Motivation
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RANTING BURNS CALORIES!
This is an open, ongoing, support-encourage-motivational-RANTING thread. Feel free to skip to the end, or spend days reading through all of this ...
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I have decided that "Diet" is a 4-letter word.
I find myself muttering and uttering the word around my house these days with loathing and vehemence previously reserved only for comments directed toward liberal politicians. In fact, I seem to be talking to myself a lot more these days .... sort of a running, sarcastic commentary on all the foods I can't eat, or on various other related topics. I wonder if there is a link between calorie-deprivation and Tourettes Syndrome? Grrrrrrrrr.....
I am now on Day 8 of the dreaded D-word. This is already the longest period of time that I have ever successfully remained on a diet. And I seem to be growing grouchier and feistier each day..... at least when I am alone and no one is around to hear my running rants. (My wonderful DH has heard some of my more memorable rants on the subject of broccolli and reports that I am hysterically funny when I am hungry!) I am counting carbs. I am counting calories. I am counting fat grams. Sheesh ... now my math anxiety is about to kick-in!
Mini Rant #1 .... what masochist decided that the serving size of cereal was anything less than 2 cups? Have you ever measured out 2/3 a cup of cereal? Or even a full cup? And placed it in a bowl? Those few little flakes and pieces just sit forlornly at the bottom of the bowl, shivering and lonely, even when we dribble on a few meager droplets of skim milk! Sheesh. Well, I can tell you that there is simply no way that my oversized body is going to be happy with that tiny amount of cereal ... so I have been eating TWO servings for breakfast. SIGH. And while the side of the box says that I can supplement the cereal with some fruit, they probably don't mean eat 45 cherries with your cereal -- much less 1/2 a watermelon, huh?
Mini Rant #2 .... Things NOT to say to someone who has told you that they have just started on a diet:
1.Good, you sure needed it.
2. It's about time.
3. Really? It doesn't look like it.
4. Again? Haven't we heard this before?
5. Gosh, how much weight do you need to lose?
6. What do you weigh? I've always wondered.
7. I never need to diet, I have a fast metabolism.
8. Really? I can eat all I want and never gain weight.
9. Is THAT why you are so grouchy?
10. I sure hope you plan to exercise a lot more.
AAAUGGH! All of these responses are just the thing to make me even grouchier .... so just smile and say something encouraging and supportive, ok? I will let you know how it is going.
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=^..^= Molly
WELCOME TO MOLLY'S MOTIVATIONAL RANT / CHAT THREAD ... FEEL FREE TO SHARE YOUR RANTS, TOO! YOU CAN EITHER READ FROM THE BEGINNING OR JUST JUMP ON IN ON THE LAST PAGE ... JOIN US!
Reason: Removed sticky 9/12, had been up since 9/4
silvaraynebow ... keep us posted on how the veggie-lifestyle goes. Though, for all practical purposes, I don't really stay up nights worrying about getting eaten by turkeys, tunas and errant chickens! 
Now that I am buying and eating more fresh veggies, I find that they no longer fit neatly in the bottom drawer of my fridge and seem to be expanding and escaping throughout the refrigerator. Just tonight, I opened the door and a bag of spinach LEAPED out at me. And we've had several errant cherry tomatoes (I almost typed "cheery tomatoes" there) ... go rolling across the kitchen floor to the great delight of kittens Megan and McIntosh. But don't you just hate it when veggies go all limp and droopy before you get a chance to eat them .... sigh .... I sure do. The thrifty side of me (and that is a small side of me, let me confess), feels bad about it.... but my evil side is secretly gleeful that another head of cabbage has bitten the dust and been sent off to cabbage heaven.... or wherever it is that uneaten cabbages go when they pass on.
And, is it just me, or does every family have 8 open bottles of salad dressing in their refrigerator?
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=^..^= MOLLY (Hello, I am a salad dressing-aholic)
And thanks guys for the giggles this morning!
Yes I think we have that many dressing bottles in our frige. I too have wilty lettuce and celery lurking in drawers with slimy brown stuff on them. I've tried to stay with frozen vegies just to keep the frugal personality in me satisfied but it's hard to freeze lettuce. :)
And as for the 100 cal pack stuff, I wish they would grow some hybrid banana that just had 100 calories. Bananas vary in size so much, how is a person to know how many calories are in their banana. You see itty bitty ones, medium ones, and great big honkin ones. I personally have never weighed a banana and don't plan to start anytime soon. My mother cuts them in half, she probably learned that in Weight Watchers back in the day when they ate cottage cheese broiled on toast with cinnamon on top as a treat, ewwwwwww. I hate it when I see her poor bananas lying there with their brown ends showing all dried up with a fruit fly feasting on them. Now don't you think God wants us to eat the whole thing, after all, he didn't put any zipper on it.
