Year 4, Day 59: Comfort in Grains

Right before my pants stopped fitting me in late February (around the end of my third year on SB) I noted that my typical breakfast of Kashi, et al was probably not very good for someone who doesn't exercise, and believe me, this winter, I did not exercise as much.  Last week, I got a walk, a tennis game, and a workout in, but during Dec, Jan, Feb and March it was just barely getting to the gym.  That's when I realized that a six hundred calorie, sugar-laden (bananas, etc.) breakfast had to go.  I went back on phase one and welcomed back eggs and Canadian bacon to my life.    Now, back in the swing, I am feeling the love again of my old breakfast.  Though I realize I shouldn't eat it everyday, I do love cereal, flat out.  I could eat just about any cereal, any time, and in any amount, and for any meal, but mostly I limit to low-sugar cereals and only in the morning. But if I ever get to the place where I can work out three times a week, I'll definitely be reaching for a box of Quisp, or Cinnamon Crunch.

Breakfast

Kashi Go Lean

Heritage Flakes

Banana

Strawberries

Blueberries

Soy Milk

Coffee

Lunch: Chan Shin Yuan

Pea Pod Stems

Shrimp with Lobster Sauce

Pork with Black Bean Sauce

Snack

A little bit of Jerky

3 Cheese Sticks

Dinner

Hamburger

Banana Peppers

Cabbage, lettuce salad

Luckily, I've avoided dessert

Year 3, Day 235: Poker

Poker day is upon us again. Tried to eat right. Poker night a little rougher than usual. I was not playing well and I continued to lose money. Losing money naturally leads to eating more. Eating more leads to shame, and that leads to playing badly and then the cycle continues. No surprises there. Plus, I love Chinese food. I tried to order only SoBe friendly stuff, but the truth is it's probably loaded with hidden sugar, flour, MSG, corn starch, fat, and God knows what else. But it sure tastes good.

Breakfast
Kashi Go Lean!
Heritage Flakes
Strawberries
Blueberries
Banana
Unsweetened Soy Milk
Coffee

Lunch: Russo's ($6.69)Romaine, red pepper, feta
chicken, broccoli, mushrooms
balsamic vinegar, pepperocini

Snack
4 Sticks Beef Jerky
1 Honey Crisp Apple

Dinner/Poker
Almonds & Cashews
Pistachios
Boston Lite Popcorn
Chinese Food:
Moo Shi x 2
Kung Pao Chicken
Double Cooked Pork
Sesame Beef
String Beans & Beef
Spare Ribs

Year 3, Day 79: Poker

Once again I approach my monthly card game, and once again I must strenuously avoid eating nuts and/or popcorn throughout the day. When you've fallen into a food rut, it sometimes gets very hard to get out of. I realized today that I should not be thinking of the card game as a time to have an orgy of nuts or food, though I realize that I have, in a scaled-down, and more nutritious fashion, been allowing myself to do that. What I should be doing is allowing myself a few extra calories should I NEED them, not planning on eating them. Shame on me. Why doesn't anyone write to tell me that?

Breakfast
Kashi Go Lean!
Heritage Flakes
Strawberries
Blueberries
Banana
Unsweetened Soy Milk
Coffee

Lunch: Russo's ($5.81)
Romaine, red pepper, red onion, feta
chicken, broccoli, mushrooms
balsamic vinegar, pepperocini

Snack
1 cameo apple
2 oz 50% Jalapeno Cheddar
2 sticks beef jerky

Dinner/Poker
Tamari Almonds
Almonds & Cashews
Pistachios
Popcorn
2 Moo-shi Pork
Double Cooked Pork
Beef Teryaki
Boneless Spareribs

Even if you count the Chinese food as a wash for dinner at about 700 calories, you can't think that the three kinds of nuts and or popcorn is good—it's got to total over a 1,000 calories for the night. I really need to bring a lot of celery sticks to the next game. Maybe that will help.

Year 3, Day 51: Trip To the Big Indian

This week Ruby was on vacation and so every day (Tues-Friday) I drover her to art school. On our way, I toasted her a Whole Foods chocolate pop-tart and we listened to her favorite CD Steve Songs with "On a Flying Guitar." It really was a great time. I managed to keep a stack of brownies for her snack every day (she was there until 3pm every day) which I thought was a swell treat because we made them together. On Thursday night, to my horror, I realized that Emily had given the brownies away to Maria, our babysitter. Then I remembered that Ruby and I had made chocolate chip cookie dough from scratch and made so much of it that I rolled it in saran wrap, double-bagged it and put it in individual sleeves in the chest freezer. I picked one out and baked them this morning for her snack; they were just cool enough to go in a baggy by the time we left.

