mizducky's migrations: a weight management blog with attitude

Weekly weigh-in: inching down; plus: thinking nice thoughts about produce

First, this week's numbers:

• Yesterday's weight: 205.0 lb
• Change since last week: -1.0 lb
• Cumulative weight loss: 129.0 lb
• Average weekly weight change: -1.74

So it looks like I'm consolidating around the four-pound drop I registered last week--excellent! I was slighly concerned that at least some of that big drop might have been water weight due to getting myself dehydrated from all the moving-type activities of last week, and was half expecting a slight upward rebound on the scale. But no, it looks like that level is gonna stick, at least for the moment.

(I am studiously trying to ignore the fact that I'm creeping up on the 200-pound weight milestone. I don't think I've weight less than 200 pounds in forever. But it's really just another number on the scale, I keep telling myself. Lalalalalala ... )

Meanwhile, I'm continuing to get used to householding with, and cooking for, Mr. E. It's so funny--he's understandably wanting to be independent, and is very sensitive to any hint that I'm being overprotective of him--even when it's evident to me that he's not anywhere near as together with the independence thing as he thinks he is.

For example, he doesn't like it when I get overly interventionist about his food choices. But when I see what he selects to eat when left to his own devices, it's really really hard for me not to intervene. If he had his way, I doubt he would ever remember to eat a vegetable, or any fruit other than orange juice--it would be all protein, starches, sugars, and fats, and heavy on those latter three nutrients.

Like just now, choosing lunch for himself, he picked cottage cheese, some leftover steak, and an English muffin almost drowning in margarine, with a glass of milk. Okay, the steak, cottage cheese, and milk aren't bad--especially since the steak was very lean and the dairy products low fat. But the drowning-in-margarine thing--oy. And not a single vegetable or fruit in sight.

So I've taken to various subterfuges to influence his food choices while still giving him room for choice and autonomy. I now have a fruit bowl out on the counter, plus a bowl full of cherries in the fridge. Left in plain sight that way, they tempt him into eating the stuff--I can tell it's working by the decreasing contents, plus the various little fruit pits he forgetfully leaves on the kitchen counter. Another trick I've come up with: when he puts together a (produce-free) lunch for himself, I slice up some tomato or cucumber or similar vegetable, ostensibly for my own lunch--but I put it in a bowl between us, announcing it's for us to share. Even though he'll say he only wants a slice or two, once he tastes how good it is he does wind up getting tempted into eating a good bit more than that.

You see, he really does like fruits and vegetables, more even than he realizes. It's just that only his crave foods stick in his memory and motivate him to eat--and not nearly often enough, either. Even though he knows that style of eating led to the malnourished state that helped catapult him into a health crisis last fall, that lesson doesn't stick in his head enough to make him change his behavior. So, I'll just continue to help steer his behavior in these and other such non-interventionist ways, and see if that helps any.

Weekly weigh-in: a moving experience; plus--cooking for E.

I'm back! And here's the latest numbers:

• Today's weight: 206.0 lb
• Change since last weigh-in (two weeks ago): -4.0 lb
• Cumulative weight loss: 128.0 lb
• Average weekly weight change: -1.75 lb

Nothing like spending a week shlepping boxes of belongings hither and yon to blast a plateau into little bits. I kind of suspected the plateau was all about my lagging once again on the physical activity part of the program, but it took the necessity of having to move from one apartment to another to get me into action. I hate moving with a passion to which words cannot do justice, and so when I do need to move, it throws me into a frenzy of activity, motivated by the desire to get the damn thing over with as soon as humanly possible. Well, I still have piles of boxes here and there, but my new room is now actually looking like a room and not a lost-and-found, and best of all my computer is up and running again. So at least I can return to most of my normal everyday activities--including blogging.

