Logging My Food

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all. I’ve been tracking my food intake over the past week. I did this sporadically over the years when I was dieting (or trying to, that is). Now that I’ve been keeping a food log for a week, I’m getting an inkling of why I never kept my food log for any length of time: I’m not sure whether it’ll actually help me make healthier food choices.

That is, I’m pretty sure it won’t. Almost each day over the past week, the app I’m tracking my food intake in has been telling me that I consume more calories than I burn. It’s also telling me that I consume more fat and carbohydrates than I should and not enough protein. Yes, even on days when I eat meat and dairy. And I tend to choose low-fat dairy and the meal delivery service offers lean meats.

I’m not sure whether I want to continue logging my food intake, because on the one hand, yes, I want to be more conscious of what I shove into my mouth. On the other hand, I don’t want this to become an obsession, especially because it tends to lead to a pendulum effect. What I mean is I might like to know what I’m eating, but if the app keeps telling me it’s too much, I am probably going to decide to screw the entire thing after all and just start eating whatever the heck I want., I don’t want this to turn into another diet.

One thing that the app does help me with, is predict my weight gain or loss. Or at least, that’s what I hope it’ll do. For years, after all, I’ve been worrying that I experience unexplained weight loss. The reason is the fact that I quite easily maintain these days and even lost over 20kg over the years. I’m hoping that, if I do decide to follow through with MyFitnessPal, I’ll be able to see why I’m maintaining, losing or gaining. One worry that I never even thought of until I learned about protein though, is that I’m losing muscle mass.

I Don’t Do Diets

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Recently I’ve been thinking about the dietary choices I’ve been making over the years. The reason was the recent argument with my best friend over the tuna salad and the fact that I’d said I’d try to cook just vegan when preparing meals for myself. The thing is, I should’ve known it wasn’t going to work out. In that sense, she was right that I’d lied.

This signifies a common theme with my life choices: I full-on intend to follow a particular lifestyle, try it for a short while than abandon the entire thing and do whatever the heck I like. I try to avoid this pitfall this time. I’m already happy that I’m still making an effort to be aware of what I shove into my mouth and its impact on my health, animals and the environment. In that sense, it’s progress, not perfection and that’s totally okay with me. I will probably never be a vegan, after all.

The same happened when I was dieting to lose weight. I hated the strict food plan the dietitian gave me, tried it for a short time (even shorter than my vegan experiment) only to give up on it. Thankfully, I was able to negotiate a middle path with the dietitian and I’m doing the same with myself about eating plant-based. )For clarity’s sake: it wasn’t like my best friend was trying to convert me to veganism, so in this sense it’s only myself I have to be accountable to.) In other words, I’m not eating whatever the heck I fancy at any given moment, but I’m not pushing myself to stick to any diet or eating preference. That’s just going to backfire, after all.

Tomorrow, by the way, I’m cooking a vegan curry yet again. Not with chickpeas this time. I love trying out many different foods and learning about their impact. For this reason, I also actually like my best friend’s yapping about veganism.

This post was written for #FOWC with the prompt of “Dieting” and for #RDP with the prompt word of “Whatever”.

No Bad Food #SoCS

Posted on by Astrid

This week’s prompt for Stream Of Consciousness Saturday is “food”. I immediately thought of the title for my post: “No bad food.” This is a phrase used in health-conscious communities to clarify that there’s no such thing as a “forbidden” food when dieting. I had the comment that no food is forbidden written at the bottom of my weight loss food plan in early 2022. That is, the goal wasn’t even weight loss for me, but rather, to have a healthier relationship with food.

This is also what health gurus who use the phrase “no bad food” aim to accomplish: for dieters to be aware of their healthy or less healthy choices rather than rigidly stripping foods off of their “allowed” list.

I’d like to take it a step further and say that the only food you shouldn’t eat is food you’re allergic to or food that’s gone bad. And I mean this absolutely. Yes, some food choices are healthier than others, but when you’re already a restrictive eater and you’re limiting yourself even further because, for example, chocolate spread isn’t “healthy”, you’ll end up with worse problems.

I mean, when originally starting my food plan in 2022, my dietitian gave me a standard weight loss plan because I was significantly overweight. I however wouldn’t eat at least 75% of the food on it, especially the foods she recommended for breakfast and lunch. Thankfully, rather than deciding not to eat at all, which my eating disordered self might’ve done, I negotiated foods I found tolerable and that were still considered somewhat “healthy”.

