Vegetables

I totally believe vegetables are the key to success. My return from the Arctic has coincided with peak summer produce. I've gotten fruit at Whole Foods (which does make an effort to get east coast produce not just California) and the peaches and plums are completely wonderful. And free on WW. But they are not a meal.

This morning after the gym (smug virtuous reference) I finally got to a local farmers market. "Abundance" is the feeling. Despite the heat and drought, there is lots to choose from. I had to hold back because it all looks so good. My history is of overbuying and letting things rot, so I tried to focus on specific dishes for specific meals. There is another market tomorrow, so I can get more good stuff right away. I'm thinking that for this season, I should just try to get to a market or store every couple of days, so as to waste less and always have fresh stuff. It's more work, and we'll see how it works out.

I know we have ready ripe fruit on the dining room table so I didn't get any more of that. I got the usual zucchini, eggplant, peppers for side dishes. I was very restrained on the tomatoes. Only a couple of heirloom ones. If I don't know exactly when they'll get eaten, I should pass them up.

My one impulse buy was chard. It was so beautiful, fairly small sized leaves. Since it was still breakfast time, I had the idea cooking it right away for breakfast. I had in my mind a dish I've had with other greens: bacon and greens and a splash of vinegar. I've only cooked chard a couple of times, so I consulted How to Cook Everything, and modified a recipe. It worked out ok, but not up to my expectations. Served with fresh tomato, it was kind of a BLT with no bread and C instead of L. Not a big hit with anyone else, either.

I got a darling little cabbage as well, and I'm going to shred it with a cilantro vinaigrette for a cole slaw at a picnic tonight.

Here's to the season!

Sherbert update

Planning is Everything

So after two whole days on WW, I've come to realize (for the umpteenth time) that planning is everything. Sadly, a new computer program to enter what I've already eaten will not do much for me at all. It's using the program to plan ahead before I eat that will make the difference.  And it's planning that is all the work, especially as I go back to work.  I love my job, but it sure does take a chunk out of my day!

So day one was a day out of time due to jet lag. I went wild for fresh fruits and vegetables, wasn't able to be awake in the evening hours that are my downfall, and so used my last couple daily points to eat some chocolate and went to bed feeling the allowances were generous and a piece of cake. Monday did include an Italian dinner cooked by my girl who attended L'Academie de la Cuisine while I was gone. All fresh ingredients, sounded like a good idea. But then I realized the salad she was making was bread salad, and the shrimp scampi had five tablespoons of butter in it!  It was terrific, but I was tired and barely awake, and had munched on fruit and cucumbers all during the cooking, so portion control was not a problem for me. And luckily there were no leftovers.

Yesterday, a bonus day off from work, we spontaneously decided to have lunch at Ikea.  Salmon, I thought. But the meatball lunch was only $2.99!  How could I pass that up? With potatoes, of course. When I sat down in the afternoon to calculate points, I realized I had already gone over all my daily points, used my sole activity point, and dipped into my weekly extra allowance.  For a while I contemplated no dinner, but the rest of the family wanted to be fed, so I coped. First, the afternoon was again full of fruits, totally free on the program. Then, I cooked baked salmon, using basil leaves and a squeeze of lemon instead of slathering in pesto as I would ordinarily do. I cooked zucchini, onion and tomato in sprayed olive oil for zero points. I didn't make a starch, instead offering the good Italian bread from the day before to the rest of the family.  Worked for me, only six points for the salmon and nothing for everything else. Not a disaster, but an early lesson in planning ahead. Had I not calculated after lunch, I would have had a lot more for dinner.

So my complaints: I've done a lot of on-line tracking, starting with WW back in the last decade and then going mobile on my Treo with a different database, upgrading to at least three different ones on the iphone, and now back to WW, with iphone app.  The WW database is small compared to others I've used. The name brand database so far has not coincided with the brands I use.  The fast food database doesn't include the restaurants I frequent for lunch (Cosi and Quiznos and Panera). So far, I haven't been impressed with the way you add foods to use recurrently to the database. When I entered my Muesli cereal, for example, it only allowed entering one "portion" for the values. The portion on the box is 2/3 of a cup, but I want to eat only half a cup. I can do that to add to the tracker, but if I come back to this food after a while, I'm going to have to figure out all over again what a "portion" is and adjust for how much I actually eat.  Also, I found a way to add permanent foods on the iPad app, but haven't found it on the computer version!  How weird is that?