One of the interesting things about my new household is that I'll be doing a housing exchange in return for looking after my new housemate, an elderly friend who needs someone to make sure he stays on top of his meds, his nutrition, etc. Of course I'm intrigued at the prospect of bringing to bear a lot of the healthy-eating wisdom I've accumulated over the past year and a half of my little odyssey. There is a small wrinkle: like many of his age and generation, my new housemate--let's call him E.--has very set eating habits and preferences. He's really convinced he doesn't like any spices or flavorings, or anything excessively foreign or unfamiliar. I don't want to be freaking him out--at his age and in his health situation, he deserves to have food that is comforting rather than challenging--but I do want to broaden his horizons at least a little. Plus I don't want cooking for him to be boring for me! So I'm working on him gently. One of our recent conversations went a little like this:

Me: So do you think I put too much pepper in this dish for your taste?
E: Well, if you had asked me before I tasted it, I would have said that was way too much pepper. But now that I've tasted it, it's not too much pepper.

I'm probably never going to get him eating mapo tofu or congee with fermented bean curd--nor do I think that's the goal. But I have succeeded already in winning him over at least a little to the joys of roasted vegetables, something he's apparently never tried before. And I've also had a win or two so far with old-school comfort foods with a twist--tonight, for instance, I did my version of Salisbury steak, and he liked it lots. I already see pot roast, chicken a la king, and salmon croquettes on the horizon--only done my way rather than Swanson's.

And of course I'll be featuring lots and lots of veggies. Interestingly, while there are some vegetables he says he can't abide--zucchini, for one--there are several that he loves that are on most veg-haters' hit list, like spinach and beets. I made roasted fresh beets to go with the Salisbury steak, and he loved it. And while he's lukewarm about a number of the cruciferous vegetables, such as broccoli and cauliflower, he got really excited when I made coleslaw for one dinner. I did have to use Miracle Whip (blech!) because he prefers that to mayonnaise, but still I got some crucifers into him, and that's all to the good as far as I'm concerned.

I suspect that cooking for E. will be a recurring theme in this blog from here on in ... stay tuned for further adventures.

Weekly weigh-in: postponed due to moving!

I am in the midst of the chaos of moving from one apartment to another, which presents any number of challenges to the intrepid weight-management enthusiast. The primary one right now being that my bathroom scale is currently buried in a box in my old apartment and thus inaccessible to me. So, for the time being I guess I'll have to keep maintaining the old-fashioned way: by sticking to the plan. At least I know for sure that I'm getting more than my share of exercise this week--hefting all those boxes is definitely giving me a workout!

In my new abode, as I think I hinted in a previous post, I'm in a much more walking-friendly neighborhood, so I think the outlook for my future forays into exercise is going to be a whole lot brighter. But for now, I'm just looking forward to getting the rest of my stuff moved over--and then a long soak in a hot bath full of Epsom salts, and a nice long full night's sleep in my own bed.

Weekly weigh-in: still twiddling around

Okay, so yesterday's numbers:

• Yesterday's weight: 210.0 lb
• Change since last week: +1.5 lb
• Cumulative weight loss: 124.0
• Average weekly weight change: -1.75

Sigh. But not a very dramatic sigh. I looked back at my records and I see I've been farting around 210 pounds since back on April 23rd. I mean, I'm not going to be happy if it should creep up higher than that, but this fibilation is still very much in the range of water weight fluctuations, and I know I've been having some continuing issues with that--overdoing the soy sauce and the pickles will do that to one.

The fact of the matter is, given how busy and stressful life has been recently, I've still been managing to basically eat healthy. I've done some situational little over-indulgences (prosciutto and shrimp at a couple of different social engagements; a couple of drinks here and there), and there was that one steak weirdness the other week. But considering what I sometimes did with food under stress back in the old days, this was nuthin'.

It may also just be time to plateau for awhile here. I did say I was going to pause at around 200 and see what the lay of the land was. And while I can do my food a whole lot tighter than I'm currently doing it, I am not comfortable with cutting my caloric intake any further. If anything is going to change, it'll have to be the exercise level, which again has been lagging.

Within a few weeks I'll have gotten through a bunch of the current stressors, and will be in a better environment to get my game really clean again. My new neighborhood will be extremely walker-friendly, so that should help matters a lot.