This week's activity in Eating the Moment was to shift the question from "Why did i just eat?" to "Why am i about to eat?". I admit i didn't do this perfectly, and intend to continue trying to incorporate it into my routine.
Plenty of times the answer was "I'm hungry" but it definitely wasn't the only one. Sometimes it was about trying something new and tasty (like at the wedding), or how my cooking/baking was (like the failed GF rolls). I sometimes ate because i wasn't hungry exactly, but felt like i needed fuel, like after my morning run. And sometimes i think i felt as thirsty as i did hungry, but wanted to go for food instead of water. There were also some opportunities where i ate to fill my calorie needs more so than hunger. I need to not be so afraid of things. Eating more fruits & veggies is great, but they can't be the only thing i eat. I can eat something with more than 100 calories per serving and not explode. Really.
Sometimes i did choose to put something down and wait, because it was out of boredom or wanting to delay going back to work. Today was a great example. On the one hand, i was more productive, because i came back to the office without a stop at Dunkin Donuts. On the other hand, i'm back and the office earlier, and totally could have stopped without any negative consequences (it's sort of an unwritten rule about field work).
Anyway, i'll keep working on it. Eating isn't just about bare nutrition or we'd of turned food into a pill. It's about pleasure and taste and so if the only reason i eat is pure hunger... well, it'll be missing all of those things. But there are bad reasons. Learning the difference between thirsty & hungry, or tired and hungry will help me in the long run take better care of myself as a whole, not just my waistline.
Friday, April 20, 2012
Monday, April 16, 2012
Hungry Caterpillar Cake
My nephew recently turned 1, and my love-in-law, Aimee, decided to have a theme of The Very Hungry Caterpillar for the party. If you haven't read the book, it's the adventure of a caterpillar who eats various things, including pears, strawberries, lollipops and chocolate cake before eating a leaf, forming a cocoon and turning into a beautiful butterfly. Eric Carle's illustrations are fun and it's a cute read for children.
Aimee's skills are amazing, and made an entire spread based off of the foods in the book. I had the joy of spending some time with her in the kitchen to make the birthday cake, or in this case, cupcakes.
We used 1 box of 1-2-3 Gluten Free Deliriously Delicious Devil's Food Chocolate Cake Mix and 1 box Yummy Yellow Cake Mix. I can not rave enough about these mixes, by the way. If you find yourself needing to bake Gluten Free on occasion, and want to be able to make more than just the basics, check this brand out (Stop & Shop often carries them). They do not have other potential allergens, such as corn in them, and you can make them vegan or not.
For the head we used a cupcake cake mold, and the rest were baked in regular muffin tins with liners. Inside the vanilla cupcakes we places a few butterscotch chips, and dark chocolate chips into the chocolate cupcakes.
After the baking was done, we make a mock-up to see how many we had and how much space we would need.
Yes, some of the chocolate ones caved in. We decided to make up for it with frosting.
Aimee did the bulk of the frosting creation while i did the food coloring. A tip i learned from Aimee was to add a little salt to the traditional buttercream frosting mix. Wow, did it make a difference in flavor!
Eric Carle's illustrations are done by layering hand painted papers like a collage, and we wanted to imitate that style with our frosting. This meant we needed several different colors of frosting. We ended up with two greens (for the body), two reds (for the head) and a blue and yellow for accents.
Of course, after everything cooled came the serious work of actually frosting all these cupcakes! Aimee took on the head and we both worked on the cupcakes. For the most part we chose a base of one green, and added accents of the opposite green as well as blue and yellow. We used toothbpicks to sort of smear and mix the colors without them becoming fully blended.
When the caterpillar was fully arranged on the table, this is what it looked like:
Because we had a day between the baking and the party, we wrapped everything up (carefully!) and kept the spare icing that Mike didn't eat for any last minute touch-ups. Here is the final picture, fully assembled with other foods Aimee had made for the party:
Aimee's skills are amazing, and made an entire spread based off of the foods in the book. I had the joy of spending some time with her in the kitchen to make the birthday cake, or in this case, cupcakes.
We used 1 box of 1-2-3 Gluten Free Deliriously Delicious Devil's Food Chocolate Cake Mix and 1 box Yummy Yellow Cake Mix. I can not rave enough about these mixes, by the way. If you find yourself needing to bake Gluten Free on occasion, and want to be able to make more than just the basics, check this brand out (Stop & Shop often carries them). They do not have other potential allergens, such as corn in them, and you can make them vegan or not.
For the head we used a cupcake cake mold, and the rest were baked in regular muffin tins with liners. Inside the vanilla cupcakes we places a few butterscotch chips, and dark chocolate chips into the chocolate cupcakes.
After the baking was done, we make a mock-up to see how many we had and how much space we would need.
 |
| The initial rough layout |
Yes, some of the chocolate ones caved in. We decided to make up for it with frosting.
