I’m very much looking forward to chopping some bunny ears today. I don’t really like to get into the headspace of earning chocolate with exercise. But that lil bunny will taste more delicious coupled with tired muscles.
I love fishes cause they're more delicious!
Yeah, I know, I’m an 8-year old. I’m totally excited for my veggie burger for lunch because it’s on a sandwich thin shaped like a goldfish.
Gold Fish sandwich thins?? Are you kidding me? They are the most awesome supermarket discovery I’ve made in like months. AND only 3 Weight Watcher points!
They are even more delicious if you make them swim around and dance in between bites and please be sure to eat the smile last!
AnchorDude: (finger to ear piece) Yes (offical NewsManNod) We’re just getting this in. There’s a developing tragedy underway in Long Island, New York. We’re going live to Senior Correspondent Smarty McSmartson. Smarty, I have a report of rogue ninja stealth Donut Holes terrorising a sleepy suburb. What’s the latest?
Smarty: That’s right, Bob. What you are about to see is graphic and shocking. Parents, you may want to shield the eyes of small children. At approximately 4:30 this afternoon, this young woman was attacked viciously and violently by a box of Entenmann’s Pop’ems. Miss, can you tell me what happened?
Fat Girl: Oh it was terrible. They came out of no where. Just all of a sudden there were there. Wheat-Free Week shouldn’t have ended this way. (Insert slow-mo image of Fat Girl collapsing into her La-Z-Boy, fanning herself)
Smarty: Authorities tell Awesome News Network that open boxes of Pop’ems have been sighting in isolated locations throughout the town. (Pan across the picturesque vistas of suburban Long Island).
Smarty: The Rich Chocolate Frosted Pop’em seems to target dieters and fitness enthusiasts with particular ferocity.
Fat Girl: (Desperately grabbing the mic) I could have handled just one. I could have fought it off, but there were too many, they just kept chanting: Eat me Eat me Eat me. (tragic sobs)
Smarty: (pan back to Smarty with obvious chocolate smears across his lips, glazed look in his eye). Citizens are cautioned to be on guard. Should you spot a Pop’em, do not approach. Go eat a carrot. (As the shot fades to black, Smarty is seen diving into a box of Pop’ems with both hands).
Thus ended Wheat Free Week.
My parents are fantastic people. There are many things I’m grateful for about how I was raised and one of them is a love for food. Yeah, yeah, I know, that love of food accounts for the size of my ass, but that’s not thier fault. Some of my best memories are food related. Mom sending us to school with thermos full of milk dyed green for St. Patrick’s day. Dad going on a massive Quest(tm) for Exploding Noodles.
We do a lot of Food Adventures(tm). We’ll discover an ingredient, or a style of cooking or an international cuisine and explore it fully. I got my love of travel from my dad and that translates into a love of international food. I can hold my own in a “Strangest thing I ever ate” contest with just about anyone (Whole baby sparrows, deep fried, on a stick. Ha! Beat that!). International cuisine has some strage stuff.
We did Chinese food for Chinese New Year (Go Bunnies!) and I was surprised by the vastness of choices I had. This past week has been a bit of a struggle because I was thinking very small. I forget that there’s entire cultures that only do wheat because of western influence. This particular resturant doesn’t do a lot of batter fired food, so as long as I stayed away from noodles, I’d be set. I had rice dumplings, sushi (don’t get me started about sushi served at a Chinese joint. That’s another blog post), stirfried veggies, grilled mushrooms, assorted meat dishes AND DESSERT.
I’m a big dessert fan. Hello? Have you seen the size of my bottom? I need a little sweet treat after dinner. Going wheat-free took away all my dessert options. No cake, no brownies, no cookies. Le sigh. I’ve been making due with hot chocolate. And that don’t cut it. Imagine my absolute glee when I encountered my favoite all time Asian snack – Seseme Seed Rice Ball filled with red bean paste. Yeah, I know, you’re saying “ew” right? Oh ew is not the case at all!!!!!
Sesame Ball - A gluten free gift!
It’s made out of a special type of rice flour that is chewy and subtly sweet. Since it’s deep fried, the exterior is just slightly chrunchy and the sesame seeds are alive with flavor. So, your teeth crunch through this crispy outside and then hit this soft and warm and chewy inside and then you encounter the red bean paste.