LOL...zippers on bananas! I do eat the whole thing, no matter the size, though if large I count it as 2 fruit servings. Did you know you can freeze them? I put frozen bananas in the blender with yogurt and a bit of milk for a quick "shake".
Even apples have been "supersized"! Do you think Eve would have grabbed that forbidden fruit if it had weighed a whole pound!!??
Fresh pineapple...what a treat. But why didn't God design them with a zipper? Cutting one of those lovely fruits should count as about 100 calories burned! Not to mention the wasted parts!
But, since I'm broke, it really drives me crazy to have food go bad, which has turned into me going to the grocery store practically every other day versus once a week. Argh. I try to alternate between the three grocery stores near my house so as to not see the same checkout people each time, but alas, some of them are getting to know me.
silvrayne - good luck with veggie-ism. It really is a great way to lose weight and stay healthy. I was a vegan for several years in a effort to lower cholesterol (which it, surprisingly, didn't do) and had little trouble with my weight...unfortunately, I got bored and craved, of all things, yogurt!
JJ
YOU go...you got what it takes..Thanks Molly!
Cece
I am trying to be espcially "good" this morning and this afternoon since I am going out to dinner with DH this evening. So, breakfast was 1 cup of Special K (protein), 1/2 cup e, skim milk, and a juicy, red delicious apple. You would THINK these items would be simple enough to log onto my daily food log .... but noooooooo. Sure, the cereal and milk were easy enough, but now that I have EATEN that apple, I don't recall exactly how large a diameter it had. Heck, I just ATE it, I did not dissect and measure the crispy little sucker. As a compromise, I have just decided to call it "Medium" and stop spending any more brain cells on apple size estimations. Sheesh.
Last night, after confessing about my 7 or 8 open bottles of salad dressing, I was brave enough to undertake a fridge exploration party to toss out old items, outdated items, unidentifiable items, and anything that seemed to weird and/or scary to actually EAT. I am proud to announce that we are now down to 5 bottles of salad dressings/salad vinegars, 1 of which hasn't yet been opened! Apparently, I also have a problem with opening jars of salsa, hiding them behind the Diet Cokes, and never looking for them again .... ewwwwwwwww. I am trying to keep better tabs on expiration dates, too, and can cheerfully report that I have to eat four little cups of sugarfree, non-fat caramel-flavored pudding in the next several days. (YUM!)
Our fridge has lots of room now, especially because I finished off the broccoli last night (insert resounding crescendo of music from Handel's Hallelujah Chorus) and I finally threw out the approaching-slimy cucumbers / radishes / spinach. And yesterday I consumed an impressive 3.5 cups of fresh green beans .... YAY! Anyway, we clearly need to go back to the store for more veggies, since the only ones left are some spinach, some cheery cherry tomatoes, and some shredded cabbage. I think I will get some brussell sprouts and artichokes and fresh corn (ok, ok, ok, and more of that !&***% broccoli) at the store!
Keep ranting .... it is fun! 
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=^..^= MOLLY (a rant a day lets us avoid cleaning out the refrigerator)
)
Today's next rant is on .... unsolicited advice.
First off, let me state that I am on this wonderful forum because I want advice ... solicited and unsolicited.... from my friends, buddies, fellow calorie-counters, and health-conscious individuals. You may all freely dispense and disperse food and exercise and diet-related advice in my general direction any time you so desire ... because when I am ON this forum ... posting and logging and reading and participating .... I am in my "diet mode." And, frankly, many of you seem to be very knowledgeable and helpful and I need all the help I can get. (whew)
BUT ... what I really do NOT always appreciate is unsolicited (and often remarkably dreadful) advice from allegedly well-intentioned, well-meaning friends/acquaintances who THINK that they have all the answers and just CANNOT wait to tell me why whatever I am doing is "wrong" and will "never work." I refuse to believe that the "only" diet that ever works is Weight Watchers, or South Beach, or Atkins, or the Zone, or whatever diet your mom/friend/sister/neighbor just lost all their weight on. "You'll never lose weight just by counting calories, you aren't getting enough vitamins and you'll get scurvy or something" ... or .... "You will never lose weight unless you cut out all dairy from your diet" ... or .... "You will never lose weight unless you limit yourself to 1200 calories a day, max" .... or .... "You will never lose weight unless you give up all artificial sweeteners in all forms and never touch Sugar Free Jello and Diet Pepsi in your life." AAAAUUUUGGGHHH!