Now I happen to have the privilege of being at an almost healthy BMI, but the fact that I struggled to maintain a healthy eating routine (or any eating routine, for that matter) when trying to stick to a weight loss diet, did convince me that, truthfully, there’s no such thing as bad food.

Indeed, there’s no such thing as a good or bad eating routine. Yes, some choices are healthier than others, but there’s nothing wrong with making “unhealthy” choices when those are the “healthy” choices given your personal circumstances. Honestly, in fact, I believe there’s no moral wrong in eating whatever you feel like eating. Placing the blame for obesity on the individual, is, in my opinion, ignoring the fact that many people are struggling to stay afloat mentally and physically without having to deal with restricting their food intake.

And I don’t mean that people can’t make healthier food choices, or that they shouldn’t be encouraged to do so within the limits of their own personal circumstances. Like, I eventually settled on low-calorie jelly for on my lunch bread rather than chocolate spread and for regular muesli rather than crunchy muesli for breakfast. These are healthier choices and I am glad I made those. However, if I could not have made those choices for whatever reason, it’d still have been better to eat my crunchy muesli and chocolate spread on bread than to starve.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (November 30, 2024)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone on this last day of November. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare. I just had my last cup of coffee for the day, with a treat of the Dutch typical St. Nicholas candy mix “strooigoed”. I’d have loved to pass you some, but ate the whole bag myself. I’m just comforting myself that the amount wasn’t nearly what I used to consume during a binge. Anyway, let’s have a drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, first I’d talk about the weather. A serious storm passed by here on Wednesday. It was the first major storm in nearly a year and a half or so I read on the news. That surprised me, since it wasn’t even a year ago that a staff from one of the intensive support homes died while riding the side-by-side bike with a client. Then again, the most severe winds aren’t in this province and therefore maybe near the coast people are less likely to go out in stormy weather.

Anyway, during the remainder of the week, it hasn’t rained and sometimes even the sun came out for a bit. Daytime temperatures have been around 8°C.

If we were having coffee, I’d say that I’m doing pretty well this week. I consider the fact that this is my fourth blog post of the week, a positive sign of my improved mental health. I really hope it continues.

If we were having coffee, then I’d share that I have a nasty cold. This morning, I spent most of the time in bed because I was feeling so miserable. No fever, thankfully, but in my case even a cold can knock me down for a few days.

If we were having coffee, then I’d tell you that I’ve been quite crafty over the week. On Tuesday, I created a polymer clay pig for a staff who will celebrate 25 years of working for this care agency on Monday. And just so you know, she was the one constantly asking me if I could create a pig; it isn’t like I think a pig is especially suited to her.

Polymer Clay Pig

On Thursday, I crafted yet another polymer clay unicorn, this one for a new staff, who is into unicorns as much as I am. I tried adding flower-shaped wings to it, but this wasn’t a success, since during the curing process, one of the wings fell slightly down the back of the unicorn and got distorted in the process. No photo, sorry, since I threw the thing into the bin.

Then today, I didn’t know what to do, so I decided to mix a polymer clay color. Not sure what I’ll do with it.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that I didn’t do Black Friday shopping this year. That is, I did purchase some new clay supplies yesterday, but they weren’t on sale as far as I could tell.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d tell you that we had pasta salad with tuna for dinner today. I had originally planned to make it with a staff, but since I don’t want everyone else to catch my cold, the staff ended up making it himself. He initially wanted to offer everyone a bit as a side dish with our regular meal, but I countered that we have enough to use it as a meal. My plan had been that we’d have a tasty meal for once rather than the mediocre meal service food. Besides, we get treats more often than I want to think of. See my point about the St. Nicholas treat: it wasn’t a binge, but it was more than my food plan says I can have and I’m not even on a weight loss diet.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (July 23, 2022)

Posted on by Astrid

Hello everyone on this fourth Saturday of July. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare today. It’s been a few weeks. Let me share what’s been going on.