Breakfast:
Kashi Go Lean!
Heritage Flakes
Strawberries
Blueberries
Banana
Unsweetened Soy Milk
Coffee

Lunch: New Ginza
Sashimi Plate
Salad
Soup

Snackz
3 Pieces of Beef Jerky
1 Cameo Apple
1/4 lb of Almonds

Dinner
Bok Choy with Pork
Chinese Ribs
Shrimp, Scallops & Peppers
1 Shumai
1 Yakitori (Fried)

Tonight was supposed to be a poker game, but our host got sick and so we decided to just drive on down to Foxwoods. Unlike the other Connecticut casino, the Mohegan Sun, Foxwood's food offerings are not that great. They have a good upscale steak house and lots of fast-type food (including a Carnegie Deli kiosk) but not too much in between. They do have a nice Chinese Restaurant in their new casino, and they just added a Hard Rock restaurant inside. We chose the Chinese and I due to the fact that I was getting my Wampum card (the card where you are offered points for gambling that you can use later to pay for food, etc.) I didn't order. The food was all too-sweet, which I found very disappointing. On the way down, we ate a lot of Almonds. On the way home I was hungry and bought a bag of smartfood, but I was strong and didn't open it.

Year 3, Day 23: Sifting through the rubble and poker

Of course, the day after the disaster you are sifting the rubble, looking for meaning, and trying to understand what happened. Probably not doing either with the proper intensity, or really well. But when you can't die you have to live, so on goes the battle. The best thing is to just take a deep breath and move on. After all, in the words of my mother-in-law, "no one lost a leg." I always liked that saying. I thought it drew the line at a properly tragic and comic place. I'm not sure what the discussion where you determine what's just UNDER losing a leg is. I tried to keep things on track with the typical breakfast (see Breakfast Rut) and lunch. Continued to have a bit of a suppressed appetite. Having poker to look forward was a plus.

Breakfast
Kashi Go Lean!
Heritage Flakes
Strawberries
Blueberries
Banana
Unsweetened Soy Milk
Coffee

Lunch
Russo's ($5.07)
Romaine, red pepper, red onion, feta
chicken, broccoli, mushrooms, balsamic vinegar, pepperocini

Snack
2 beef jerky
1 apple

Dinner/Poker/Snacks
almonds & cashews
pistachios
Boston Lite Popcorn

Chinese:
2 moo shi pork
man yan beef
string beans
kung pao chicken
Szechwan pork
boneless spareribs
beef teriyaki

A lot went kind of wrong though, en route to poker, showing me that this was a week of problemitization. (I know that's not a word, but it came up in a previous life as we brought it into work and it became the standard funny way to discuss things that went wrong). I left a lot of things I wanted to bring to the card game at home on my porch, and I was quite distracted all night. Is that why I lost at cards? At the end of the night we drove off and I had forgotten my keys and I had to go back. Did I mention I ate my weight in nuts? Yes well the world could be falling apart and some things don't change.

Year 2, Day 357, Last Day of Vacation, Poker

I did get to the gym today—amazing since there was absolutely so much to get done on my one real vacation day at home (in between handing stuff at work via email). I did 7.25 miles in 65 minutes (at level 5) then I did my 50 ab crunches (5 sets of ten, roughly). I was keen on going to the gym for a lot of reasons, but one is the theory that it would help me at the card table. It did in fact help, in two ways. One, I always feel great after going to the gym—it's like cleaning out your desk, or finishing some long overdue task. That kind of thing, much like writing—the overwhelming need to keep doing one's chores can be paralyzing, but the freedom when you complete the task in inspiring. Secondly, it help to know that I burned off an extra 500 or so calories (that's a conservative estimate) so I worry less about the cavalcade of nuts that I inevitably will consume. As it turned out, I did do better tonight—coming in second—than I have done in the three previous games, so that's either a testimony to working out or the power of positive thought.