Aimee did the bulk of the frosting creation while i did the food coloring. A tip i learned from Aimee was to add a little salt to the traditional buttercream frosting mix. Wow, did it make a difference in flavor!
Eric Carle's illustrations are done by layering hand painted papers like a collage, and we wanted to imitate that style with our frosting. This meant we needed several different colors of frosting. We ended up with two greens (for the body), two reds (for the head) and a blue and yellow for accents.
 |
| Frosting cooling on porch |
 |
| A closeup of some of the cupcakes |
 |
| Assembled |
Because we had a day between the baking and the party, we wrapped everything up (carefully!) and kept the spare icing that Mike didn't eat for any last minute touch-ups. Here is the final picture, fully assembled with other foods Aimee had made for the party:
 |
| Complete! |
We had discussed using candles or pretzels as spines and ears, but decided this was good enough. It really was an incredible sight and i'm very proud of our artistic baking abilities! And it tasted awesome too!
Friday, April 13, 2012
LoseIt App
Recently, i made a deal with one of my closest friends. She has been on a weight loss journey for quite some time related to her health issues as well as becoming a parent. It's very impressive, and she and i struggle with a lot of the same challenges. She has some extra ones, like a gluten intolerance, but generally speaking, we have some similar Stuff to work on.
So i'm joining her. We have a trip planned Labor Day weekend, and my goal is to lose 25.2 lbs by then. It's ambitious, but as of this post I'm 5 lbs down already, so i feel it's not impossible.
Food has always been a challenging issue for me, and to help me reach this goal i am using something called LoseIt. LoseIt is an app available for iPhone and more recently Android systems. It is incredibly simple in what it does, but that's what makes it very powerful.
At it's heart, it's a calorie counter. It allows you to track what you eat, how much you exercise and what your basal metabolic rate is. Using that information, you can follow the calculated limits to gain, lose or maintain your weight.
I don't know how large the database of foods is, but i've yet to have trouble logging something. It can scan bar codes from packages and automatically knows the calories, and has a large list of restaurant and prepared foods as well as single ingredients. Similarly, the exercise options are varied and allow you to fine tune your activity levels.
There is also a social media element, though i'm not currently using it. You can connect with Facebook or Twitter, or just connect with friends. You can certainly add me if you're interested in joining along!
Through some of the forums there i stumbled across The Hacker's Diet, which is a pretty simple and mathematical look at weight loss. It ties very well with LoseIt in that it's really about energy in and energy out. It's worth a read if you're trying to lose weight and connect to math/science. There are also some neat tools to tracking your weight change.
What geek tools are you using for weight loss? I'd love to know!
So i'm joining her. We have a trip planned Labor Day weekend, and my goal is to lose 25.2 lbs by then. It's ambitious, but as of this post I'm 5 lbs down already, so i feel it's not impossible.
Food has always been a challenging issue for me, and to help me reach this goal i am using something called LoseIt. LoseIt is an app available for iPhone and more recently Android systems. It is incredibly simple in what it does, but that's what makes it very powerful.
At it's heart, it's a calorie counter. It allows you to track what you eat, how much you exercise and what your basal metabolic rate is. Using that information, you can follow the calculated limits to gain, lose or maintain your weight.
I don't know how large the database of foods is, but i've yet to have trouble logging something. It can scan bar codes from packages and automatically knows the calories, and has a large list of restaurant and prepared foods as well as single ingredients. Similarly, the exercise options are varied and allow you to fine tune your activity levels.
There is also a social media element, though i'm not currently using it. You can connect with Facebook or Twitter, or just connect with friends. You can certainly add me if you're interested in joining along!
Through some of the forums there i stumbled across The Hacker's Diet, which is a pretty simple and mathematical look at weight loss. It ties very well with LoseIt in that it's really about energy in and energy out. It's worth a read if you're trying to lose weight and connect to math/science. There are also some neat tools to tracking your weight change.
What geek tools are you using for weight loss? I'd love to know!
Eating the Moment, Activity 1 - Why did I just eat?
As part of my weight loss goals, i'm working on Mindful Eating and developing a more healthy relationship with food. Part of this is finding resources that work for me. One of those is a book called Eating the Moment: 141 Mindful Practices to Overcome Overeating One Meal at a Time by Pavel Somov. I'll try to write more about it as we go.
The first activity in Eating the Moment is, after you eat, write down why you ate, for a weekish. It was pretty simple, but having to actually think why something just landed in my mouth was interesting, particularly as i'm being more aware of what and how much i'm eating.
Today is technically 7 days, but since i don't have a functional computer at home, i thought i'd make yesterday the last day and move on to the next exercise today. Because Duncan and i are using Friday as our weigh in day, it also feels like a good time to move along.
