Foodies, Food Costs and Body Shamers

Our St Patrick's Day buffet here at my independent living community was both traditional and amazingly good. I say that as someone who doesn't particularly like Irish food. It included stew, of course, corn beef, cabbage, soda bread, a chocolate concoction with Bailey's liqueur and doctored-up mashed potatoes that were so  good I wish I could have stuffed them in a pillow case and snacked on them through out the night. Unfortunately, during and after that meal I drank so much water that I literally made 14 trips to the bathroom between midnight and eight AM. 354 steps according to my fitness watch. Twenty-five steps per around trip. I did the math.

 My CCC gives us a $320 food allowance that we can spend any way we want between their fine dining room and their lunch cafe or snack case. We can even invite outsiders to eat with us and blow the whole amount in one for two sittings. The amount hasn't changed since they opened in October of '21 although the price of their meals has. For example their nightly specials are up to $14.70 (yes, 70 not 75) from $10.75. That only covers a meat and a starch and it's $5.00 extra if you want a vegetable, salad or other side order. Their meals not on special are around $17 for salads on steroids or salmon, $21 for a steak plus the sides are separate. Soup used to be $4.00 a cup at noontime but is now $5.00. Noon specials are $12.95 for mostly sandwiches and fries or chips. If you're careful---which I am---I can eat one meal a day six days a week, and make my allowance last the entire month…until there's a holiday buffet in the month which are $25 to $30 and always well worth it. Others here with families who take them out to eat often have money left over at the end of the month and since it doesn't roll over they look for friends to buy their meal for them. I have benefited from their generosity when a holiday buffet is in the month and I run short. No on wants to leave money on the table for the management.

The lunch special this week was waffles with strawberries and cream, which I lust after (but never order) every time it comes around. If I had ordered them I would have had to do in front of The Body Shamers. One in particular loves to point out how much sugar or white flour is in whatever I'm eating. I've rarely see her eat anything but giant salads or shrimp. Another woman I frequently have lunch with takes a more subtle approach, telling me that she couldn't eat that omelette or grilled cheese sandwich on my plate without gaining weight. 

I'm the second heaviest person living here and I know how they talk about the other fatty behind his back. "He takes too much bread." "He always orders extra sauce and gravy." "He struggles to walk but doesn't use the gym to help control his weight." "He cooks at home, too." "He gets lots of food delivered."

I never raid the table after everyone leaves to round up the bread left over in the baskets like Mister Fatty up above does. But I understand his obsession with doing so. Some of their breads are to-die for and half the women here don't eat carbs so it goes in the trash. I try never to sit next to him at the community farm table because all he talks about is his gourmet cooking which glazes my eyes over. There are two of us here who claim a life time of not having an interest in cooking so we joke about putting space between this guy and us. Grabbing a random seat at a table for 12 or 14 is an exercise in diplomacy. I don’t want to sit near The Body Shamer-in-Chief either or the woman who complains about everything she puts in her mouth. Don't get me wrong, I love the community tables because you can sit back and listen and they are a source of endless amusement with everyone's personal foibles on display and their past histories that get revealed. 

Just yesterday I learned that The Body Shamer-in-Chief used to be 80 pounds overweight before giving up sugar and white flour. Took her a year and a half and she claims that didn't involve any additional exercise. That fact put a whole new spin on her pointing out how much sugar and carbs I consume with my food choices. Maybe she's trying to help? Maybe she thinks a person in her eights doesn’t already know about the cause and effect of food choices? How I need more salads in my diet? When she's not eating salads she's drinking Champaign with a shrimp cocktail so I've taken to asking her if she knows that shrimp are bottom feeders who eat the poop of other sea creatures. It’s a childish tit-for-tat but her being a former principal of a grade school I'm sure she knows that. She's a take charge kind of woman who I really do like but someday I'd like to wrestle her to the floor and force-feed her donuts until she goes into a sugar coma.

Today I did something I haven't done since I was in my teens. I made waffles. A year ago one of the Skinny Minnie twins was selling brand new, Weight Watcher waffles makers for $5.00. I snapped one up for two reasons: 1) I love waffles and 2) I was/still am trying to grow a friendship with her. She, too, was a former fatty-fatty-two-by-four and has been going to Weight Watchers for over 40 years. The box of batter mix I bought back then I got the waffle maker was about to expire so I spent my Sunday morning mixing and baking and cleaning up and the waffles turned out perfect. It was a lot of work but I ended up with enough to freeze and pop in the toaster later. I have a half of box of mix left and will do it again when I can buy some fresh strawberries and cream to top off the waffles. Eating them at home without hearing a choir of comments about how sweet they are or how long someone would have to walk to burn off the calories will be my dirty little secret. 