Breakfast
Kashi Go Lean!
Heritage Flakes
Strawberries
Blueberries
Banana
Unsweetened Soy Milk
Coffee

Lunch
Chicken Breast
Cabbage & Romaine Salad with Feta

Postworkout Snack
1 Large Fuji Apple
2 Sticks beef Jerky
2 oz 50% Jalapeno Cheddar

Dinner/Poker
Cashews & Almonds
Pistachios
Boston Lite Popcorn
Moo Shi Pork
Beef with String Beans in Black Bean Sauce
Mongolian Chicken
Shrimp in Lobster Sauce (Dark sauce)
Boneless Spareribs
Szechwan Spicy Pork

We used to play poker in Lower Allston (nicknamed L.A. by the few hipsters that lived in between exiled KGB refuseniks and incoming Brazilian immigrant families that made up the neighborhood that lived in the shadow of the Mass Pike. The neighborhood wasn't much but EVERYONE delivered there, so there was a panoply of choices, though for about 8 out of every 10 weeks we ordered from Moogy's, a sub-shop operated by college staff so busy slacking off that they often refused our orders for reasons that strained credulity and made one suspect that for one reason or another they might be...incapable of fulfilling our order. One night it was because 'they ran out of buns.' One night "the toaster isn't working" and so on. We came to realize we'd need several backups. The truth is we ate so much (Funyons, Doritos 3-Ds, Cheese Cubes and Fritos) even before the food got there that we really could have done without the food. The point is, now we really only have two choices, deli or chinese. I tend to overeat more at the Chinese table, because it's my soft spot (one of many)

Year 2, Day 277—Restraint Finally Shown at Chinese Rest.

Yesterday a co-worker insisted I try eggs from Marino's Lookout Farm in Natick, MA. Of course those who are long-time readers of this blog know that eggs play a large part in my oeuvre. So I tried them. To his credit, they were just as advertised, creamy and delicious, and by far better softer and tastier than other eggs I have eaten recently. So now I am going to have to go to Owen's (a nearby poultry farm) to see if their eggs are any better. I will not back down from a challenge.

Breakfast
2 Soft-Boiled Eggs from Marino Farms
1 Slice Balthazar Multi-Grain
2 oz 50% Jalapeno Cheddar
Coffee

Snack
Medium Dunkin Donuts Coffee
4 Pieces of Beef Jerky
1 Extra Smokey

Lunch: Chan Shin Wan
Hot and Sour Soup
Moo Shi Pork
Chun King Chicken

Dinner
Cabbage & Avacado Salad
Chicken a la Emily
A few bites of hamburger
Broccoli
Asparagus

For the first time in...well, ever I left a Chinese Restaurant without cleaning my plate. It took all the will power I had but I managed to leave without that last mooshi pancake and without the last few bites of Chun King pork that were rightfully and deliciously mine. I didn't want to leave them, but I knew that I was full and that eating any more was just silly and a waste.

Year 2, Day 252: Poker

I have loved my Fridays at home with my family and this Friday was different because Veteran's Day meant neither child had school and we were all together. This also made it a little more challenging to get to the gym, but I did, and did my customary 6.5 miles in about 60 minutes. I was really eager to get to the gym because I desperately wanted to raise my metabolism so I wouldn't fret about the massive nut intake that I voluntarily subject myself to once a month. I also was craving a beer, and I had one, though it was at the end of the night when it didn't really help either my mood, or my poker playing. For the first time in probably four years I was totally wiped out at the card table. I lost everything. So much for my theory about working out helping the poker game. That theory needs some retooling, no doubt.

Breakfast
Kashi Go lean
heritage flakes
banana
blueberries

Lunch: Takara
Sashimi
Edamame
Salad
Miso Soup

Post-gym workout snack
6 oz. plain yogurt
3 tablespoons super chunky peanut butter


Dinner/Poker
Pistachios
Almonds/Cashews
Twice-Cooked Pork
1 Beef Teriyaki
2 Mooshi Pork pancakes
Kung Pao Chicken
UFO Beer
Popcorn

I noticed on the Chinese menu too late that they had a chicken-lettuce wrap offering as well as some other VERY South-Beach friendly choices. I was ordering off an old scan of a two-year old menu, so I got what I deserved. Between the nuts and the kung-pao chicken and the peanut butter for post-gym snack I was really fretting about the total nut intake for the day, as I will never forget reading that line in the South Beach diet book "Nuts are Diet Busters." Again, I am trying to tread lightly between staying on the diet and loosening up. But I'm finding it hard to live in the middle. People think staying on the diet is hard, but it's actually a lot easier to be a zealot than to engage in the incredible discipline required to live in a constant state of moderate living, food-wise.