Chicken Soup for the Dieter's Soul (5 page)

And a diet would address only what I took in. But life offered the chance to play with energy, experiment with taking it in and burning it off. A diet held no challenge: Here, eat this measured thing. Life said, “Have some fun. See what happens when you eat a little and burn a little. Or eat a lot and burn a little. Or eat a little and burn a lot. Or eat a lot and burn a lot.” What fun! Like being a scientist. Diet? Every day is grapefruit. Life? Every day is different.

So I banished “diet” from my mind-set and lexicon and focused on life. I resolved to do three things: center my meals around plants, choose healthy calories over bad or empty ones, and move for at least twenty minutes a day.

When the time came for my first postconversion meal, I opened the fridge. I wanted to plant-center my plate, but there wasn’t a fresh fruit or vegetable in that whole Kenmore. I opened the cupboard and took down a can of peas. I found an onion, sautéed it in olive oil, threw in some chopped garlic and lemon juice and folded the mix into the peas. I poured a tall glass of orange juice, sat down on my deck and tucked into this humble, healthy lunch that would change my life.

The next morning, I dug out an old pair of sneakers, pulled on my elastic-waist shorts and oversized T-shirt and went outside to move. I started out walking but soon found myself lifting my feet high enough off the ground to approximate a rude form of entry-level shuffle-jogging. That first day, I made it once around the block. I felt like I was going to die, but I knew I’d run the race of my life.

Now, after years of salads, fruit, fish, chicken, whole grains and the occasional Oreo or Dairy Queen cone, I wear high school–size jeans and have long since given away my elastic-waist shorts.

And that energy experiment? My favorite take in/burn off combination is “eat a lot and burn a lot.” That’s what I do when I train for a marathon. I’m preparing for my sixth.

Lori Hein

Take Two

P
atience and perseverance have a magical
effect before which difficulties disappear and
obstacles vanish.

John Quincy Adams

There is something about everyone they’re not happy with. Maybe it’s their weight, hair, eyes or skin color, their shoe size, job situation or relationships—any number of things.

For me, it’s always been my weight.When I hit puberty I sprouted a chest, a butt and a little gut all at once. I became aware of things I never had before, in places I never thought of before. I became increasingly self-conscious.

Some girls chose not to eat. I chose the opposite and began eating too much. My appetite sky-rocketed, but I looked fine, until I hit eighteen. Then it was as if gravity had something against me at an early age. I was making bad eating decisions, was depressed and cared way too much about what people thought of me.

Eventually my weight became an obstacle in the way of happiness—or so I thought.

It took many years of these bad eating habits for me to end up considerably overweight. I would diet, crash diet, nose-dive diet; if there was a diet out there, I was on it. I tried about everything but eating tofu with tweezers! (Don’t think I didn’t consider it though.) And I would lose weight, only to gain it right back, and then some.

A constant frustration for me was the emphasis that society placed on being thin. Thin is beautiful. To those of us who aren’t, we must resolve to lose weight and be healthy and live happily ever after. That moment of fortitude vanishes the minute the delivery boy, holding the extra-large pepperoni pizza with extra cheese, rings the doorbell and you think,
Well, I paid for it; I might as well eat it!
which is exactly what I would do. Then I would feel terrible about my lack of self-control and cry.

Of course I comforted myself with a double-dark chocolate candy bar, or two or three, which worked until I read the nutrition label. Imagine my shock to discover my delusion about chocolate being a vegetable. Hey, it comes from a bean, and beans are vegetables, aren’t they? The justification and rationalizations never end.

On a day I resolved to lose weight and be healthy, I would consume over 4,000 calories! I know I was in the junk food line a little too long when they handed out those metabolisms, but even the women who pack it away and stay tiny wouldn’t last long at that rate. I was living in an endless cycle of guilt, unhappiness and failure.

I would make jokes about myself so I’d feel less self-conscious about the way I looked. I would tell people, “I should put stickers onmy holster hips that say, ‘Caution, wide turns.’” Or how about this one: “I get applause when I run in gym class. My thighs slap together so loud it sounds like everyone’s clapping.” After all, my attitude is based on 10 percent of what life hands me, and 90 percent of how I react to what life hands me.

It didn’t occur to me until later that, like almost everything in life, happiness is a choice. I made some bad choices in the food I ate, and how much of it. Now I have to reverse the process. In the end, it isn’t about crash diets or what society thinks—it’s about learning to have a diet. Everything we eat is a diet, and one secret is to keep things in proportion. Another is choosing to be happy with what you have—no matter how much more of it you’ve been given.

God, my husband, and the prayers of many family and friends are the reason I’m able to put life into a different perspective today. Society doesn’t define happiness— especially mine. I no longer let it. What we do with our lives and bodies is up to us. I had to change my attitude before I could change my eating habits. There are certain things about myself that I can’t change, but the things I can, I am learning to be less obsessive about and more patient with.

I’m still in a weight-loss process and will be for a long time, but now when I answer that door and find an extra-large pepperoni pizza with extra cheese waiting, I’ll have two slices instead of four—and choose to be happy that I had any at all.

Karen A. Bakhazi

Poached Eggs au Gratin

M
AKES
2
SERVINGS
E
ACH SERVING: 19 GRAMS PROTEIN,TRACE CARBOHYDRATE

1 tablespoon white vinegar

4 eggs

2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese

2 teaspoons chopped fresh parsley

In a deep medium skillet, bring 2 inches of water and vinegar to a boil over high heat.

Reduce heat to simmer. Crack an egg into a small bowl and tip gently into boiling water. Repeat with all eggs.

Cover skillet and cook 3 minutes for soft yolks, 5 minutes for firmer yolks. Using a slotted spoon, remove eggs from water and drain thoroughly.