Saturday
Breakfast - hunger
Snack - hunger
Dinner - hunger
Dessert - craving, needed calories, hunger(?)
Sunday
Breakfast - hunger
Snack - tired, thirsty, hunger(?)
Late Lunch - hunger, boredom
Dinner - hunger, needed calories
Monday
Breakfast - calories, fuel/tired
Lunch - wanted a break from work, lunchtime trigger?
Snack - hunger
Dinner - social, hunger
Tuesday
Lunch - hunger, smelled food
Snack - hunger, bored(?)
Dinner - hunger
Dessert - calories, craving
Wednesday
Breakfast - fuel, hunger
Pre-dinner - cooking trigger (tasting), hunger
Dinner - hunger
Dessert - hunger, tired, calories, pain (wanted cold)
Thursday
Breakfast - hunger
Lunch - hunger, habit
Snack - hunger, food in front of me
Dinner - hunger, tired
There is a huge bias here. In reducing my calories i'm being forced to think before i eat, and not eat so mindlessly. If i wasn't being so careful boredom, tired, lonely and cravings would likely have shown up much more.
When i looked at this, i first thought "gosh, i must be hungry all the time!", but i think the reality is i'm feeling hungry, so i eat, which is a normal cycle. And normal people eat every 4-6 hours. Normal people eat meals and snacks. This is OK.
Breakfasts are still a challenge. I've been doing a greek yogurt and sometimes fruit in the mornings, though often one becomes lunch or a snack.
Today i start the next activity, which is asking before i eat "Why am i about to eat?". The upcoming week includes a wedding (social eating opportunity) and four unscheduled evenings (bored/emotional eating opportunities). I can change my mind or not once i answer that question, but it's about the honest check in beforehand. I wish loseit had a notes option to keep everything in one place, but so it goes.
Related, C25K continues. The dental work is still sore and mucking with my sleep, so exercise is being pushed to after work. I hope to get back to 6AM next week. Still, i'm doing it. Yesterday was a walk day, but i chose to run 2 3 minute sections just to see if i could. God that's a long time at this point, but i know soon enough it'll be easy. Just keep swimmin'. Or runnin'. Or something.
The first activity in Eating the Moment is, after you eat, write down why you ate, for a weekish. It was pretty simple, but having to actually think why something just landed in my mouth was interesting, particularly as i'm being more aware of what and how much i'm eating.
Today is technically 7 days, but since i don't have a functional computer at home, i thought i'd make yesterday the last day and move on to the next exercise today. Because Duncan and i are using Friday as our weigh in day, it also feels like a good time to move along.
Saturday
Breakfast - hunger
Snack - hunger
Dinner - hunger
Dessert - craving, needed calories, hunger(?)
Sunday
Breakfast - hunger
Snack - tired, thirsty, hunger(?)
Late Lunch - hunger, boredom
Dinner - hunger, needed calories
Monday
Breakfast - calories, fuel/tired
Lunch - wanted a break from work, lunchtime trigger?
Snack - hunger
Dinner - social, hunger
Tuesday
Lunch - hunger, smelled food
Snack - hunger, bored(?)
Dinner - hunger
Dessert - calories, craving
Wednesday
Breakfast - fuel, hunger
Pre-dinner - cooking trigger (tasting), hunger
Dinner - hunger
Dessert - hunger, tired, calories, pain (wanted cold)
Thursday
Breakfast - hunger
Lunch - hunger, habit
Snack - hunger, food in front of me
Dinner - hunger, tired
There is a huge bias here. In reducing my calories i'm being forced to think before i eat, and not eat so mindlessly. If i wasn't being so careful boredom, tired, lonely and cravings would likely have shown up much more.
When i looked at this, i first thought "gosh, i must be hungry all the time!", but i think the reality is i'm feeling hungry, so i eat, which is a normal cycle. And normal people eat every 4-6 hours. Normal people eat meals and snacks. This is OK.
Breakfasts are still a challenge. I've been doing a greek yogurt and sometimes fruit in the mornings, though often one becomes lunch or a snack.
Today i start the next activity, which is asking before i eat "Why am i about to eat?". The upcoming week includes a wedding (social eating opportunity) and four unscheduled evenings (bored/emotional eating opportunities). I can change my mind or not once i answer that question, but it's about the honest check in beforehand. I wish loseit had a notes option to keep everything in one place, but so it goes.
Related, C25K continues. The dental work is still sore and mucking with my sleep, so exercise is being pushed to after work. I hope to get back to 6AM next week. Still, i'm doing it. Yesterday was a walk day, but i chose to run 2 3 minute sections just to see if i could. God that's a long time at this point, but i know soon enough it'll be easy. Just keep swimmin'. Or runnin'. Or something.
Friday, April 6, 2012
Not totally forgotten
I let life get in the way of this blog, and for that i apologize. My intention is to get back to it! So there!
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