Dumpster Diving for Nutritional Information

Late lunch today.  That whole having to make a living thing gets inconvenient at times, I'll tellya.

I was going to skip posting as I already spent most of my delayed lunch reading other people's blogs, but then I went over to the office fridge to get a Diet Coke (cue angelic singing) and I saw something I didn't understand.  Someone apparently purchased "chicken tenders" from the prepared food case at the grocery store across the street.  This is a fried strip of chicken, and yes I totally understand the allure of the food itself, but here's the thing.....there is NO nutritional information on the package.  My immediate thought when I saw this in passing was "How do you count that???"

Now let me point out that this food was obviously purchased by one of the thin or clinically underweight people who work in my office.  I say this is obvious because it's in the fridge.  Any normal (read: food-obsessed) person would not put ONE chicken tender back in the fridge for later.  This seriously does not compute.

But my point is that I spent, I kid you not, almost an hour logging last night's dinner.  The Man made this amazing taco casserole which, after we ate, reduced me to digging through the recycling and the trash, cellphone in hand, scanning ingredient barcodes into my FatSecret account so that I could calculate my caloric intake.

I may be getting a tinch obsessive, yathink?

Anyway...the BodyBugg comes tomorrow!  Oh yeah, that'll do WONDERS for the old OCD.

Today's lunch:  Amy's Rice Macaroni & Cheese.  Kinda bluh.

Excuse the lack of photos & links.  On the run.

One. Stinking. Pound.

This weekend I ran my ass off.  Sadly I do not mean this literally.

Saturday I got up at the crack of 8:30 (if you know me, you know this is a hurcurlean feat) and went to the gym, where I swam laps for 20 minutes.  I picked up The Boy at his grandmothers (where he opted to spend "MY WEEKEND") and we went to the West Side Market, where we walked for roughly two hours.  I came home and made a nice dinner for my family, then I took The Girl bowling. 

Sunday involved some grocery shopping and another three games of bowling.

I consdiered this to be an active weekend.  No, I didn't run a marathon or hike to the top of a mountain but I do not feel that I was anything close to sedentary. And I was pretty gosh darn proud of myself.

Combine this with the rest of the activity for the week, which consisted of my two normal trips to the gym (40 to 60 minutes of exercise each) and a half hour on the dreadmill in my basement, you would think I'd see a happy number on the scale this morning.

Shit no...I lost a pound. ONE sad little pound.

Gee...do you think it could have had something to do with the ice cream and donuts?  Really?

Big, fat SIGH.

I am a slave to sugar. 

We have developed a habit of stopping at Dairy Queen almost every Friday night, where I get a medium Double Fudge Cookie Dough Blizzard (I hear angels singing just from typing it). 

And The Man likes to bring home a dozen donuts with the newspaper on Sunday.

Yes, I suppose could ignore the donuts.  Sure, I should abstain from the ice cream.  Theoretically I could also fly if I flapped my arms hard enough, but honey it's not happening.  I rarely smoke or drink, I don't do drugs.  I LIKE SUGAR!!!

So what to do?  WHAT TO DO????  Do I accept dismal weight-loss numbers as the cost of my sugar habit?   Do I swear off the stuff, for the eight bazillionth time, knowing full well that within a week I'll be thinking that I'd rather be fat and be able to eat what my family eats?  Do I up the exercise with pretty much the same result of eventual disgust in what feels like endless self-punishment.

I'm starting to think I just have to accept the numbers, dissapointing as they are.  Be happy, even THANKFUL, for any shift in the right direction and get on with my life.  I mean I participated in one sort of exercise or another five out of seven days last week so increasing that does not seem reasonable.  I heard some diet guru last week saying that he recommends SIX HOURS of cardio training PLUS weights every week.  Who does that?  Who has an hour plus, every single day, to devote to exercise?  Not this fat chick, I'll tell you that.

I talked to my Chiropractor last week about my acid reflux and he gave me a "reduced sugar diet".  This plan advocates, among other thingss, MAKING YOUR OWN SALAD DRESSING.  I wrote about the old weight watcher plan where we had to make our own ketchup a couple of weeks ago (can I go blind for linking to my own blog?).  Remember the old "I get two meats and one bread and one vegetable" plan?  This paper that my doctor handed me in two- thousand-freaking-eleven was exactly that.   I'm sorry, I can't go back there. 

Is this what we've come to as a society?  What happened to eating like a normal person?  To me having to weigh and record every bite I put in my mouth is not normal.  Schleeping to the gym every single day and pushing my body until it hurts is not normal.  Enduring pain and emotional misery to be healthy should not be necessary.  But it seems that it is, and this is something I'm having a very, VERY hard time accepting. 

Today's lunch:  Braunschweiger (from the West Side Market) sandwich with yummy sweet potato chips (from Aldi's! go figure!)