Frenetic Food

I feel like I spend way too much brain power on food. Between thinking about what to buy, what to eat, what to make, what do I feel like, what to bring for lunch, etc, I get exhausted. If it weren’t for David, I might eat the same thing every day, because it’s hard to be creative day after day.

I have been looking at Pick N Save’s weekly ad, hoping for some sales that will inspire something healthy and delicious. Not much this week. There are a lot of picnic and cook-out foods are on sale, for obvious reasons.

We always manage to eat delicious and somewhat healthy meals. We rarely go out to eat based on desperation and necessity. But at the beginning of the week, looking towards the days ahead, I feel overwhelmed. I can only handle so much salad. Bringing a salad for lunch feels like a last resort. My salads are usually more than just lettuce; my current favorite being a chef salad with chunks of cheese and turkey breast, so it’s delicious and filling. But I can only take so much!

I much prefer to make a big dinner and take in leftovers. Some dinners, however, don’t work so well for that. I don’t really like reheating ground beef, so our mini burger and taco salad dinners are out. I don’t think leftover fish sounds very good, so large portions of that are out too. Reheating steak or pork in a microwave can often make it dry and not nearly as tasty. I think the best things to reheat are meats that are cooked WITH other ingredients, like stirfry or some sort of veggie casserole.

I’ll still take dry leftovers over dreading salad every day. If we weren’t on a dinner time limit it would be easier. We could go to the grocery store after work and pick up some fresh veggies and cook whatever sounds good to us that day. But planning meals for the week is a job that I find difficult, especially when my list of foods that I am eating is so limited. I’m still scared to add back carbs. I’ve had some fruit and high-fiber cereal. Maybe I’ll take the leap and make some cous-cous for dinner this week. Also, it would be nice to be able to take a sandwich for lunch in a whole wheat pita.

I hit 183 this weekend, for a moment. I weigh every day, and this morning I was a pound higher than that. I’m not surprised or disappointed, but I’m still saying my current weight is now 183. I looked at myself in the mirror today while getting dressed and I kind of liked what I saw. I saw waist!! And my stomach wasn’t sticking out as much! And I could swear my butt and thighs look just a TINY bit smaller. But there’s still a long way to go on the thigh and hip area. South Beach really cuts into the belly-fat, so I can only hope that as more weight comes off, it will come off other areas as well.

Here’s a body peeve of mine… Chubby knees. I feel like I have chubby knees! I DO.  I feel like my calves and ankles are pretty enough, but I don’t like anything cut above my knees. I feel like my legs look like thick tree stumps up there. Again, I hope some of that goes away with continued diet and exercise.

Okay, and I’m going to add this here. It’s about breasts. Specifically mine. They’re not small. And I don’t really want them to be SMALL, exactly. They’re mine and I like them the way they are. But they got bigger as I gained weight. So I expected them to, um, deflate a bit. They haven’t. Like, not really at all. Like, I’m still wearing the same undergarments. The bands don’t dig into my diminishing back fat as much, but they still fit. Um, what? I was was honestly a little worried that I’d lose weight there and no where else. Apparently I worried them into staying the same?

Sagging is a BIG fear of mine. That, and breast cancer. My breasts have, in many ways, become a huge part of who I am. I could write a whole post on my self esteem as related to men and my boobs, but that’s for another day. Anyway, I don’t wear many skimpy tops and I even usually sleep in tank tops that have that built in shelf support. I was kind of hoping for a little of that, ahem, weight to be lifted.

Whatever. I’m honestly loving my body a little more every day and it really feels fantastic. At some point, you just have to accept things that you cannot change. Or at least things you can’t change without a big bag full of money.