Eating at community tables seems to bring out the food critics in all of us as we watch each other do things like pick all the onions, olives or candied nuts out of salads, or count the snap peas on our plates. Mr. Fatty is a pea counter and complains if he didn't get as many as someone else at which point someone will often share their peas with him. We all have our food foibles. I hate the rabbit-like eaters the most who leave half their meals behind while I am a member of the Clean Plate Club. I guess their moms never told them about all the starving children over seas. It's bad enough that I have to worry about my own guilt when children are starving and food is being thrown out. 

My teeny tiny next door neighbor is also in the Clean Plate Club but her dog helps her walk it off. Cause and effect. Yes, I do get it. I've gained and lost 50 pounds three times in my life but I just can't seem to find the motivation to go through that torture again. Being a one person assist in my future nursing home room, instead of a two person assist, is all I can come up with for motivation and so far I'm not altruistic enough to put saving their backs up against a year of always feeling deprived when I'm at a lunch or dinner table plus spending hours in the gym every day. My motivations before were: 1) finding a man, 2) keeping him once I found him, and 3) going into knee replacement surgery without a 30% chance of dying on the operating table. My lack of funds for a whole new wardrobe is also a deterrent and being so close under the noses of The Body Shamers who would surely notice if I start eating like a rabbit and that would only drive me back to closet eating. Been there, done that before. I don't take praises well when it comes from people who think they are helping when they point out good food choices. Makes me want to make bad decisions behind their backs just to prove something I don't entirely understand. But I know I'm not the only fatty-fatty-two-by-four who has done that. What's that all about? ©

Until next Wednesday.

How I'm Surviving the Holidays

How did is get to be December already? And why have I started my annual pilgrimage to Diet and Exercise Mountain already, a full month before I'd traditionally do it?  I've got the answer to that second question. It's the fact that I've stress-eaten myself into gaining so many pounds this year that my clothes are getting uncomfortably tight and I refuse to buy a bigger size. I'm so serious about this that I'm not entering the gingerbread house building contest this year. Aside from the fact that I can't have all that candy around tempted me night after night as I'd add layer after layer of gum drops, gumballs, life savors, pretzels, cotton candy, twisted licorice, etc., etc. on a cookie house put together with Royal Icing. I also want to give some of the others residents at my CCC a chance to place in the winner's circle this year. Between shopping for just the right candy and building a gingerbread house, then decorating it, I'd be on a sugar high for over a month and once you're riding on that tiger's back it's hard to get off. And think of the money I'm saving. Gingerbread house decorating is expensive when you do things like buy a box ice cream cones because you want one to cover in spearmint leaf-shaped confectionery. Last year a bought an entire bag of something just to get a star shaped piece of candy for the top of the aforementioned Christmas tree. I need to go get on the scales. I think I gained a pound just writing this paragraph. 

Another reason why I'm not entering to contest is it's time consuming and I'm back to feeling like I'm running out of time in my old age to finish all the things that need doing and/or I want to do. Naturally, being a self-indulgent kind of person I usually end up doing the fun stuff before things like mattress turning, closet and filing cabinet purging, starting my income taxes and fine tuning my estate plans. And being a worry wart I've accumulate a lot of necessary distractions from what our reality will be after January 20th. My upstairs neighbor says she's just not going to worry about it. Easy for her to say, she's 93 and a prime candidate to be shipped off to the glue factory and she says there's nothing we can do to change things. I don't agree but that's not the post I'm writing today.

What projects are on my agenda right now? I'm working on finishing a landscape painting that I don't like but I need to cross it off the list so I can go on to a more inspiring painting, another customized paint-by-number of one of my niece's grandsons. She asked me to do it from one of her favorite photos. When I ordered the kit from the Asian import company they made it and sent it out the same day when others I've ordered from them took several weeks to product before putting it on a slow boat from China. I think they were trying to beat the coming tariff increases this time, same as me. After that is completed I want to try to repaint some of the tiles in my new 1930's Bakelite Mahjong set that my nice gifted me a couple of weeks ago. I've watched two videos on how to restore them and it doesn't look that hard to do. The only part you can't do over and over again until you get it right is putting the tiles in the oven to 'age' the ones that are lighter in color than the rest of the set. I won't be doing that on this set but I've love items made with Bakelite my entire adult life so I'm fascinated by the change-the-color-process. I might try the process on some orphan tiles I've accumulated in my hunt for one bams.