They have blogs and message boards so I'll have to find where the geeks talk about the way the interface works.  The iPhone app is only rated 2 stars out of 5 on average, with which I would concur.

More later. Work awaits. Breakfast is ready, and lunch is packed.  Starting out right.

Episode IV: A New Hope

Back from vacation and full of new resolve. I am groggy with time changes. My journey home involved being awake for 24 hours straight (that hasn't happened in years) with flight disruptions and all. I went to bed at 1 am, which by my body clock should have been getting up time.  Ironically, it is actually likely to help me adjust faster - I was able to sleep in till seven this morning because I was so tired.  The trip was a wonderful and magical time out of real life, to one of the few true wildernesses left on the planet. It was, however, a luxury tourist excursion, not a polar death march, and pretty much a diet and exercise disaster.  I haven't visited the scale yet, but I downloaded my magical exercise tracking device and verified my overall activity level was about equivalent to the low side of normal life here. Hard to get all the steps in on a very small ship unless you go to the gym - which I did do twice, hooray for me.  The food and drink was good, and I just went with it.  I drank more alcohol last week than the previous year altogether.  Almost entirely in the form of beer, which was what I was feeling. Ice cream as well every day. Dinner portions were small, but the rest was served as a buffet and that didn't help moderate my consumption of the good tasting food. But it was was it was, and now I'm going to re-focus back here.

During my seven hours in Newark airport yesterday, I went ahead and signed up for Weight Watchers on-line. I'm studying the meal suggestions, and getting ready for my first shopping trip. Every new diet seems to start with buying food, oddly enough.  This time, it's fruits and vegies, baby.  This is the right time of year for that!  One of the things I dis-liked about WW last time was the emphasis on highly processed "lite" versions of things, as opposed to eating lower on the processing chain. Now, I think the fresh fruits and vegies, enhanced with leaner versions of meat and dairy, will work for me. Nuts are more welcome now than before, too, I think, which works for me.  

I had done weight watchers on-line a while ago, and they still had my login information - I think it was 2002 when last I checked in..  I like tracking and counting, etc., and in the pre-phone app era, WW was the best on-line experience I found.  Don't remember how long I stuck with it.  They now have specific apps for the iphone and ipad, which I'll get a chance to check out soon.  

Right now, clean up, weigh-in, eat something, start unpacking into the laundry, and off to the food store. No work today - a chance to adjust and get ready. I'll scan the hundreds of work emails later today. 

Personal Bests

Ok, so the eating and drinking on this wonderful trip has been -- well, I'm going to describe it literally as calorific. I don't want to use a value laden word such as a disaster. It's been a lot more calories in than out. But I'm still feeling virtuous.

I'm just back from my second trip to the gym- a first for me on cruise ships. The other ships I've been on have a deck you can walk around, and I've walked and walked and walked. This one is too small. I am doing stairs a lot, but it's still a very small boat.

We've been to shore a couple of times but that hasn't been a great deal if exercise- a stroll where we study artifacts and flowers and wildlife every few steps. More field natural history than hiking.

I went kayaking for an hour or so. That was absolutely a thrill. But when I got back on board I went directly to the gym, because I knew it wasn't enough. I didn't do much- a little bit of walking an jogging on the treadmill. But even that little bit felt really good.

Now I'm just done with a good solid workout session. I covered two miles more quickly than ever before on the treadmill, which presumably means more quickly than ever period. I averaged 4.5 miles an hour. I stuck with the jogging pace for five minutes at a time which is more than Ive done in the past. I'm a little suspicious the settings on this brand of treadmill are a little generous compared to what I'm used to, but also this was really the optimum time to workout. Two hours after a couple of meals, plenty of sleep, ready and raring to go to get that heart beat up after several easy days in a row. I rounded out with some push ups and crunches.

