Crabby Pantry Diaries, Week 5: PB & C March 29, 2011

During Lent, I’m often given to spiritual pondering. This year is no exception. Specifically, I find myself wondering when they are going to go ahead and canonize Harry Burnett Reese, the guy who invented the chocolate and peanut butter combo. If you think I’m being sacreligious, then you’re just not a person who enjoys PB & C. In which case, something very wrong happened to you as a child. I suggest therapy.

The rest of you well-adjusted readers know what I mean. You remember the first time you ate chocolate and peanut butter together. It was Halloween. You were sorting through your haul of goodies that you’d just dumped out of your janky homemade cloth pumpkin sack onto your frilly kitten bedspread. You see the mini Reese’s Peanut Butter cups and you remembered the commercial you’d seen recently: Ralph Malph is walking down the street, munching a chocolate bar. From the other direction comes Robby Benson, eating from a jar of peanut butter. Why he’s eating out of a jar in public like it’s nothing, we may never know. When I eat it straight from the jar, I do it alone. In my kitchen. With the lights off. And then I cry. Because I like my peanut butter extra salty.

Here is the shameless wonder himself:

You may ask yourself: Why is Robby Benson costumed in nerd glasses and talking with a not-so believable Brooklyn accent? Why is the peanut-butter eater characterized as a nerdy intellectual? Where is he going, and what is he going to do with a jar of peanut butter when he gets there? What is a “Paper Back Bookstore”?

My younger readers may better remember this other Reese’s commercial from the 80s. This time the peanut butter jar freak is a woman, in a movie theater. At least it’s in the dark. I can think of worse things she could be doing in the theater. Get out of my head, Alanis!

Now, you may ask yourself: Is that a man or a woman sitting next to her, and why does she/he not even care that there is a potential psychopath sitting right there, eating out of a peanut butter jar she has sneaked into the theater via a giant purse? Why does the woman look so pleased to suddenly see a random object fall into her peanut butter? Why is there a fog machine in the lobby? Why is the snack vendor doing an impression of Igor? Are we watching a scary movie or are we IN a scary movie? Why would any woman fall for such a twitchy little twerp as he who tosses his chocolate bar over the balcony railing at the first sign of trouble in a presumably scary movie? Is she attracted to the high school jacket denoting he has lettered in something? Do they give out letters for peeing your pants? And, after she evidently just scarfed down the twitchy twerp’s chocolate bar after it fell into her peanut butter (Oh yeah, I am getting the metaphor LOUD and CLEAR, you dirty, dirty Reese’s commercial writers), why does she then get her Miss Piggy on, and hoof it to the lobby to get MORE chocolate and peanut butter in the form of the aforementioned Reese’s? I’ll tell you why. Because she is pregnant. And it is the best thing ever.

Anyway, so back to Halloween. You tried the cup. You loved the cup. You wanted to melt a big vat of cups and take a bath in the ensuing goo. You wondered why your mother never put cups in a blender and added the mixture to your baby bottle. You wondered why nobody had invented Reese’s cereal. Oh, just you wait.

Sigh. I miss the ’70s and ’80s. Those were the days when cereal manufacturers could get away with saying things like “Now part of this complete breakfast” and our moms, either addle-pated by all the drugs they did in the ’60s or too busy to care what we shoved down our gullets as long as we got to the school bus on time or both, bought it. “Part of this complete breakfast,” means nothing. Neither does saying, “Hey, we’re a legitimate breakfast cereal because you can eat it WITH A SPOON.” Moms today are just too amped up about being lied to by food makers. Thank you, “Food, Inc.” You ruined awesome cereal for college students everywhere.

My point is this: I lost another 2.4 pounds this week. I somehow did this AFTER indulging in some serious PB & C on Saturday night. The deceased inventor of PB & C was smiling down on me as I roamed through Target with Little Dude’s boxes of baby cereal (sans Reese’s, thank you very much — he’s 9 months old), making a pit stop in the chocolate aisle for a 400 calorie fix of the best thing ever. It was totally worth it, and totally a miracle. And that’s why he has earned sainthood.

Worst Day: Saturday, March 26

Breakfast: Two eggs, two servings light string cheese, one T ketchup, two mini Cadbury Creme eggs.