On Black Friday I took full advantage of the sales and also bid on a 1923 wooden Mahjong set. Won it! It's missing one tile that I think I can duplicate over at the wood shop and then dink around to get the aged paint color just right. But I won't let myself play around with that project until I've condensed and purged some stuff on a bookshelf in my den closet. That's my plan: for every project I do that's fun I'll alternate it with projects that need to be done, be it deep cleaning or downsizing here in the land of I won't live forever. Do I sound manic? I would be if all the plans in my head actually come to pass. They won't. But half a list accomplished is better than nothing and without a list that's what would happen.

I did manage to carry out a project for the common good here on the continuum care campus. Our mail room cabinet where we store out of seasonal decor, Mahjong sets and boxed puzzles was in desperate need of cleaning and organizing. It's always been a fight for space as the puzzle boxes seem to breed in the dark. So I took it upon myself to move the puzzles to our library---after getting permission from the woman who man's our library. She's self-appointed but was an actually librarian before retirement and she's done wonders with our library here, doubling it's size and rotating books between ours and the library in our assisted living building on campus and the county library's donation box. Book seems to breed in the dark around here, too. It felt good making space where it was needed and giving people better access to the puzzles.

I've also started gearing up for another project in the community. Starting in mid January I'm teaching three two hour classes in how to play Mahjong followed by a month of monitoring a newbie table of players during our regular club's playing time. I teach with a lot of hand-outs so I'm set up folders for the class attendees this time around. 

But the biggest thing I'm doing to get through the season is what I'm not doing. I skipped going go the choral concert, the brass band concern, the Christmas plays and live nativity, the bus tour of city lights and I won't be enjoying cookies-by-the-fireplace Christmas morning. And I didn't join the decorating committee who spent last week decking the halls with every wreath, garland, tree, ornaments, candle sticks, nativity sets, lights, reindeer and red bows on the planet. I am, however, going to the Christmas buffet, a sing-along, a cookie decorating party and the White Elephant Gift exchange. And I just returned from seeing a ballet company of girls 13 and under who performed to music from The Nutcracker. 

There truly is something for everyone to do around here and no pressure if you want to sit out any or all parts of the festivities. Well, I shouldn't say that. I've been taking heat for a week for not building a gingerbread house this year and I'd like to punch the woman who keeps nagging me about my decision. ©

From Wordle to Weighing in to Dementia

Google came out with its list of the most searched words for 2022 and Wordle came in first. As usual I’m running behind the eight ball because it took that list for me to finally jump on the band wagon and try playing the New York Time’s daily word game, Wordle. Oh look at me, I just used not one but two  worn out metaphors in the same sentence. “Behind the eight ball” is urban speak for “at a disadvantage” which is where I thought my creative, dyslexia driven spelling would put me if I followed the crowd and start doing what everyone else has been raving about doing for this past year.

Hooked that’s what I am now after a week of playing it every day. I’ve even learned how to cheat by playing as a guest on my Kindle and playing with an account on the Times site on my computer. That gives me double the guesses to solve the puzzle. After a few days of playing the game I found another site where you can play Wordle unlimited times every day. And the another 'cheat site' that is for people who play Scrabble but it’s godsend for solving Wordle. Usually I’m able to get the correct word on the third try using that WordTips site and sometimes by the fifth try not cheating at all. I don’t know if working Wordle will help me improve my spelling skills but it can’t hurt. At my age, any brain exercise I get is a good thing.

I’m not bragging when I say this but I think I do plenty of exercise for my brain. I read and discuss books with others, I play solitary and spider every day. I play Mahjong once a week. I write nearly every day and spend time on the computer with all the issues that entails when things go wrong. I don’t depend on a calculator to do the math that comes with living a normal life. 

But when it comes to the other kind of exercise---the kind that requires us to move our bodies---I’m a dismal failure. And I have no excuse. I have a fully equipped workout room steps away from my apartment door and all kinds of free classes I could be working into my weekly schedule. If I’d seriously try to become a morning person I could make it to the cardio boxing, cardio drumming, sit and stretch or balance classes at the crack of too-damn-early. I did try them all when I first moved in but the afternoon Tai Chi is the only class I make it to, at least on an inconsistent basis. Don't even mention afternoon line dancing. I trip over my own feet too often to try that again---did a class and loved it in my forties.

But I’m a creature of habit if nothing else and it’s the beginning of January so I’ll bet you know where this is going. Yup, since I was in my early teens I’ve started a diet and exercise plan in the new year that will no doubt peter out by the end of February. And boy, do I ever need it this year! The holidays with all the extra foods and drinks around here put ten pounds on me since Thanksgiving and I need to get that back off before I outgrow my clothes. My first indication that I would honor this time tested tradition of all fatty-fatty-two-by-fours was when I found my jumping on the rowing machine across the hall every day. We have a TV in there so it’s been surprisingly easy to pop in there on the way home from going to the main building and I've been watching the 2023 version of Ground Hog Day, starring Kevin McCarthy trying to get enough votes to be the Speaker of the House.