Red Bean Paste, or Anko in Japanese is the only substance on this earth that could rival chocolate in it’s deliciousness. I’m sitting here stumped on a way to describe the taste and texture as we don’t really have anything like it in the West. As the name implies, the texture is a paste, that can either be smooth like silk or a wee bit gritty, like when you cream butter and sugar together for cookies, you can feel the grit of sugar on your tongue. It’s dense and sweet but not overly sweet, just perfectly sweet. And when you encounter it in a baked good, oh my it’s like angels singing.
I mean seriously, if you put Red Bean Paste and Milk Chocolate in a Caged Death Match, I don’t know who would win but the carnage would be delicious. I can eat the stuff straight up, on ice cream, in desserts but hands down my favorite incarnation is Sesame Balls.
“Are you INSANE!?” Fat Girl’s cry of horror reverberates off the walls. “What the hell are we supposed to eat then, huh? ‘Wheat-FREE’? What the hell is wrong with you?” Fit Girl and Fab Girl give each other knowing looks – Brace yourself for a two-year-old style tantrum when Fat Girl starts cussing.
“Look, it’s just for a week OK? Just a week.” placates Fit Girl, as she slides off her spin bike.
Fat Girl snaps her Lay-Z-Boy back to it full upright position. Kind of hard to wag your finger and recline at the same time. “Bread is a staple. Pasta is a staple. S-T-A-P-L-E. That means you’re supposed to eat it every day.” Counting off on her fingers, Fat Girl continues, “They eat pasta every day in Italy. They eat noodles every day in China.”
“Baguettes in Paris!” Fab Girl cheerfully chirps from her chaise.
“Why are you doing this to us!?” Fat Girl faux faints into the fully reclined position. Eyes like laser beams go right to Fit Girl’s core. “Torturer. Witch.”
“Oh, they have croissants in Paris too.” Fab Girl moans dreamily.
“I’m doing this for US OK?” Fit Girl brandishes her own exclamatory finger wag. “You’re fat. You’re not in Paris. And my tummy hurts!”
And with that, Fit Girl, Fat Girl, and Fab Girl all fart in unison to underscore the point in classic sitcom perfection. Cue laugh track.
“Mon dieu!” giggles Fab Girl.
Snapping open her Food Tracker to hide her embarrassment, Fit Girl scans her notes with air of coming doom. “Let’s see what did we eat today? Toast for breakfast. Sandwich for lunch. Pasta for dinner.”
Fat Girl adds “Cake for dessert.”
Fab Girl adds “Mini Bagel for a snack.”
“What!? That’s not on the tracker!” panic one-two-punching Fit Girl. Fat Girl and Fab Girl shrug in response.
“Well, That’s a lot of carbs to digest.” grumbles Fit Girl. “I’m not saying we’ll never have cake again, but this is about balance.” Waving the tracker as Exhibit A. “There’s nothing balanced about this.”
I’m almost done with my Wheat-Free Week. I can’t say that my feelings of health and well-being have skyrocketed as a result of not eating wheat for 6 days, but I have had far fewer tummy issues this week. Going Wheat-Free has brought back an awareness of what’s going in my mouth and that’s a trend that needs to continue. I don’t just pop things in my mouth anymore, I have to stop and think if it has wheat in it. At the salon, they were celebrating someone’s birthday with a glorious chocolate cake. I had a knife poised over it to cut a little sliver for myself when I remembered that cake has wheat in it. I had to stop and consider that food and make a choice about whether or not eating this bite of food was in my best interest. The answer was surprisingly no. Yay me.
This whole journey is about finding a balance in life. A balance in work, in food, it fitness. I don’t think I’m going to continue being wheat-free after this week, but rather make very calculated choices on where I want to indulge. Keeping pasta and more importantly, bread to the realm of “special occasion” food like bacon and fried food, could do me worlds of good. Well, that’s the theory anyway.
It was a dark and stormy night. Ok. It wasn’t actually dark or stormy. Or night. But Crazy Inner Fat Girl was lurking about as if it was a dark and stormy night. She creeps on up to the hidden cash of chocolate like a ninja, her prey in sight. Just one wee little chocolate. No one will know. Peeking around the corner, Fat Girl slips a tiny chocolate in her mouth and pockets another. Ok, three more. The lights are out, no one is watching. SUCCESS! The calories won’t count!