The most frustrating part is that I did NOT start the conversation with. "Hey, I am trying to lose weight by counting calories and getting a little exercise ... please tell me what you think I should be doing instead of that." For the record, I don't want to hear about whatever fad pills or tea you bought from a late night infomercial, I don't want your recipe for cabbage soup, and I am not interested in the grapefruit diet. And, finally, and this is VERY important .... unless I have specifically asked you to be my accountability partner, watchdog or prison warden, do NOT NOT NOT say "Should you be eating that?" when you see me eat something in your presence. (Someone just said that to me over a single slice of low-fat cheese, for heaven's sake!)
Ahhh. I feel much better. How's things with the rest of you?
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=^..^= MOLLY (... it's my thread and I'll rant if I wanna ...)
Yup, I can sure understand that! I monitor my calories each day and one thing I REALLY can't give up is some sort of sweet. The other day I had a sweet potato casserole, boy was it yummy. I had it in my calorie plan, but it's hard for me to not feel guilty eating it. I keep telling myself that, but I sure wish I would listen!
The other thing, is if I choose to get a little crazy and have something really naughty, I might as well enjoy it too! Then get back on the wagon. I guess the thing to remember is this is a lifestyle change, not a 4-letter-diet. In the course of life, having say a piece of pie, enjoy the dang thing, cuz it's not gonna kill me! Whereas a 4-letter-diet having a piece of pie is a bad, bad thing. Right?
Personally if someone were to ask me if I really needed that slice of cheese I?d probably say something like ..Well actually you?re right? I need the chips and the salsa and the other lonely slices of cheese to go with it? mmm NACHOs?Seems balanced?
Yum, I've been thinking of making that, haven't since 1979! Oh, and I cut bananas in half, too. (I put plastic on the end, keeps off the fruit flies.)
My rant for the day is I FEEL OLD!!!
Rufus FEELS old? Hee hee hee .... I AM old!!! Well, at least I am over 40 ... doesn't that make me, officially, a grown-up? And doesn't being a grown up FEEL old some days?
Well, my wonderful DH took me out to dinner tonight to our favorite chinese restaurant (no MSG ... yay!) We started off with sizzling rice soup .... but without the sizzling rice. YUM! I love that tasty chicken broth with spinach, mushrooms and water chestnuts .... and I think there was chicken in there. Then we had 2 entrees ... Sizzling chicken and vegetables (broccoli, pea pods, water chestnuts, baby corns, bamboo shoots, carrots, zucchini) and mu shu pork -- but WITHOUT the crepes or the plum sauce (pork, cabbage, mushrooms, celery, scrambled egg). My DH was wonderful and valiantly ate BOTH egg rolls (so I wouldn't be tempted) ... and he had fried rice, but I didn't. My biggest rant is that I have absolutely NO idea what to put on my food log -- so I think I will just put down 600 calories and call it good. My portion sizes for the soup, mu shu pork, and chicken/veggies were all very reasonable ... about 1 cup of each ... and the chicken and pork were very lean. Of course, it is the sauce that is the sneaky culprit in chinese food, isn't it?
We are headed off to the grocery store in a few minutes ..... we are (if you can believe it) OUT of broccoli.
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=^..^= MOLLY (a rant a day keeps the broccoli away)
When I splurge on Chinese, I usually try to log it as all of the lovely healthy ingredients it does have, with a blantant guesstimation of the quantities of each, then go ahead and add in the tablespoon of oil that they probably started the stir fry in, and a hoisin sauce or stir fry sauce into the mix. It probably comes out a little low, but it really is too hard to figure out. So hard...I was told there would be no Math!
when trying desperately to "save up" calories for the pizza they were ordering at work tonight (why is free food really everywhere and does it have to be such a topic of discussion when you don't want to eat it!!! we worked over 16 hours, so they are required to feed us because we couldn't leave, and then it was the "oh, you are on a diet! well, everyone else is eating pizza, why do you have to be so difficult and try to order a salad instead!!!!), anyways, I was actually a little cheered with joy about just how many cups of broccoli I could spread throughout the day to feel like I was eating more!
Then I thought about the raccoons that keep eating the vegetables I have worked so hard on growing all summer and thought, now there's my support group! Even the raccoons are weaning themselves off of my trash in order to become healthier raccoons that eat only eggplants, green peppers, and my one pitiful little cheery cherry tomato that (cough cough) had not even gotten to the point of being ripe! maybe that was their binge- so hungry off of the baby lettuce that they were desperate enough to eat my tiny green tomato!