Snack: One 100 calorie popcorn snack.

Lunch: Two servings potato soup, made with Greek yogurt and fiesta blend cheese.

Snack: 1 cup baby carrots, one plum

Dinner: Same as lunch. That’s good soup. Plus 4 oz. of leftover turkey from Crock Pot Friday.

Snack: One Choxie milk chocolate and peanut butter bar (2 servings per bar.) No, not Reese’s. Just wanted to throw you a curve ball.

Best Day: Monday, March 28

Breakfast: One serving oatmeal, one-half serving rice milk in coffee, half serving cadbury mini creme eggs.

Lunch: Boca sandwich with light string cheese, 1 plain Greek yogurt with one serving pineapples.

Dinner: Three cups field greens salad (yes, it was the biggest bowl known to man, what of it?), one T olive oil, 1.5 c brown rice.

Snack: Homemade trail mix: one 100-calorie popcorn snack with 1/4 c. walnuts and 1/4 cup raisins.

Crabby Pantry Diaries, Week 4 March 23, 2011

I feel like writing loud today because I LOST THREE POUNDS AND SOME CHANGE, PEOPLE!

That about takes care of my all caps and exclamation mark quota for the day. In case you’re counting, that’s ten, plus the extra ounces I was kvetching about last week. I’m over my dessert rage and on to more positive minutae. I’ve even started writing myself notes on my Dunder-Mifflin dry-erase board on the refrigerator, like a true cornball self-improver. At first it started out sarcastic: “I love going to bed hungry, it makes me happy.” Then it tumbled into nebulous sincerity: “Go to bed hungry, you feel better about yourself in the morning!” This week’s note is not so much nebulous as it is pragmatic: “If you want a snack in the evening, brush your teeth and go to bed early.”

I know what’s happening. I’ve lost my first ten pounds, and I’m still prancing through that honeymoon phase of dieting. That’s the kind of honeymoon where, instead of rolling in the hay and occasionally going outside to look at a palm tree, you spend every waking moment thinking about food, writing down your food, wondering if you remembered to write down all of your food, wondering how much vegetables you will have to eat with dinner because you’ve run out of calories too early in the day, cursing your genes and your thyroid and your slow metabolism, and yelling at your spouse who is never hungry at the same time you are. And the diet honeymoon doesn’t even come with palm trees outside. Look out the window? See? Wet cement and blank, dormant trees. That’s March for you.

The upside is this honeymoon, as you compulsive dieters know, is also the phase where the pounds fall off like crazy. Your body has been re-booted. I know that this phase is not going to last; I’m going to plummet for awhile and then land on the plateau. That would be the same plateau after about a 20-pound loss that prompted me to drop out of Weight Watchers three times. Yep. Three. But that’s probably not going to happen for another month or so. Until then, I’ll allow myself to be slightly less crabby.

Worst Day: Friday, March 18

Breakfast: 1 serving oatmeal, 1 service rice milk in coffee, 1/2 serving Cadbury mini Creme Eggs.

Lunch: Boca sandwich with light string cheese, greek yogurt

Snack: 2 servings rice cakes with one serving peanut butter and one serving jam

Dinner: Two and one-half large pieces of crock pot lasagna with ground turkey, 8 oz. red wine. Not great, but only went over my calories about a couple hundred.  Also used whole wheat pasta and lower-fat mozzarella.

Best Day: Thursday, March 17

Exactly the same breakfast and lunch as Friday.

Afternoon snack: 1 apple, one serving peanut butter.

Dinner: Two cups mixed vegetables, homemade trail mix (100-calorie popcorn snack, with one serving raisins and one serving walnuts.)

After dinner snack (not a normal thing but I was way under my calories): 1 cup Cheerios, 1 serving rice milk. Still over 160 calories under budget.

That’s about it. I’m actually in a good mood. I truly can’t think of anything to complain about today. Must have something to do with wearing a tie-dye shirt. I just can’t be crabby today, so I won’t bore you with my positivity.