I’ve also started eating lunch AND dinner again. I have/had a bad habit of going all day long without eating then from dinner on I’d make up for lost time, eating too many calories close to bedtime. I’m ordering soup for lunch and salads for dinner and I’ve already lost my first two pounds of my ten pound goal. If you saw my photo on the Christmas post you know I have far more than ten pounds to lose but right now I just want my clothes not to feel so tight.

New topic: One of my readers cautioned me not to describe my trips down to visit the Memory Care building out of respect for the residents and their families and it was easy enough to omit my infrequent interactions down there before my brother moved in. But I'm visiting several times a week now which makes it a bigger part of my life so from time to time I will be including a few of those experiences in my blog. Like today. My brother didn’t think his phone was working so I used my cell to call his landline. After he answered and we exchanged greetings I said, “Your phone is working so let's hang up now.”

“Don’t do that!” he said, “I want to talk to you.”

“I’m right here in the room with you,” I replied. “What do you want to talk to me about?”

So we had a good five minute conversation, all the time with me standing on the other side of the room and him talking into the phone.” It was crazy and funny and makes me smile every time I think about it. It's also a perfect example of the type of things I’m looking for every day to fulfill my New Year’s Resolution of finding the sweet moments in every day. My brother and I laughed a lot that day and the phone conversation was a sweet take-away.

Visiting a memory care aka dementia ward can make you sad but a visit can also make you feel good about helping someone touch bases with pieces of who they used to be. My brother and I have had some good conversations based on what I call my Show & Tells---objects, photos or readings that I bring with me. Even without a Show & Tell just helping a loved one do things like find their glasses or work their phone is a huge deal for someone who lives a small life in dementia care. ©

Diets, Doctors and the Box in the Basement

I’ve had the same internist for almost fifteen years. He’s a skinny-mini and I’m pretty sure I could bench-press him if I was so inclined. He’s got a new computer program and he showed me a flow chart that tracked the ups and downs of my weight through the years that I’ve been going to him. Up three pounds over this past six months, down the six months before. Ya, that’s my pattern. Got the message, doc. Accountability. I tried playing the jokester during this weight conversation. It usually works with him but this time he didn’t see any humor in me saying that I was on the Trump Stress Diet, eating everything in sight that isn’t nailed to the wall. He replied, “Well, you’d better find a different way to deal with your stress because he isn’t going anywhere.” What did I expect him to say? “Here’s some coupons for Cold Stone ice cream,” would have been nice, “go get your sugar buzz on.” 

My thyroid test numbers are wacked out again. We’re going to lower my dosage which, hopefully, will make it easier for me to sleep but won’t throw me back into a chronic hives cycle. I’m allergic to myself. If he had a flow chart on my thyroid and hive history overlapping it would show that I’m almost due for another five-six months bout of daily hives. A few years ago an autoimmune specialist finally concluded that thyroid antibodies have been causing the chronic hives off and on since I was a baby, but what’s new now is there is an infusion available to stop the hives in their track, if you can get the insurance company to cover it and a doctor to order it. But which doctor? The autoimmune specialist who takes four months to get into see? The internist who seems to be letting too many things fall through the cracks lately? Or the allergy doctor who would refer me back to one of the previously mentioned doctors but only after a few months of loading me up with useless tests and pills? I don’t know what was going on with my internist this week, he sure wasn’t his usual self. But then in the wake of what’s going on in the world, are any of us our usual selves?

I should be cleaning my house right now instead of hanging out at the computer. Ya, you read that right. I’m cleaning before my cleaner cleans. Actually, it’s more like picking up stuff and putting it where it belongs. I have a habit of littering the house with shoes and putting papers that need filing on top of the filing cabinet instead of inside it and I leave clean clothes hang in the laundry room too long. I don’t want to fest up to how messy my kitchen table/desk top looks the day before my cleaning service shows up. It’s embarrassing. I also go through the house and pick up temptations like my cell phone, iPod, house keys, jewelry, sensitive mail, my purse, medications, etc. and I put them in the car. Then I’ll have to pick up all the dog’s toys. Right now his tiger is trying to suck the dust out from under the stove and his squirrel is trying to figure out how to get outside the door he’s been stalking.

