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Eating Smarter (Not Harder?)

I had written this a few weeks ago, with the intention of including it in a November Weigh-In post:

I’m tired of thinking about food all the time.

I’m tired of planning and tracking and adjusting and making it work. I’m tired of beating myself up over poor food decisions made at the wrong time. I’m tired of re-figuring how many pounds I’m going to need to lose next week to get back on track to reach my weight goal.

I’m tired of it… but that doesn’t mean I’m giving up.

That just means I need to make more decisions ahead of time, so I don’t have to think about it so much.

Little did I know that WeightWatchers would be forcing my hand on the matter.

Today — since today was my weigh-in day — I started the new Beyond the Scale program with WeightWatchers. Where the PointsPlus system calculated a value for each food based on Fat, Fiber, Carbs, and Protein, the new SmartPoints are calculated based on Calories, Saturated Fat, Sugar, and Protein. (It’s not like I’m breaking any non-disclosure agreements by sharing that much info — I read that much info in some Oprah article online.)

What does that mean? It means that the comfortable food-groove I’ve been in for the past five years or so is being shaken up, and I no longer automatically know how many Points my favorite foods will cost me. Some are now more, and some are less.

The idea is to encourage healthy eating. The few sweet indulgences I had will be even fewer, now that sugar is part of the calculation, and fiber can no longer offset a high carb count. I’ll probably be eating more protein, though — my husband and I had practically gone vegetarian, since meat was more “expensive” than veggies.

My prior goal for the holidays, once I resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn’t hit Goal-with-a-Capital-G by the holidays, was to maintain my weight. I have done that: once I decided that I was going to hold steady through the end of the year, I haven’t weighed in above that weight. I’ve even been recording my daily weight in a Google Spreadsheet, where I have a forecast function predicting where my weight is trending, and I make sure to adjust if I see that trendline creeping up above my hold-steady weight.

My new goal for the holidays is to master this new program. I suspect that the act of familiarizing myself with all the new meal combinations and possibilities, shaking up the status quo, will be enough to keep me in line from a weight standpoint.

I’m actually pretty happy with the weight I am right now. I’m healthy and relatively fit. I just want to see what that last 10 or 15 pound difference will look feel like.

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Monday Morning Tantrum

This morning was not a good morning.

It didn’t help that I did not sleep well last night, between atomic wedgie pajamas and waking up sporadically with various limbs asleep or numb or in pain and Connor getting me up at 4am so I could cover him up after his bad dream. So, when my alarm woke me up at 6:50am, I snoozed it three times, then turned it off entirely, then finally got up a half hour late.

Connor got up while I was in the bathroom getting ready and politely requested to play with my phone under the blanket. (That’s a common request these days.) I acquiesced, but told him he’d have to cover himself up, since I was getting ready for work, and that he’d have to turn off the phone and come out as soon as I told him. OK, he said.

Then he pitched a fit when it was time to get dressed, of course.

He’s getting too big for this, really, but I removed his jammies against his will, as he was refusing to speak and just communicating in grunts. I tried reasoning with him, but finally I just got some fresh underwear on him and carried all 40 pounds of him downstairs, along with his clothes, my work clothes (since I was wearing workout clothes for my physical therapy session before work), and his blanket for naptime at school.

He changed his tune at that point, and started crying and screaming that he’d wanted to put his clothes on upstairs, not in the kitchen! But that’s what we did, and he finally calmed down and cooperated with me.

Briefly.

We still had tiffs about what he’d like for breakfast (“Fine, I’ll decide for you”) and getting his shoes on (“Fine, we’ll go to school without shoes, then”). We drove to preschool with Connor carrying his shoes in his lap and Clutch blaring full blast on the stereo because Mommy was seriously at the end of her rope. Mommy may have driven just a little faster than usual, too.

He’d calmed down for real by the time we got to school (three minutes later). He quietly informed me that he’d like to get his shoes on in the car now, so I helped out with that. He hopped out of the car just like normal and we gathered up his stuff headed to the front door.

As we were walking up the sidewalk, Connor said to me, “I love you anyway.”

Was not expecting that.

I’ve told him that before — whenever we’re both infinitely frustrated with each other, when words have been exchanged, when we’ve both had enough… once we finally calm back down enough to talk civilly to one another, I always tell him that I still love him, even if I’m mad at him.

I guess that stuck. I can never tell what will make an impact on him, and I guess that did.

He was still a little sullen as I dropped him off, but I gave his teachers the heads-up about our morning, and we had our normal hugs good-bye.

Connor really is a sweetheart… when he’s not being a little shithead.