There is no way this exercise bout makes up for the calories I'm consuming. But it does keep me in the pink of fitness. I wonder if my lack of sleep had me almost over training before. Often the workouts seemed to be going uphill. Walks at lunch were easy to by pass. But right now I'm strong and I'm happy.

As I finished my exercise, I looked down from the glass wall to the sun deck below. There were my friends, first in line for the outdoor beer and brats in the Arctic. It seemed the perfect finish to my lovely workout. My quota of three things is more like four or five.

I expect a good five pounds up when I get back. But as long as I'm strong and healthy, it'll be the perfect time to start a new diet and get to lower than I was before. So I'm happy.


Sherbert update

Location:Svalbard

Not Worrying About Food

Plenty of other things to think about.



Sherbert update

Planning for Vacation

I've got my middle boy off to camp, and my girl all programmed while I'm gone. At last, my thoughts can turn to my own great adventure. (My oldest boy will do the dog sitting.) Today I'm starting the laundry push. I've been doing digital packing, too. Reading books loaded onto the kindle and audio books onto the iPod and a movie onto the iPad. Digital guide books and maps. Researching software for managing photos. Checking out international and shipboard computer and phone rates.

Journal or blog? If a digital journal, what is the difference?

I guess it's the audience that makes it different. When I started this blog, I wrote for a while before I let people know about it. I've kept journals on and off since high school. I've kept separate books for separate purposes, writing in one specific one to track my weight, another one for my garden, and an intensely private one for private things. I have a green hardback book I have used as my journal for voyages. I've written in it on a cruise ship in Norway and a small sailboat in the Caribbean, in Alaska and Quebec and all over the Chesapeake. It will come with me on this trip, but I'm thinking the electronic tools for the iPad that allow me to bundle with photos could be a lot of fun. Internet access on the trip is too expensive to post from the road, so there will only be a journal, none of the interactivity I enjoy on this blog. But the electronics will permit me to eventually export it as a pdf and post it somewhere, and I think I'll probably do that. Writing for an audience makes a difference.

Having just a small audience of a few friends changes the nature of what I write here. I've always been honest, though sometimes I edit by omission. But I really enjoy knowing someone is likely to read it, and having this audience and interactivity does bring the "diet buddy" dimension to life. It brings accountability and focus. The comments help bring motivation.

So I'm planning for the trip, and I've been thinking through how to handle food and drink. This will be a somewhat active trip, so only on the travel days I'll need to focus on getting an airport walk. (Hmm, implications for the size of my carryon-can't walk the halls schlepping a heavy bag. While traveling, I'm on my own and will need to have everything together the whole time.)

On the travel days, there are likely to be prefab chicken caesar salads available, my standard goto meal on my lap. But on board the ship, there is likely always food available, and plenty of drink as well. I'm thinking of making a rule, maybe something like a points system. Ice cream, alcohol, and French fries each as a point. Then, two (or three?) a day. These are my downfall foods. There will be other desserts, of course, also costing me a point. So is three points too many? My companions drink, but luckily only beer really tempts me, and it fills me up so quickly I won't go overboard. It's too hard to stick to low carb foods- often sandwiches are what's available. but I can't be counting all the time, just those things that bring big cost. Alcohol, dessert, and French fries.

Time to advance the laundry. Back to the packing.

Any thoughts on how to handle eating and drinking on the road?

Sherbert update

Fro Yo

The big new sensation in town. You grab a cup, fill it with as many of their dozen or so flavors as you want, then top it with candy and hot fudge, and pay by weight.

So not worth it in my opinion, which was probably affected by the long line on Saturday night. But the favors were indistinguishably soft squishy: cookies and cream, chocolate, and coconut all tasted pretty much the same. And I guess the no or low fat is supposed to be good for you, but not with candy and hot fudge on top.

I'll hold out for locals like Moorenko or Giffords, or even a good dark chocolate from Ben and Jerry's. I do love my ice cream, and the denser the better. I'm less concerned about fat content than most dieters, and will try to portion control into reasonable calorie counts.


Sherbert update