Thus goes the secret snacking that never gets recorded and why my weight has been stuck in the 190s.
You see, I am a big fat fibber when it comes to snacking. A piece of cheese while I’m waiting for dinner to cook never gets recorded. The five crackers that go with the piece of cheese is ignored. And the existence of the little pat of butter on the aforementioned crackers and cheese is blinked away.
I might record the frozen yogurt I ate, but not the dark chocolate chips that go on top. I will write down the slice of bread I ate with my soup, but not the slice of bread with butter I ate while the soup was heating up. I’ll say I had lamb chops for dinner but there is no evidence of the teaspoon of mint jelly I had. OK 2 teaspoons. And I think the world might stop revolving if I actually made note of the coffee and creamer I have on a daily basis.
So why do I fib? It’s not like I don’t have the calorie budget to record 60 calorie piece of chocolate. It could be simple laziness. If I have that piece of chocolate, then I have to go to my computer, log in, search for the correct food item, click some buttons blah blah blah. Almost doesn’t seem worth the effort to eat the damn piece of chocolate.
So I’m starting a new week of total honesty with what I’m eating. Everything will get recorded. Everything, including the coffee and creamer. I’m working my butt off in the gym, and the few extra minutes it will take to log in my food for the day really shouldn’t be such a production. It will be an interesting experiment and should be quite eye opening.
Dinner was done. I was at 1400+ calories for the day. My mom proposes Frozen Yogurt. Now, I’ve got a soft spot for Red Mango. It is the best stuff on this earth. Seriously.
The problem? FroYo is like 200 calories. I want to stay below 1500 calories AND burn more than 1000 calories a day. Hmmmm what to do?
Are you ready to rumble!
In this corner, we have Fat Girl, Champion of Manipulation. Five Time Pity Party World Cup Winner.
In that corner, it’s Fit Girl, a new comer to the scene rapidly making a name for herself.
Ding. Ding. Ding.
Fat Girl comes out swinging hard!
I’m quitting smoking, I DESERVE Frozen Yogurt.
Fit Girl ducks and rolls, runs circles around Fat Girl.
You don’t deserve things, you EARN them. Have you earned a FroYo?
Oh, that was harsh, the crowd gasps. Fat Girl felt that one for sure. Fat Girl staggers and recovers, winds up with a classic -
I’ve been good all day, one treat won’t kill me.
Look at the fancy foot work on Fit Girl! That blow doesn’t even come close to landing.
You can have FroYo, IF you burn the calories RIGHT NOW to compensate. Go for a run.
Oooooo That HAD to hurt Bob. Fat Girl is a bit of a mess. Wait a minute, yes, I think the Ref is gonna call it… YES! TKO! Fit Girl Wins!!
And the crowd goes wild.
So yeah, I went out and ran over a mile. I mean I RAN. I pounded out that run. IN THE RAIN. I actually ran in the rain. I have never felt like an athlete before. Right then. I was an athlete. That last half a block, rain stinging my face, in that instant, something small changed. I can’t describe it yet, but beating all the excuses and lies I tell myself and running to earn that FroYo, shifted something. And I suspect I will never be the same.
Oh yeah, and the Red Mango was delicious. Key Lime with Mochi.
And to catch up on runs posted to DailyMile… This is what I ran yesterday. It should be one run but stupid Niki+ decided to END rather than PAUSE when I stopped to tie my shoe.
On 8/23/10 I ran 2.75miles in 32:25 mins at a pace of 11’46” burning 392 calories.
On 8/23/10 I ran 1.11miles in 13:19 mins at a pace of 11’57″” burning 158 calories.
Every time I log on and see my DailyMile Donut Meter, I’m reminded that its been AGES since I’ve had a Donut. Donuts were never a thing for me (or for Fat Girl). I could take ‘em or leave ‘em. If you brought a box to a meet, sure, I’ll have three, but I wouldn’t go out of my way just to buy one. Once I get to “I’ve earned 200 Donuts” I think I just might have one!