If we were having coffee, I’d ask how your weather is. We haven’t had an official heatwave here, as we had only three days of daytime high temps above 25°C. Then again, on Tuesday, the temperature reached 39°C. That’s not a record, for your information: the Netherlands’ official all-time heat record was reached three years ago and it was almost 41°C.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you that, on Monday, I took a trip into town with my staff. I had to get some toiletries and new baby wipes (which I use for cleaning my claying supplies). I also went into Action, a discount store, actually looking for origami paper. I didn’t find any, but did buy some clear stamps, a stamping pad, blank cards and alcohol ink. As it turns out, I will most likely only be able to use the alcohol ink for my clay, and I’m not 100% sure how, as it contains glitter. I mean, that may damage my pasta machine rollers, so I may need to only roll by hand when I’ve used this alcohol ink. I might find other uses for the other supplies. I was thinking of starting up simple card making again. Now my past self is laughing and telling me “No!” in a firm voice at the same time, but I’ve already decided not to invest any more money into it. If I can’t do this at all, that’s €4,95 wasted, but some people at the day center may still be able to use my supplies.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that I’ve been loving coming up with some ideas for my polymer clay. I’ve also been watching a lot of YouTube tutorials. I’m still not actually crafting much, but that will hopefully change soon, as I managed to blend three different intensities of the same color green that I intend to use for a unicorn. Let’s hope this unicorn turns out great!

If we were having coffee, I would share that I really need to mind my food plan again soon. I am still just overweight as opposed to obese, but I do need to watch out that my weight isn’t creeping back up. On Monday though, my sister and her family will be here for a belated birthday visit and we’re going to order pizza I think. That will be the fourth time in a month that I’m either eating at a restaurant or ordering takeout. After that, I’ll seriously watch my diet. I’m already trying to make sure I’m not having too many treats. For instance, yesterday I was hungry mid-afternoon and decided to have some carrots rather than going for my licorice. I think that counts for something.

If we were having coffee, I would resist the urge to rant about my appointment with my psychiatric nurse practitioner and the care facility’s behavior specialist on Tuesday. It was really frustrating, but I’m not ready to share the details. I would instead refill your cups and ask you how you are.

Five of My Favorite “Cheat” Foods #5Things

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Today I’m participating in the #5Things challenge, for which the topic today is “cheat day” foods. Now I don’t really do cheat days. I do usually have more high-calorie foods on weekends than week days, just because it’s easier to keep track that way, but there’s not a single day when I completely indulge in whatever I want. I have a history of disordered eating, including binges, but I am determined I never want to return to those days.

I also don’t believe in “good” or “bad” foods. Rather, I believe in healthy and less healthful habits. I had it written on my food plan, for this reason, that no food is completely forbidden. Else, less familiar with me staff might say that a food isn’t on my food plan so I can’t have it.

Anyway, today I’m listing five of my favorite foods to have on a day when I’m less conscious of my diet.

1. Pizza. Every once in a while, when I go to my husband’s and my house in Lobith, my husband will drive by Domino’s on our way from picking me up at the care facility. I love their pizzas. I also love the pizzas from my neighborhood Italian restaurant. Both are a definite nine out of ten on the deliciousness scale. (For those visiting from #5Things, my dietitian a few weeks ago explained that, if I don’t give a “cheat” food an eight out of ten or above on how much I love it, I may consider not eating it at all.)

2. Pringles. These are by far my favorite chips and they too score at least a nine out of ten. My care home recently ordered like a whole box full of Pringles cans at the supermarket because they were on sale. Yum!

3. Cheese twists. These are sticks made of puff pastry with cheese flavor. My husband buys them at the supermarket almost every time I go to Lobith.

4. Licorice. When I still suffered with disordered eating, I would often buy a bag of licorice multiple times a week and consume the whole thing within ten to twenty minutes. Now, I usually have a bag of licorice in my locked kitchen cupboard. The staff aren’t allowed to actually prohibit me from eating the candies, but the fact that they’re locked away does keep me from being tempted too quickly. I usually have three or four candies a day at most.

5. French fries. I don’t have these often anymore, as when we do get takeout food here at the care facility, it’s usually Chinese or Italian because it’s easier to blend for those who have difficulty eating solids. However, I truly love love love good fries! There’s a snack corner here in town who put “special” orange spices over their fries and they’re delicious. (I bet it’s just paprika, but they refuse to disclose their “secret recipe”, even though it’s public knowledge that they don’t mix their own spices.) I also love some spicy snacks to go with my fries. Here in the Netherlands, there’s one called a mexicano, which I think is particularly tasty.

What are your favorite “cheat” foods?

Joy in February

Posted on by Astrid

Last month, I shared my one word for 2022: JOY. Today, I want to share an update on how I’ve been doing with this one word. I am joining the Word of the Year link-up, which I didn’t join in with last month (because I didn’t see it on time to join in), as well as Lisa’s One Word linky.

Overall, I’ve been doing pretty well remembering my word for the year and seeking joy in the ordinary moments. I didn’t experience any mind-blowingly delightful moments, but I did enjoy the everyday.

