DAY TEN

Ah, now I can hear it. The Call of the Carb. In the last ten days I’ve had ten Ritz crackers and a ¼ cup of yellow rice. Tonight I ate a half an ear of corn yes, of course with butter and salt with a Caesar salad. And I had a salad for lunch. So I’m munching delicious salads and eating meat but no bread, no potatoes, no pasta, no chips and dip, no hummus and pita chips, no snacks. It sucks, even though I really like what I am eating. There’s a whole bunch of stuff I like that I’m not eating. And there’s the rub. Oh, Bread, I miss you! Ciabatta or rosemary drenched in olive oil, toasted rye with butter pooling in all the nooks and crannies, pumpernickel and mustard, and white, white, white! While I’m not giving it up forever seriously, what kind of monster would do that? I’ve decided at least for now to just cut out all carbs (okay, most) and see what happens. And it’s making a huge difference. Irritatingly so.

So the novelty is wearing off. It’s day ten.

One thing I’m hanging onto like grim death is my morning cup of coffee. My morning cup of joe is important to me. It’s 5 am and the house is quiet, and I sit on the patio or wander the garden. It’s a lot more than a cup of coffee. It’s a ritual that helps prepare me for my work day, and it’s worth every calorie. I measure my cream (2 tbsp) and sugar (1 tbsp), and I only have one cup. And I’ve decided this is one indulgence I won’t give up. I tested my blood sugar today, an hour after my coffee, 1 cup of whole grain cheerios, half cup of skim milk and two small strawberries - from 102 at rising to 173. Hmmmmm. Nope, still not giving it up!

I’m also tracking my calories, trying to keep under 1,500 a day, because that’s what the ‘interwebs’ told me a person of my height and girth should eat to lose weight. Tracking calories is time-consuming and boring, but at least it’s annoyingly informative! I don’t know that I’ll obsess over this piece long-term, but for now it’s giving me a clear sense of how f***ing little you actually have to eat to get anywhere, and that sucks eggs, which by the way, come in at a whopping 78 calories a piece. So say goodbye to that creamy egg salad sandwich on white. But it’s got lettuce on it…

I’m off to dinner with a friend tonight, and I’m already perusing the menu in my head. It’s a good thing I like salads, because believe me, there’s nothing you can get in a restaurant that doesn’t have fifty million times the calories of the same stuff you’d make at home. On the upside, restaurant food fills me up. I almost never get a dessert because I’m too full. Of course after I get home and rest up, that bowl of ice cream begins to beckon, and eventually I tell myself it’s okay because I didn’t get dessert at the restaurant…oh, the things we tell ourselves! Fat people would make incredible lawyers; negotiating, shading the truth, creating complex justifications for why we murdered that Milky Way bar. He was asking for it! Sophistry!

So, onward to day eleven, which promises more of the same. I’ll close with two of my favorite quotes from Ron Swanson of Parks & Recreation:

“You’ve accidentally given me the food that my food eats.”

“Salad is for the weak.”

Hang in there!