Weekend Food Diary

So I rush through work Friday evening, drive 50 minutes through heavy traffic across town to meet my fiance, leave my car at his work and we head over to Knoxville on a 3.5 hour car ride.  We stop on the way and I throw caution to the wind and have a fried chicken sandwich (w/ mayo) and a LOADED baked potato from Arby's.  When we get to Stuart's mother's house, I have a couple of sugar-free blueberry muffins.  I do not take my usual 2nd dose of medicine that night. 

Next morning I have a piece of toast with butter, a couple of scrambled eggs and a half a piece of spicy sausage.  I do take my morning dose of medicine.  Then we go about 30 minutes up the road to a historical site (read: field) where they are rebuilding an 18th century fortification.  (They do at least have a porta-potty there.)  At lunch I have bratwurst and onions and potatoes cooked in whole milk.  Multiple helpings of that (I was in my can't-get-full mode).  Then I had a brownie and a few cookies later.  Oh, and I also had a sandwich with whole wheat bread, mayo, pepperoni, ham, and salami with a few torilla chips. 

Supper was more of the bratwurst stuff along with a half-bag of popcorn for an appetizer and a couple more brownies.  I have a diet Sierra Mist to drink at one point (no caffeine).  I think I do take my second dose of medicine just to be safe.

Sunday morning's breakfast was two eggs, two muffins, three or four pieces of real, pan-fried bacon and a whole piece of spicy sausage.  I take my first dose of medicine.  I have another Sierra Mist. 

Sunday's lunch consisted of CiCi's Pizza, with 6 small pieces of cheesy breadsticks with spaghetti sauce, three or four slices of pepperoni pizza and a couple of brownies.  Then we take the really, really scenic drive home. 

Supper is another Italian sandwhich (see Saturday).  I don't take my second dose of medicine.

Guess what?  I'm not dead yet.  My intestinal tract has behaved itself like... well, a normal intestinal tract.  My theory?  Banana chips.  I ate my way through a small bag of them over four days last week and had gotten almost constipated (stools were small, hard and a just little bit hard to pass).  So I backed off my second dose of medicine, to little effect.  So I had the Arby's and lived.  I just kept on eating and kept on living, despite having not had any banana chips now since Thursday.  Hopefully I will keep on living today too.  I guess when I go back to having soft, more frequent stools, I'll get me some more banana chips. 

 

Well, I did have a second poop this morning that was somewhat soft and burned like everything--bile caused by that pizza--but I took an extra Welchol and haven't had any problems since. I'll be back on my regular diet this week and normal medicine doses; all of that crazy stuff was just because I was away from my expensive healthy diet. You can't get good-for-you food when you travel. about the only thing that's moderately decent is chinese food (not that I've seen that in a drive-through variety), and only then if you go heavy on the rice and very light on the meat and sauces.

You know, after you've been off fast food for a while, you stop missing it. I had three Krystals back in August, then another three and a few fries the last part of October, then the Arby's Friday night. That's been my total fast food consumption for about the last 6 months. Part of that is because I wanted to keep that grease and fried stuff off my stomach, but my main motivation was watching my weight. I don't crave it at all anymore (I used to long for McNuggets all of the time).

I told Stuart Friday night that either Arby's had changed their recipe, or the chicken sandwich and baked potato just weren't as good as I remembered. And really, I don't think they changed the recipe; I think once you get off that stuff, it no longer tastes good. Add to that I have been eating very little in the way of processed foods--that almost nothing I eat has partially hydrogenated anything in it--and I think I've lost my taste for junk fat. Mind you, I eat a lot of dairy and nut fats now, but not those nasty oily fats. The pork I had this weekend was my first in a long while and it's been longer than that since I had any red meat. I've been sticking to seafood and chicken, and I've been trying to eat more meals without any meat and loering the amount of meat I have when I do have a meal. Even potato chips taste greasy rather than satisfying. I've gotten to where I can eat a sandwhich pretty well without them (although I may eat a few tortilla chips with it, which I am not weaned off of yet). I'll eat a few when they're openly available, but never buy them for myself. Luckily Stuart doesn't buy them either, so they stay out of the house completely.

It's sort of liberating to know you are free from the vices of fast food--monetarily and dietarily. Next time we get ready to road trip somewhere, I'll make sure I at least take something to eat so I can avoid the tasteless fast food places (that stuff really doesn't have any taste, you know; the fat in the oils is used as a substitute for flavor). Stuart and I did that when we went up to Kentucky on vacation this past summer, mostly because of budget issues (I was unemployed at the time). I had a Slim-Fast for breakfast and he a sandwich, then both of us had sandwiches for lunch. Supper was the only meal we had out, and we ate it at a sit-down place.

My next task is to lower the amount of sugar I consume. They have done studies and think that the more sugar you consume, the more sugar you crave. People who go off sugar for a while will lose their "sweet tooth" (although that doesn't necessarily hold true for diabetics). Mine has gotten much better and I don't crave candy anymore. I look at cakes and doughnuts and walk right past because they seem too sweet (although I can still tolerate cookies and brownies, apparently, lol). I do, however, keep sweetened nuts or sweetened trail mix around. Of course that's better than a Snickers, but not as good as no sugar at all. Maybe I'll wean myself down by buying a bag of sweet nuts and a bag of plain and mixing them together so I get less sugar with each serving. I'm already lowering the amount of sugar I put in my daily pitcher of green tea. And I've switched from fake sugar to real sugar. I'll occasionally have something with artifical sugar in it, but I figure if I'm going to eat something that's not that great for me, it might as well be real; fake stuff that's not that good for me surely is worse.

Now, if I could only manage to lose some weight. Or learn to not care about it. I'm eating better than I have ever eaten in my life, yet I'm back to bordering on overweight (although a size 12 American doesn't sound/seem overweight). Some part of me wants to blame it on my lack of gall bladder and therefore inability to regulate my appetite, but another part of me says that's very American--the lame part of America where everything is someone else's fault and nothing is my fault.

I've learned to eat less sugar, less fast food and less bad fats and sometimes I even actually crave vegetables (!!), so maybe I just have to work on shrinking my stomach by lessening what I put in it at any given time.

YOU GO, KERI!  Way for your guts to be behaving despite your weekend indulgences.  Sometimes it's good to test them :)  I have been increasing the banana intake (1/day), hoping they'll stop me up, but no results so far, darn it.  And I hate bananas with a passion!

You're right about the "being away from fast food" phenomenon.  I actually very rarely had fast food growing up because my parents were health freaks, then I sort of rebelled when I left home and began eating it more frequently.  Now it's like a once-in-a-blue-moon sort of thing and it never tastes that good!  Now if I want some greasy stuff I'll just cook it myself.  Like the french fries I made last night with nothing but good ole' potatoes, canola oil, and salt.  YUM!

Keriamon; what types of meds are you on?