In particular, what I’m happy about, is that I found joy in the treats I could have every now and again now that I’m on a healthy food plan and don’t allow myself to indulge in whatever I please. Now that I have COVID, I’ve ditched the diet and am more or less allowing myself to eat what I want, but I’m still not overeating, thankfully. I mean, I have a bag of licorice on my table (under the guise of it helping with sore throat, which I don’t even have right now), which I could’ve eaten all in one sitting had I not been mindful. Instead, I am truly savoring each sweet.

I also enjoyed my creative hobbies quite a bit over the past month. Though in this respect, I still look to improve myself, I can still find joy in the mere act of creating. Earlier this week, I found intense joy in my first polymer clay color mixing experiment.

Because I sometimes struggle to find the energy to start “larger” activities such as polymer clay, I also asked my day activities staff about some easier to get started activities. She brought me a simple game with a board and insertable small pieces in different colors. I have been enjoying doing this activity with my staff or alone.

Lastly, I didn’t see my husband a lot over the past month, but I did enjoy speaking to him on the phone and texting him everyday. I obviously won’t say that seeing him less made me appreciate his visits more, as I wish we could have seen each other each week. However, it definitely was a lesson in enjoying the ordinary and delighting in the extraordinary.

Finally, both my husband and mother-in-law have been very sympathetic now that they know I have COVID. I am truly grateful for both of their thoughtful text messages. I also was positively surprised to get a call from my sister as soon as I posted about my positive COVID test on Facebook early Wednesday morning. You might think that the fact that I was surprised, means I view her negatively, as I assume most people expect their family to sympathize when they have COVID. While I admit this is in part true, I also think I shouldn’t take sympathy for granted.

I Am Overweight!

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Today I’m joining Di of Pensitivity101 for Saturday Swapit, a weekly weight loss meme. I am not intending for this to become a weekly feature, but, because I had a dietitian’s appointment yesterday, I wanted to share some things I learned.

First though, I have a major win to share: when stepping on the scale yesterday, it told me I’m now 70.1kg. This means I’ve crossed the line back from obese to just plain overweight! I did kind of trivialize the achievement by saying it’s the absolute minimum I had to lose to cross this line and hence I may be back into the obese category next week. That may be so, but I did lose 1.7kg since starting on my food plan five weeks ago. That may not sound like much, but I’d rather lose the weight slowly and keep it off than lose more weight only to gain it all back and then some.

Like I said, I’m doing my healthy eating plan under a dietitian’s supervision. The main goal is not weight loss, but relative mental stability with respect to food and a healthy eating structure. You see, I have a history of bulimic tendencies and had a slip-up with respect to purging just before Christmas. Every opportunity to eat still leads to inner conflict.

With respect to this, the dietitian taught me about my negative and positive voices: the healthy-eating voice vs. the bulimic voice. Even if you’re not bulimic, you’ll likely recognize some of the disordered things the negative voice is telling me, such as that, if you’ve eaten a “bad” food, now the day’s gone to waste and you can just as easily call it a cheat day and binge eat whatever you want. The reality is, though, each healthy food choice will ultimately contribute to your weight loss (or other healthy lifestyle goal).

Another thought is that you have to make up for one small treat by restricting on another food. The idea that this thought is unhealthy, may contradict the previous one, but, in reality, it’s all about balance. If you’ve had one small treat that’s not on your food plan in the morning, it doesn’t mean the day’s gone to waste, but it doesn’t mean you need to be restricting or making up for it later in the day either. It doesn’t mean you can have said treat each and every day, of course. Your food plan is there for a reason, after all.

Another thing I asked the dietitian about is late evening snacking. I have a serving of fruit on my food plan in the evening. My staff felt that, for practical reasons, it’d be best if they’d offer it to me at 9:15PM. I countered that, since this is pretty close to my bedtime, I wouldn’t burn it off then. Thankfully, the dietitian was able to reassure me that people’s digestion works 24 hours a day. It’s a myth that late evening snacking causes you not to burn off the calories you consume!

Share Four Somethings (January 2022)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Can you believe it’s almost the end of January already? I can’t wait for this month to be over with, honestly. February can be depressing too, but not as depressing as January. At least then the weather may start to warm up a little. Let’s hope! Anyway, today I’m joining Share Four Somethings. I think I joined this link-up once before, but am hoping to make it a regular habit now that it’s a new format. Here goes.

Something Loved

Essential oils. Yay, my three new oils arrived today! Though I haven’t tried them out yet, I will certainly be doing so soon. One, lemon, isn’t really new, but I’d had to throw out the old bottle because it’d gone past its shelf life. This really should be a motivator to use my essential oils more often. The other two, spearmint and sweet marjoram, I haven’t used before.