Crabby Pantry Diaries, Week 3: My Mother, My Prison March 16, 2011

If she were a tiny action figure, she would come with a teeny bag of homemade cookies, a Barbie-sized pie plate of leftover pie from church, an itty-bitty tin of blueberry muffins and a pull string that would make her say the following, “What do you want me to bring?” “Ok, I’ll just bring something small.” “It’s OK, you can have one cookie.” “Well, maybe you’re husband would like some treats, did you think of that?” “Fine, I’ll just make cookies for him from now on.” “Grandma’s sweetheart would like some cookies.”

All of these features make up the DNA for a perfect grandmother. But not a mother to a serious dieter. Less than perfect. Less perfect and more … disastrous saboteur of self-esteem and empowered calorie-counting.

I can’t blame my mother for my issues with weight or with food. Obviously, nobody held a gun to my head and forced me to eat cookies after school every day or dessert after dinner. Nobody forced me to continue that practice when I became an adult. And I can’t blame it entirely on genetics. Although genetically speaking, even the thinnest, tallest, blondest, bluest-eyed women to whom I am related still complain about DBD. Dutch Butt Disease.

But my mother should know better. You may recall the fact that this is the person who lost and is still losing weight after bariatric surgery. What I’m learning is, elective medical procedures do not fix food addiction. She specifically asked what she could bring when she and dad visited last weekend. I specifically said, “Nothing. No sweets. PLEASE.” She showed up with a bag of cookies and a pie. Homemade sweets are my kryptonite. I had such a great week, after going to two different restaurants, ordering pancakes and taking half of them home each time in a carry out box. Then my mother shows up with pie. This makes me crabby, but I’m not able to express my disappointment to her because I’m polite to my houseguests. This makes me frustrated, crabby, and now hungry and wanting to eat sweets.

I waited to express my displeasure until after she left. I tweeted. Tweeting: a passive aggressive girl’s best friend. Blogging: a passive aggressive girl’s longer best friend. My first order of business was to send that pie off to my husband’s office on Monday morning. Come on, people. A Key Lime pie with cream cheese and lime green Jell-O? If there’s one thing being a crabby dieter has made me into, it’s a food snob. If I’m going to nuke all my calories on dessert, it better be real Key Lime. That’s sweetened condensed milk, egg yolks, and actual Key lime juice. But then Husband forgot the pie. So into the trash it went. I know. It’s crazy wasteful. But I did it and it felt good. If I hadn’t, that thing would have been sitting on my counter calling my name in the language that only cream cheese knows, even packaged inside an imposter pie. Then, I piled an empty baby cereal box on top of it, and threw in some old, wet tea bags. No way to Costanza that pie out of the trash.

Pie victory aside, My mother’s cookies did not escape my cookie-hole. Neither did the lard in the refried beans at the Mexican restaurant on Saturday night. And so, I ended up gaining half a pound this week. I’m not too upset, I guess. It’s not that much of a setback, and aside from that I gained a bit of courage in the face of empty calories. And possibly, some courage in the face of Little Dude’s grandma, to whom I will say next time, “Bring the cookies and pie home with you, or else it’s going in the garbage.” I’ll let you know how that goes.

So here was my worst day. Saturday, March 12:

Breakfast: One-half serving triple berry pancakes at Spyro’s. (Only the best breakfast in town)

Lunch: Boca chicken patty, light string cheese, 100-calorie deli flat bread, greek yogurt. Um, followed by three oatmeal raisin, cranberry, white chocolate cookies. Yes, THOSE cookies.

Snack: couple handfuls honey mustard pretzel pieces.

Dinner: Steak tacos and a 27-ounce margarita at Cebolla’s. And no, I did not take half of it home. I did only eat half of the refried beans, but half a pound of lard and cheese is still half a pound of lard and cheese.

Best day, Thursday, March 10:

Breakfast: One serving oatmeal, half serving rice milk, coffee.

Snack: 1 medium ruby red grapefruit.

Lunch: Boca sandwich (I think you get the picture), greek yogurt, one serving Snapea Crisps.

Snack: Homemade trail mix: one serving each of raisins, walnuts, and popcorn.

Dinner: 1.5 servings couscous, 1/3 can tuna, 1 cup peas.

Snack: 1 serving popcorn with kettle corn seasoning, 2 servings wine.