Sprinkle with grated Parmesan cheese and fresh parsley. Serve immediately.

Reprinted from
The Schwarzbein Principle Cookbook.
©1999
Diana Schwarzbein, M.D., Nancy Deville and Evelyn Jacob.
Health Communications, Inc.

You Choose, You Lose

D
estiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter
of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for; it is a
thing to be achieved.

William Jennings Bryan

“I’ve had it. I’m sick and tired of saying I can’t have something,” I complained to my best friend Linda. “I can’t have chocolate cake. I can’t have ice cream. I can’t have a yummy éclair. Is there anything I can have?”

“You can have lots of things,” she said.

“Yeah, right. You’re not the one trying to lose weight. The wholeworld is filledwith things that are off-limits.” I sulked in my chair as I read the lunch menu in the restaurant.

Pastrami on rye. Cheeseburger. Tuna melt.

Roast beef au jus. French fries. Onion rings.

Cheesy broccoli soup. New England clam chowder.

Double-fudge brownies. Blueberry cheesecake.

The choices were endless.

As a teenager I could eat anything I wanted and as much as I wanted. Not anymore. Now I step on the scale every morning and peek at the numbers, hoping they haven’t gone higher than the day before. I’m happy if I haven’t gained and elated if I’ve lost even half a pound. It’s a daily struggle and I’m tired of fighting. I’m even more tired of that word “can’t.”

There are so many things in life I just can’t control. How tall I am (I always wanted to be short like my sister). My boss (I wish he’d save the big projects for Monday instead of Friday afternoons). The high cost of living (I wonder if I’ll ever be able to retire). I have no power over so many areas of my life. Is there something I could take control of?

Then the light bulb went off in my head, one of those “ah ha” moments when it all comes together. There was something I could control—my own mind and my own decisions.

I did have a choice in this one area, the area of what I chose to eat. I could pick something I knew would be good for me, or I could pick something that wasn’t in line with my goals. It was all a matter of choice. And it was all up to me.

Linda’s voice brought me out of my thoughts. “How about the BLT? Or is that something you can’t have?”

“You know what? Starting right now, right this minute, I’m not going to say ‘can’t’ anymore.” I sat up straight in my chair. “I’m going to say what I choose to have instead.”

“Sounds like a good plan to me,” Linda said. “So what are you having?”

“I’m choosing the Chinese chicken salad and I’m asking for the dressing on the side.”

“Sounds terrific. But you can’t have a soda with that, right?” she said. “Oops, I said can’t. I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay; it will take a while to get used to it. But to answer you, I’m choosing ice water with a slice of lemon today.”

I felt great when I came out of the restaurant after lunch. Not only did I not feel bloated from eating too much, but the salad filled me up just fine. And most of all, I felt more in control of my mind and of my eating habits.

It was something I could choose, and I love the feeling of power I have in that.

B. J. Taylor

Whatever I Want

Y
ou cannot make yourself feel something you
do not feel, but you can make yourself do right
in spite of your feelings.

Pearl S. Buck

Two months into my new life as a gastric bypass patient, I have begun a journey into my past to see if I can answer some of the questions I have about what led me to the 385-pound, high-water mark in my life. As this new tool has allowed me to begin shedding the weight, gain confidence and overcome my failure mentality, I have realized that what it hasn’t done is to banish my mental cravings for food. This is not totally unexpected. I knew from the start that weight-loss surgery was no magic pill or sorcerer’s spell that would make all of my fat issues disappear in a puff of smoke. But the hope is always there, isn’t it?

So, as I sit here, watching the weight disappear, notching new holes in my old belt and trying to ignore the siren song of the kitchen, I’m also looking back over the years to try to find out what hole in my psyche I have tried for so long to fill with food. For years I’ve blamed my hunger on a slow metabolism, super-size stomach and a faulty telephone line between my belly and my brain. Now that my stomach holds no more than a couple of ounces, and I know that I’ve recently filled that with dense protein, any feelings of hunger cannot be related to my belly. In fact, the sense of fullness that I’m feeling even as I type would suggest that, were I to give in to the impulse to grab a snack, I would probably find myself hugging the toilet in the near future, as all engines reversed.

So, into the past . . . as a child I grew up in a poverty-stricken neighborhood. I can easily recall weeks when our only food was potatoes and government-granted bricks of processed cheese. Breakfast, lunch and dinner . . . potatoes and cheese. In all fairness, I have since spent time in countries where this abundance would be reason for celebration and now understand what a blessing from God it was to have food, any food, on the table when so many in this world do not. However, that reasoning has little impact on the mind of a child or the mental pathways and habits that are formed during this most influential time of our lives.

Over the years life improved, but only slightly. It wasn’t until I was out of high school that I lived a life completely free of government financial aid. We were “poor,” and that was a message that echoed both from our bank statements and from the innermost parts of our self-image. By the time I was ten or twelve, I had ceased to ask for anything beyond the most basic needs. The mantra in our apartment was “We don’t have the money for . . .” Regardless of the object of desire, the answer was always the same.

Lest there be any jumping to conclusions, I want to make it clear that this WAS the reality. I had no miserly mother who saved every extra penny for her own clothing, booze or cigarettes. Mom did the best she could with very, very little. When she said we could not afford it, it was because there were not enough pennies in the cookie jar to buy bread, much less the new style of jeans, the latest record or the new Nikes that all the “cool” kids were wearing. Thus, I became used to the mantra and tried to keep my chin up despite the taunts of other kids and the deep-seated sense of being less than my peers. The only thing that saved me from serious psychological damage, at least in my opinion, was that I grew up in a home rich with love. Positive reinforcement, loving touch and acceptance were as plentiful as cash was not.