Year 2, Day 16: The 36's Don't Fit

All dieters know that no matter what the scale says, the real test is: how do your clothes fit? You have pants and or shirts that are tight; you have favorite clothes that you don't want to admit you can't wear anymore. There are the bellwether clothes— sometimes they fit, sometimes they don't. For a while there I was buying 40-waist(ed) pants. That's not necessarily a good thing. I still had a lot of 38's and I was often proud to be able to wear them. 38 sounded good. It was my age, it was my waist size. When after about a year on the South Beach diet the 38's didn't fit me, I was very very glad. I never thought I would really be a 36. I probably haven't been a 36 for 15 or 20 years. A few months ago, both Emily and I realized that the new 38s we bought when I hit my goal last July were too big. Yesterday, she bought me a pair of 36 Gap Shorts. Now admittedly, GAP clothes look fantastic on thin people, but I find are fitted for the slightly heavy— they are roomier than most. We couldn't believe it—they were WAY TOO BIG. Now that's just one pair of GAP shorts, but that was really a milestone. The 36's didn't fit, they were too big.

Breakfast
1 cup Kashi Go Lean
1/4 cup Grape Nuts
1 Cup Unsweetened Soy Milk
Tea

Snack
1 Medium Dunkin Donuts (1/2 decaf)

Lunch: Russos ($6.41)
Red leaf, red lettuce, red onion
chicken, olives, feta, broccoli
scallions, celery, oil & vinegar

Dinner
Ham, Swiss and Broccoli Omelet
Asparagus

Accidental Other Things Eaten in the Service of Feeding Children:
1 saltine with peanut butter
1 or 2 bites of a strawberry popsicle
a few cheerios

Caffeine is something that supposedly jacks up your insulin levels, which has the effect, when the levels decline, of making you need something to raise your blood sugar levels. This can often be ready by the body as hunger, and possibly, as a result of today's coffee I was ravenously hungry by 11:30AM. When I got to Russo's there was (predictably) no chicken. Of course I sought out Carlos, who was in fact a tall Brazilian behind the rotisserie counter, who barked his Portuguese disapproval out loud, causing someone to come out from nowhere with a plateful of newly cooked chicken. This in turn, led to swarming, bringing out my hoarding behavior (at least five pieces of chicken) leading to a six dollar salad. Instead of leaving over the forty-one cents, I finished it. But at least the 36's don't fit. That counts for something, maybe a whole piece of chicken.