See what I did there? Well, no you can’t see precisely. But looking at my food log, my wine intake seems to increase heading into the weekend, peaks on Saturday with the arrival of my parents (see 27-ounce margarita above) and slowly tapers off again after Sunday.

There’s probably not a correlation there.

 

Crabby Pantry Diaries, week 2 March 9, 2011

I just noticed. If you read the title a bit absentmindedly, it might make one think I’m writing about how I don’t like my underwear. That could be a decent enough blog post for another time, but I don’t know about a weekly feature.

Anyway. So I lost three more pounds this week! That makes seven so far, and I’ve yet to break a sweat. That is to say, I have yet to break a sweat on purpose. I don’t count incidental sweat. Slight perspiration at the hairline due to schlepping up and down the narrow church basement stairs with my 25-pound 8 month old son and an Ikea bag full of toys doesn’t count. Incidental strenuousness is just gravy. But not literal gravy. That would be far too much sodium for my diet. Learn to walk already, Little Dude!

As promised, here are my worst and best days over the past week.

Worst Day: Sunday, March 6

Breakfast: One serving oatmeal, half-serving rice milk in coffee. (Great so far)

Lunch: Three slices Archer Farms Sicilian Thin Crust Pizza; three slices Archer Farms Spinach & Goat Cheese Pizza. That’s 1,065 calories right there. Hey, the humiliation is working. I want to vomit reading that.

Dinner: Approximately one cup spaghetti with meatballs, and 1 large slice blueberry cheesecake, served by our lovely and polite church youth group as a fundraiser for camp. As I knew this was coming, what I should have done was gone straight home from church in the morning and eaten a grapefruit while the pizzas were in the oven, instead of attacking those delicious Target pizzas like an exhausted, starving zombie all over brains on a silver platter.

All that put me about 400 calories over my budget.

So, here’s my best day this week:

Tuesday, March 8:

Breakfast: 1 serving oatmeal, 1 serving rice milk in coffee.

Lunch: 2 cups field greens salad, 1 2/3 T olive oil, 1/4 c. walnuts, 1 serving Meijer brand light string cheese, 1 red grapefruit, 1 Dannon Greek yogurt.

Snack: 1 Skinny Cow Chocolate and Peanut Butter Ice Cream Sandwich

Dinner: Half serving double blueberry IHop pancakes. No syrup, so that worked out to about 400 calories. So proud of myself, as I also asked for a takeout box and ate the remaining two pancakes this morning! This is an old Weight Watchers trick — make two meals out of one restaurant meal — but I rarely ever execute it successfully.

Snack: 1 100-calorie Pop Secret Microwave popcorn snack, 1/2 tsp kettle corn seasoning, 6 oz. white wine.

Sounds like a lot but I was still 56 calories under budget.

More importantly, it was my best self-esteem day yet. So much so, that I almost forgot to blog this morning. But I couldn’t have that. It’s sort of like anti-depressants. You feel good, so you decide you don’t need the pills, so you stop taking them, and you feel bad again and the spiral begins. The difference is, I seem to have some genuinely interested readers counting on me to take my weekly “pill.” So the extra dose of “Yay!” on top of yesterday’s success is just gravy.

Mmm. Gravy.

The Crabby Pantry Diaries, week one March 2, 2011

I hesitated for a long time to create a regular update on my struggles with losing weight. My reasons are five-fold:

1) Whenever a woman tries to combine humor and dieting in written word form, she risks painting herself into a corner resembling a Cathy cartoon. I might as well go to Wal-Mart and get my heart-appliqued sweatshirt now.

2) It’s none of y’all’s business what I weigh or what I want to weigh.

3) Talking to others about your diet is like the opposite of the Law of Attraction. If you run your mouth about what you’re eating and what you’re weighing and how much you’re exercising and how much sleep you’re getting, then people will inevitably ask you about it. Then, when you slip and eat a whole row of fudge-covered Oreos, you’ve got nothing to brag about. And so when that auntie or fellow parishioner asks you how your diet’s going, you hem and haw and they eventually stop asking. Then you give up the diet. Then you’ve got an anemic-looking category on your blog that ends up going the way of Wine for your Weekend (ahem). See? The opposite of The Secret.

