Monday, September 14, 2009

Breakfast, Brunch, Lunch, Linner and Dinner (and Many Snacks)

I was all set to post pictures of our home gym and since those never got taken I, um, can't post them. Soon though!

So its a good thing I didn't post about Thursday's dinner because boy did that story get longer. Disclaimer to those of you who have emailed me to say that my eating habits have inspired you, a warning: this will not be inspirational in that way.

When journaling, it is good to be willing to go with the flow. Do your best to write everything down, try always to write your calories down and occasionally take a best guess/shot in the dark for how many calories the salad at the office lunch had in it, particularly since you only ate 60% of it (okay and also 33% of the cookie you convinced your co-worker to share). Since Thursday my life has been an exercise in going with the flow journaling-wise.

I left work a bit later than usual on Thursday as I had to finish up travel documents for a trip I'm sending our organization's President on, as well as having to do someone else's job, which is always super fun. I had about ten minutes to eat some watermelon, unpack the five tupperware containers from my giant work bag and get my tush out the door. I was on my way to a Sunday school teacher's meeting which was to start at 7 p.m. What possessed me to think that suddenly Greek people would be on time, I have no idea. But I had never been to an event or even a small gathering where food was not offered at this church. I have been attending this church since I was born, so that's quite a track record. Thus, I didn't even try to eat dinner or any semblance of dinner while at home for that hot minute. When my fiance asked if I planned to eat anything more for dinner my answer was something like 'Can't wait to eat the tasty Greek lady church food. See ya sucker!'

Half way to this meeting, I'm gloriously on time (in America but HUGELY early in what my father and I call Tiempo Greco) and my stomach starts talking. FEED ME. I was prompt according to the clocks (and about a queen's age early according to the rest of the meeting's attendants), when, as a good friend in college aptly described, my stomach started to eat itself. If you have ever been so hungry you thought you might pass out and barf at the same time, you know this feeling. So of course I look around and there is... BANANA BREAD. Don't get me wrong, I love banana bread. But people, this is not the sustenance I had myself so excited about - trying not to think about my hunger for the following 2.5 hours was torturous. By the end of the night I had eaten: 1.5 pieces of banana bread (at church), 1 piece of homemade whole wheat toast with almond butter and honey, 1 glass of whole milk, 3 bowls of watermelon and 2 peaches. By the time I had gotten home and consumed these things I was so tired from the regular rigmarole that I just gave up the ghost and went to bed.

One evening of ridiculous eating tacked onto a day of good choices - not a big deal! But, lo, you have not heard about Friday through Sunday. Oh my friends, it gets better.

Friday my fiance and I were planning to have dinner with my mother and grandmother. The plan to was to fulfill my need for the Greek food I was so harshly denied the night before. All day I made good choices - balanced proteins with whole grains and even treated myself to a small chai after lunch. And then, at the end of the day, I'm trying to finish my work plus another person's work and my fiance calls to offer me a ride home. Yes please! Then I get in the car and he suggests we go to happy hour. Also, yes please! And then we both realize we're STARVING and our stomachs have moved on from eating themselves and started snacking on our livers. So we ate the carrots and hummus in my purse. So you say, that's not so bad! No, its not, but then we got to the bar and ate the tastiest nachos I have ever encountered. I made sure to have just enough to be less starving but have room for real dinner. Go me!

And then dinner came. Now keep in mind that I was craving these things and a lady's cravings know no bounds. There was roasted octopus (tastier than you know), wine and um, we shared the combination entree. NOM Nom nom nomnommmm. Pastitsio, how I love thee.

So we got home, complained about our fullness, and then I resolved to work out extra hard on Saturday. Yea, no. That didn't happen. See, so often the things that fall into place to make a healthy day have nothing to do with food. Instead they're all about the random crap that gets in your way when you're using every ounce of your strength and judgement to reach that extra vegetable in favor of that cookie. And for me, that thing that got in my way was our mattress. We bought ourselves a very nice piece of furniture, a bed with a headboard and no foot board (my fiance is over 6 feet tall). The nice people came and assembled it, placed our mattress on it and kindly took our box spring (which was dying) to the trash area of our building. You see, this nice new bed is a platform style bed, no need for silly things like box springs.

Except when one of the people who sleeps on this bed has a back that might as well be made of the knots you see sailors tie. Oh the pain! So this means between Friday and Saturday night I got 4.5 hours of sleep. By Sunday morning I had slept about 25% of the amount of hours I usually need. I went to the first day of Sunday school prepared to make children cry, if only so that someone else would feel my pain (not really, I'm quite nice to the children, except those damn high school kids who talk through the ENTIRE service). On Saturday I ate acceptably. I couldn't, for the life of me, tell you how many calories were in my dinner because we were at a rugby banquet for my fiance's team. I did, however, manage to leave food on my plate at each of the four courses and not eat a single thing I wasn't hungry for. After the D for dinner on my Saturday journal entry are the following: steak, wine, shrimp, salad ???.

And now for the I'm ridiculous and oh haha so funny part: we were out of most of my favorite breakfast items on Sunday. No eggs, no bread, oh the horror. So I had two pieces of fruit, some yogurt, milk and slapped some almond butter on something or other. When I returned home my fiance was trying to get his Sunday morning act together and we both started writhing on the floor in starvation. You'd think that since we're human, we've been alive for a combined total of 54 years (had a hard time adding that one up) and were born with the ability to chew, we'd have figured out that whole - eat, be satisfied and exist thing. But, apparently, no, we get hungry and FREAK OUT. We then decided to go through all the menus in the house and have something delivered since there is nothing more torturous than cooking when you're about to start dry heaving out of starvation. We settled on some sort of Asian food to be delivered. Only, no! Apparently, in Washington D.C. no one delivers on Sundays before 3:30 pm. The good places don't deliver until 5! So, after some more writhing and moaning. We got our act together and walked to Buca di Bepo at three in the afternoon. No, really, we ate family style in the middle of the day because we're ridiculous. Now, for the record we took a lot of it home and ate it for dinner, but yes, we're completely useless. Can you imagine, our poor future children...how long do you think it'll take them to figure out that writhing on the floor means Mommy is hungry?

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