Awwwww...... raccoons sound so cute. And so do squirrels. And bunnies. Of course, we have rather large "mousies" all over our front and back yards (we will NOT use the "r" word or I will have a hissy fit) .... and somehow, it doesn't seem quite so cute when the little furry critters are invading your space. And right now, our "mousies" are only eating the bird seed and dog food and the cat food I put out for the neighbor's cats .... they aren't eating MY food. I think if they were eating my food, I wouldn't be so forgiving!
ahhh .... pizza. Supposedly, if you can avoid eating the high fat meats on it, at least it is better.... but that white flour crust and high fat cheese are rather hard to avoid. *sighs wistfully, and thinks about pizza*
I bought ground flax seed at the store tonight because someone said it was good for reducing bad cholesterol. OK, now I have a bag full ... and am wondering what I do with this stuff. (30 calories a tablespoon, by the way.) I read the entire bag ~~ a short novel on the wonders and joys of eating flax seed, yet it omitted any mention of what one actually DOES with flax seed. Maybe I will just sprinkle some on my morning cereal.
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=^..^= MOLLY (one good rant deserves another!)
ahhhhh, flax seed, been there, still have some, forget to use it. Yes sprinkle away, salads, cereal, in baked stuff, on your vegies. You can't really taste it, and it's good for you.
I think I'll go get mine out!
OH, btw, I have been one of those that poo poos diet sweetners because a pastor of mine lost his memory from it. But he drank a lot of diet coke.
But I think cutting out everything that they say is bad is crazy. Moderation (in my grandmothers voice). I drank diet pop for 14 years, my memory is not good, but it's probably due to the pot I smoked in high school.
I know I would lose faster if I cut out all white stuff, but I got real with myself this time and I know our lifestyle would interupt that NO white food law.
What I hate is my mother telling me how she lost her weight when she stayed heavy all her life until she was 85 and had lost some taste buds and appetite. And when I needed a few peices of clothes she said, "I already gave you all my fat clothes." hmmm, maybe I'm holding a little grudge, I better go repent.
I have a friend who told me I was a know it all. Funny, I don't like know it all's. In another forum we were asked to share things we had heard or read about nutrition and dieting, I did that, but I defintely don't practice everything I repeat. So if I ever sound too advicey, just slap me up side the head. :)
I bought brussell sprouts at the grocery store last night in lieu of cabbage ... my theory is that they look like itty bitty cabbages ... so they are probably just as good for me, right? I was thinking of steaming them with some garlic powder ... how does THAT sound?
We are off to the Dog Park this morning (with our dogs, of course!)
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=^..^= MOLLY (what do you like on YOUR brussell sprouts?)
So Ms. Mouser - I am one to give advice. Count Calories... don't completely cut fat. Count Calories... much easier than a point system. Count Calories... don't cut carbs. Count Calories... It's the only thing you can do for the rest of your life. I'm kind of a know-it-all, too. I've been blessed with so much smarts (HEHE!), it is my mission in life to share all my wisdom with anyone that is willing to sit and listen! OK... now I say that jokingly! But it is a blessing and a curse to have so much wisdom! (Still joking!)
Now for some more advice, if man decides to alternate the banana as created by God, by putting a zipper on it, stay clear. You know that when we try to perfect God's creation, we remove or alternate minerals and vitamins, usually making them toxic!
Here's my rant... Someone else ranted about the expense of healthier foods, and I say why aren't healthy foods more available? Why can we find processed everything? I want a whole grain twinkie, filled with non-homogenized organic cream, sweetened with cane sugar.
I better hit the grocery store today, too, because we are completely out of brussell sprouts!
Brussel sprouts! My grandma tried to make me eat those when I was little. I finally did, but only after she doused it in "processed cheese food". I am not a rocket scientist, but somehow I think that eating brussel sprouts with plastic orange sauce on it would defeat the purpose. No brussel sprouts for me. Same goes for cauliflower. And peas. Oh and lima beans (why did God make these?).
Molly- I have the same problem when we go out to ethnic restaurants. I don't go so far as to take the rice out of sizzling rice soup (isn't it just sizzling soup then?) or the crepes and sauce from the mu shu pork (since the sauce is the best part, but then that would make it the worst part, right?), but I just keep the portions smaller. (Please don't hurt me, if this is considered unsolicitated advice, I'm really not a know it all) But like you, I usually chalk it up to about 600 calories and call it good. (burrito, taco, rice, beans, chips, guacamole, and 3 margaritas= 600 calories, right?) whaaaaaaaaat? Ahhhhh come on. It was a small margarita....
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