4) It’s really, horrifyingly humiliating, personal subject matter. This coming from the chick who recently brought you a post sponsored by her breasts’ failure to produce enough breastmilk. I don’t care how many fatties take off their clothes on national television and step on the biggest and most judgmental scale known to man, it’s still intensely private to me.

5) Dieting is hard, and it makes me crabby. I hate writing down my food consumption. I hate counting calories, points, or whatever-the-H you want to call food restriction. I hate exercise. I hate sweating. I hate workout clothes. I hate skinny people who can eat whatever they want. Even more, I hate skinny people who think they are fat. Those last two things might not have anything to do with my diet, but those are the people who are in my crosshairs whenever I’m on a diet.

And let’s face the facts. What we are doing here is a diet. The nutritionists don’t like us chunky monkeys to call it that because it sounds depressing. Well, kittens, it is all depressing. If you cut back on your Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, you, sir, are on a diet. Call it a lifestyle change, call it a meal plan, call it a 100-calorie–snack-pack eating strategy, call it Lettuce Immersion Therapy. I don’t care. It’s a diet. It’s the only thing that will work. If you aren’t reducing your calories and increasing your activity level, you won’t lose weight. All successful and healthful weight loss programs are based on that simple formula. Take in less than you put out. (Hey, get your mind out of the gutter.)

So, my plan is to give you sweeties a little weight loss update every week. I’ll share with you my food log, which I hereby rename my Crabby Pantry Diary. It needed a snappier name. “Food Log” just made me thing of Tootsie Rolls. And … other things that resemble logs, which we won’t get into here.

I choose Hump Day because Wednesday is the toughest day of the week whenever I’m dieting. On Monday, I’m all energized to start the week off right. On Tuesday, I’m still so proud of myself for having a good Monday that I carry that energy all day. By Wednesday, I’m ready to lick stamps until the chemical adhesive absorbs into my bloodstream and kills me. I figure if I let you in on what I’ve been up to once in a while, I’ll be held accountable. As much as a smallish group of family, friends and distant strangers can hold a person accountable via blog comments in lieu of a real face-to-face support group.

My goal is to open up my Crabby Pantry Diary every week and give you a peak at my best day and my worst day of eating, in addition to how much weight I’ve lost that week. I realize the weight loss is sort of without context, as I’m not quite ready to share with you what my actual starting weight is/was. Maybe I will do it eventually. Maybe not. If not having an exact chart at which to look bothers you, then you’ve got other problems.

Here it is then, week one:

Best Day: Monday, Feb. 28:

Breakfast: 1 serving oatmeal, 1/2 serving rice milk in coffee.

Snack: 1/4 c. walnuts, 1/4 c. crumbled blue cheese.

Lunch: Boca chicken patty with light string cheese on 100-calorie Deli flat sandwich bread, 1 red grapefruit, 1 Greek yogurt.

Snack: 1 apple, 1 serving creamy peanut butter.

Dinner: 2 cups salad greens, 1 T. olive oil, 2 servings Brussels sprouts.

Snack: 100 calorie microwave popcorn snack, 4 oz. glass white wine.

TOTAL: 1,756 calories.

Worst day, Sunday, Feb. 27.

Oscar night, party of one:

Breakfast: cheesy grits.

Lunch: roasted chicken breast, leg, wing & thigh

Dinner: 1 pint coffee flavored Ben & Jerry’s.

Snack: Two bags Pop Secret microwave popcorn, kettle corn flavor, 2 glasses white wine.

Yikes. When I write it out like that, it is super embarrassing and sort of makes me want to gag. I suppose any of you who followed my pregnancy last year knows how effective my gag reflex is in keeping me from overeating, as I only gained about 20 pounds over those nine months. So maybe writing out my super gross moments and gagging over them will work.

Anyway, something is working. Since I started writing a Crabby Pantry Diary last month, I’ve lost four pounds!

Any and all comments, suggestions and criticisms welcome. Seriously. Go ahead and yell at me about that pint of ice cream. I’m ready for the stoning. Maybe all the stoning injuries will keep me from thinking about ice cream.

It’s going to be a great week!