Have you heard of the Million Letters Campaign? Andrew Carroll, an author and the director of the Center for American War Letters will be in town later this month and is giving a presentation at the senior hall. We’re being encouraged to bring in letters we have that were written from war zones to donate to the campaign and I have a huge box full in the basement from the Vietnam era. And that presents a dilemma for me. Is it time to let go of those letters? If so, what do I do with the carbon paper copies of the letters I wrote to the guys on my penpal list? Am I really ready to give up on the idea that I’d like to write my own book on that era of my life? I have four choices, I think: 1) Hand them over minus mine; 2) Keep them all but put the contact information for the Center for American War Letters on top with instructions if I’m died, please mail this box to them; 3) get off my duff and write the book; and 4) do nothing under the illusion that I’m going to live forever and have plenty of time to decide later on. 

I suppose I could try reading some of letters and decide if there is any historical value in letters written back and forth between strangers. I don’t remember them being filled with any Red Badge of Courage-like stories. I remember them as being from young guys eager to hear from a college girl. Guys eager to get perfumed letters that got them teased by the others at mail call. I remember crushes. I don’t remember there being much talk about the topics the Center’s website says the letters they collect show: "---love, humor, faith, death, homesickness, grief, anger, courage, peace, human resilience, camaraderie, reconciliation, patriotism and historical events.” But it’s been decades since I’ve read those letters so my memory might be selective. Do you think it’s time to let go? What would you do? I’ve only got fourteen days to decide. ©

Fitbit Mania

I’ll admit it. I’m in love with my new Fitbit. If you’ve been living under a rock you might not be aware of this monitoring device you wear on your wrist and it syncs to your smart phone or computer to give you fascinating statistics as often as you care to look. You can also go to the Fitbit community and compare your statistics with others people’s---sleep patterns, pulse rates, steps you take in a day, your calories in vs. calories out and what color unit you bought. I got the plum Charger HR. The first thing I found out is it takes me 70 steps to go from my computer to the bathroom and back again. If I was willing to walk to the gas station’s bathroom several blocks away, think how much more exercise I’d get. I pee a million times a day.

In my first week of wearing the Fitbit I didn’t change my routine, didn’t add or subtract any physical activities from my days---I’m pretty sedentary. I didn’t even take the dog for a walk because it was too hot or rainy all week. Still, I walked more than I imagined just doing average things around the house. Fitbit just sent me an email summary of my first week’s statistics and it read like this: 

Total Steps: 42,270 - 6,039 daily average (I need a smaller house.)

Total Distance: 17.7 miles – 2.53 daily average (No wonder my carpet’s wearing out!)

Total Floors Climbed: 8 – 1 floor daily average (A side benefit of purging stuff in the basement.)

Total Calories Burned: 16,640 – 2,377 daily average 

Total Calories Eaten: 10,124 – 1,446 daily average

Weight Change: 1.4 pounds lost

Average Sleep Duration: 5 hours, 2 minutes – average times awakened 10 

What I like the most about the Fitbit is your ability to see your calories in vs your calories out at any given time of the day (assuming you log your food eaten on your dashboard). It did stop me from eating things late at night a few times which has always been an issue with me. Now that I have a baseline, first week of statistics I want to add steps to my day, assuming the weather is cooperative and I can get outside to walk. And I plan to drop my calorie intake down to a diet mode of 1,000 to 1,100 a day. Then I need to learn how to push a grocery cart one handed otherwise your steps in the store don’t count. Bummer! I do my best walking behind a grocery cart and that’s a great skill to have in case I ever become homeless and need to carry my life around in one. (Yes, I'm an old lady who worries too much.)

I read a thread on Fitbit’s community message board titled: How to tell if you’re addicted to your Fitbit. One woman wrote, “You know you’re addicted when you pace the house at bedtime just to get your goal in.” Ohmygod, I did that once! I was near the 6,000 steps goal I’d set and I wanted to feel the ‘happy dance’ shock go off on my wrist. Even though I knew it was coming, it---well---shocked me. If I’d been carrying a glass of water at the time, it would have been all over me. That worked like Pavlov’s Dog in reverse. I immediately reset my goal to 6,500 steps. Another person wrote that he knew he was addicted to his Fitbit when he first made sure he was sitting down while his Fitbit was charging so he wouldn’t “waste the steps walking without it on.” Ohmygod, I did that too! I thought about posting on the thread that I knew I was addicted to my Fitbit when I woke up in the middle of the night and checked my Fitbit because I wanted to see low my pulse gets when I’ve been asleep. Sixty-one in case you want to compare.

Like most gadgets and devices, I will probably lose interest in my Fitbit when the novelty wears off, but I hope not. I want to keep it going at least until I see my doctor in October when I’ll bring in a few monthly reports from Fitbit and say, “See, I’ve been very good. Now, put a gold star on my Little Old Lady card!” ©