat with the next third. Shake and separate. Repeat. Rinse and shampoo. Repeat.
Store the candied lemon peels in an airtight container….that is until you decorate the top of your pie or just nibble on them for no particular reason other than it’s the weekend or Wednesday.
Here’s the little goodie plate I gave to six of our neighbors and with even more lemon curd remaining I think there’s going to be some mini lemon tarts at our church hospitality hour very soon in the future.
Posted in Anita Cooks, Desserts 1 Comment »
