My Fourth Coaching Session
I was glad that Cameron scheduled our fourth session on a Monday instead of Wednesday–that meant cutting Protein Time a little short. I was eager to talk to her about how it was going, and we had exchanged a couple of emails already so I had an inkling of what we would discuss…
For one thing, she completely reinforced my idea that I need to give up the scale. I can’t believe how hard it’s been, but that only makes me more eager to do it. I thought I would cut back to once or twice a week, but after she encouraged me again to really focus on how I am feeling and how my clothes fit, something clicked and I decided to go full steam. No more weighing myself.
Of course, that means no more Weight Watchers, which I have been doing pretty regularly for a while now (although recent snowstorms mean I haven’t been there for 2 weeks). seems like the right time for a clean break. On the one hand, I had found a meeting time and group that I liked, and the accountability of the scale was motivating…on the other hand, I was obsessing the night before and the morning of the meetings, trying to figure out what the lightest thing I could wear would be and worrying that too much salt or water the day before might “throw off” the weigh-in. Stressing that much over a number can’t be good!
So goal #1 for the next 2 weeks: no weighing myself. I think I will actually call it a Lenten sacrifice, and see how it goes. What I WILL do is keep tracking how energetic I am, how my moods are each day, and maybe each week I’ll try on those new jeans I bought (which are a bit too tight right now, but so were the ones I wear everyday now when I first bought THEM, and at Christmas I was wearing a size above THAT, and they were on sale, so…) A teensy, tiny part of me worries that without seeing the scale, I might not be as “careful” as I should be about my food, or I might not know how it’s affecting me…but really, if I can’t tell by my mood, my physical feelings, and how my clothes feel, then I haven’t learned anything over the past 6 weeks! (and I HAVE, believe me). So that’s that…no more scale. For real.
Next we talked about my journal. I had sent it to her ahead of time, and she noticed that although I seemed to really like the veggie recipes I had tried back during Veggie Time, once Protein Time started, I seemed to gravitate toward starchy vegetables and breads as side dishes, instead of sticking with the greens that had worked so well for me. Granted, I did continue to have some of the green veggies, but overall she was right–especially about the bread. Last time we had discussed how my husband had rediscovered our breadmaker in the garage and decided we should make our own bread, and Cameron said that seemed like a better solution than buying it (no preservatives! I will know what’s in it!) and that 1 serving per day was probably ok. However, it seemed like I ended up either having 2 or 3 pieces in a day, or none…bread had exactly the affect on me that Cameron had told me it usually does, as does sugar…having it only made me want it more.
I had started to suspect maybe the bread was a bad thing on my own, actually, but the smell of fresh-baked bread was just too irresistible, especially when we were stuck inside during a snowstorm and I was making chili and soups. What I had noticed (beyond the desire it gave me to eat more, and more, and more) was that after a day when I ate bread, I almost always felt head-cold symptoms that night or the next morning. Basically, I got a stuffy nose and head. But it literally always went away within hours, and on days when I didn’t have bread: no symptoms. Cameron told me 1 in 33 people have some sort of allergy to gluten, and wheat alone is one of the top seven allergens—it seems most just never really connect the symptoms to the cause, and if the symptoms are not strong enough, they just don’t worry about it. Crazy! Since I don’t have symptoms of celiac disease, Cameron suspects I probably don’t need to worry about going totally gluten-free, but wheat-free is a good idea.
So goal #2: I am giving up wheat. I’ll just call myself allergic. Even a little bit here and there will bring on the symptoms, making my body feel like it needs to puff up inside to try to fight off something that is “attacking it”–yuck! So I’m making that another Lenten sacrifice, and in 6 weeks, if I want to try to slowly reintroduce some minor amounts of wheat into my diet, maybe I will. We’ll see.
We also discussed the massive size of the protein smoothies I have been having each day, and discovered that the brand I bought considers one serving to be 30 grams, and her favorite kind is 24 grams. Oops. That’s 20% more! I got some from her, and tried it the next day, and ended up with about 75% as much smoothie. I was struggling to finish them before, so this is a good thing. It may also explain some weight gain, especially when I first started to have the smoothies–that was way more protein than I needed, especially, once again, since I was stuck inside and not working out.
The rest of the time we met we talked a bit about grains, and she gave me lots of good information about them, but it’s not like Veggie Time and Protein Time–I won’t be actively trying to get grains into my diet. They just aren’t that necessary. But when we do want something with a meal, I’ll be learning to make things with quinoa or brown rice.
I am not sure what all this means for my future as a baker, but I have decided not to worry about that yet. Once I figure out the EATING and the COOKING, I’ll focus on adapting some of my best recipes and I’ll learn how to keep some the same but make them rarely (and eat them myself even more rarely) and take it from there.
My final goal is to get back to Veggie Time, with Protein on The Side. Basically, when I make meals like Salmon with a vegetable, my husband might get 6 oz of fish and a cup of veggies…I will have 3 oz of fish and 2 cups of veggies. And that sounds delicious to me!