Something Gleaned

Honestly, I had to Google the definition of “glean”, so I could say I gleaned the meaning of the word. I guess my English isn’t as good as I’d like to say it is.

Seriously though, I have been reading the Bible everyday since January 1. While 24 days isn’t my longest streak ever by far, I do find that the more I study God’s Word, the more I learn. My most recent realization came from the story about the Bible passage I mentioned yesterday. The pastor sharing the story about the passage said that “favor” in Psalms 30:5 could also be translated as “grace”. This, until then, I’d always seen as a decidedly New Testamental term. Then again, I now am beginning to see that the Bible isn’t really strictly divided between OT and NT, but it’s all one story leading to Jesus. To those of my readers who’ve been believers for longer than I have been, this may seem obvious. To me, it’s a big eye-opener.

Something Braved

Well, as regular readers of my blog will know, this month was quite hard. I’ve been dealing with a lot of anxiety and PTSD symptoms. Even though one of my medications, topiramate, which specifically works to combat trauma-related symptoms, was upped earlier this month, I’m not yet noticing the change. On the contrary, in fact, it looks like I’m doing a little worse. That is, I might be noticing a slight positive change over the past few days, but it’s so early on that it’s hard to know for sure and I’m not sure whether the change is positive compared to how I did on my old dosage too. I thankfully will have an extra appointment with my nurse practitioner on Thursday to discuss how things are going.

Something Achieved

Two somethings here, is that okay? First, I have been writing more frequently and more widely than I did before. I am really proud of myself for this, as it is actually one of only a few ways in which I’m still staying active lately. Due to my anxiety, after all, I’m struggling to try new things such as crafting or even to go for a walk. However, I do try out new writing techniques and that’s something at least.

The other achievement is my diet. I started on a healthier eating plan with the help of a dietitian early in the month. Not with the aim of losing weight, although it would be great if I could lose the 1.5kg I need to lose to no longer be obese. My main goal is to experience less inner conflict about eating, as I have a history of eating disorder symptoms. So far, I’m sticking to it pretty well. More importantly, the one day when I couldn’t fully stick to the plan, because we had Chinese takeout, I didn’t resort to eating disorder behaviors. That’s quite an accomplishment!

#WeekendCoffeeShare (January 21, 2022)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone on this late Friday evening. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare, even though it’s a bit late for coffee here. I am going to grab a glass of water and some fruit in a bit, so if you’d like a soft drink or a glass of water too, you can have one. Let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, first I’d moan about the cold weather some more. Boy, do I hate winter! Several staff have been trying to coax me into going on walks because it was supposed to be sunny and nice outside. Then I’d invariably reply: “It’s 3°C outside too, brrr.” Usually, the air would become cloudier soon enough and we’d get rain.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that, probably due to my lack of exercise, I didn’t lose weight over the past week even though I stuck to my healthy food plan pretty well. That is, I didn’t feel as though I was just eating carrots and lettuce all week, so maybe I accidentally sneaked in some extras I shouldn’t have had. For example, I am allowed 225ml of yogurt or 200ml of quark with some muesli for breakfast. On Wednesday, my staff poured half the 500ml can of quark into my bowl. Now quark contains only about 50 calories per 100ml, so that didn’t really make a huge difference on its own. However, given that I or my staff may’ve made other such slightly less healthy food choices over the week and I also hardly got my butt off the chair, this combined caused me to maintain. At least I didn’t gain any weight either.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that I went to the dentist on Wednesday. Thankfully, other than slightly inflamed gums, everything was fine. I was pretty sure I’d be diagnosed with gum disease and have to be seen by the oral hygienist. Apparently not so. I was sent on my way with instructions for better teeth-brushing and flossing and an appt with the prevention assistant in February.

If we were having coffee, I would share that I texted with my sister this evening. I can’t remember whether I shared before that she’s pregnant again. She’s expecting another girl in May. So far, all seems to be going as it should be. My (other) niece (other than the bump, I mean) is doing okay too. I mentioned in August that she was diagnosed with hip dysplasia. After surgery in September and a cast for several months, she’s now doing pretty well again.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d share that my husband is off work with the flu. He tested negative for COVID, but thankfully he wasn’t so crazy as to go back into work as soon as he got the negative test result. Back in early 2020, before COVID was known outside of China, he did go to work as a truck driver while sick with the flu. I am glad he doesn’t have COVID, of course, but regardless I’m hoping he’ll feel better soon.

How have you been?