I’m still in a weight-loss process and will be for a long time, but now when I answer that door and find an extra-large pepperoni pizza with extra cheese waiting, I’ll have two slices instead of four—and choose to be happy that I had any at all.
Karen A. Bakhazi
Poached Eggs au Gratin
MAKES 2 SERVINGS EACH SERVING: 19 GRAMS PROTEIN,TRACE CARBOHYDRATE
1 tablespoon white vinegar
4 eggs
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
2 teaspoons chopped fresh parsley
In a deep medium skillet, bring 2 inches of water and vinegar to a boil over high heat.
Reduce heat to simmer. Crack an egg into a small bowl and tip gently into boiling water. Repeat with all eggs.
Cover skillet and cook 3 minutes for soft yolks, 5 minutes for firmer yolks. Using a slotted spoon, remove eggs from water and drain thoroughly.
Sprinkle with grated Parmesan cheese and fresh parsley. Serve immediately.
Reprinted from The Schwarzbein Principle Cookbook. ©1999
Diana Schwarzbein, M.D., Nancy Deville and Evelyn Jacob.
Health Communications, Inc.
You Choose, You Lose
Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for; it is a thing to be achieved.
William Jennings Bryan
“I’ve had it. I’m sick and tired of saying I can’t have something,” I complained to my best friend Linda. “I can’t have chocolate cake. I can’t have ice cream. I can’t have a yummy éclair. Is there anything I can have?”
“You can have lots of things,” she said.
“Yeah, right. You’re not the one trying to lose weight. The wholeworld is filledwith things that are off-limits.” I sulked in my chair as I read the lunch menu in the restaurant.
Pastrami on rye. Cheeseburger. Tuna melt.
Roast beef au jus. French fries. Onion rings.
Cheesy broccoli soup. New England clam chowder.
Double-fudge brownies. Blueberry cheesecake.
The choices were endless.
As a teenager I could eat anything I wanted and as much as I wanted. Not anymore. Now I step on the scale every morning and peek at the numbers, hoping they haven’t gone higher than the day before. I’m happy if I haven’t gained and elated if I’ve lost even half a pound. It’s a daily struggle and I’m tired of fighting. I’m even more tired of that word “can’t.”
There are so many things in life I just can’t control. How tall I am (I always wanted to be short like my sister). My boss (I wish he’d save the big projects for Monday instead of Friday afternoons). The high cost of living (I wonder if I’ll ever be able to retire). I have no power over so many areas of my life. Is there something I could take control of?
Then the light bulb went off in my head, one of those “ah ha” moments when it all comes together. There was something I could control—my own mind and my own decisions.
I did have a choice in this one area, the area of what I chose to eat. I could pick something I knew would be good for me, or I could pick something that wasn’t in line with my goals. It was all a matter of choice. And it was all up to me.
Linda’s voice brought me out of my thoughts. “How about the BLT? Or is that something you can’t have?”
“You know what? Starting right now, right this minute, I’m not going to say ‘can’t’ anymore.” I sat up straight in my chair. “I’m going to say what I choose to have instead.”
“Sounds like a good plan to me,” Linda said. “So what are you having?”
“I’m choosing the Chinese chicken salad and I’m asking for the dressing on the side.”
“Sounds terrific. But you can’t have a soda with that, right?” she said. “Oops, I said can’t. I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay; it will take a while to get used to it. But to answer you, I’m choosing ice water with a slice of lemon today.”
I felt great when I came out of the restaurant after lunch. Not only did I not feel bloated from eating too much, but the salad filled me up just fine. And most of all, I felt more in control of my mind and of my eating habits.
It was something I could choose, and I love the feeling of power I have in that.
B. J. Taylor
Whatever I Want
You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings.
Pearl S. Buck
Two months into my new life as a gastric bypass patient, I have begun a journey into my past to see if I can answer some of the questions I have about what led me to the 385-pound, high-water mark in my life. As this new tool has allowed me to begin shedding the weight, gain confidence and overcome my failure mentality, I have realized that what it hasn’t done is to banish my mental cravings for food. This is not totally unexpected. I knew from the start that weight-loss surgery was no magic pill or sorcerer’s spell that would make all of my fat issues disappear in a puff of smoke. But the hope is always there, isn’t it?
So, as I sit here, watching the weight disappear, notching new holes in my old belt and trying to ignore the siren song of the kitchen, I’m also looking back over the years to try to find out what hole in my psyche I have tried for so long to fill with food. For years I’ve blamed my hunger on a slow metabolism, super-size stomach and a faulty telephone line between my belly and my brain. Now that my stomach holds no more than a couple of ounces, and I know that I’ve recently filled that with dense protein, any feelings of hunger cannot be related to my belly. In fact, the sense of fullness that I’m feeling even as I type would suggest that, were I to give in to the impulse to grab a snack, I would probably find myself hugging the toilet in the near future, as all engines reversed.
So, into the past . . . as a child I grew up in a poverty-stricken neighborhood. I can easily recall weeks when our only food was potatoes and government-granted bricks of processed cheese. Breakfast, lunch and dinner . . . potatoes and cheese. In all fairness, I have since spent time in countries where this abundance would be reason for celebration and now understand what a blessing from God it was to have food, any food, on the table when so many in this world do not. However, that reasoning has little impact on the mind of a child or the mental pathways and habits that are formed during this most influential time of our lives.
Over the years life improved, but only slightly. It wasn’t until I was out of high school that I lived a life completely free of government financial aid. We were “poor,” and that was a message that echoed both from our bank statements and from the innermost parts of our self-image. By the time I was ten or twelve, I had ceased to ask for anything beyond the most basic needs. The mantra in our apartment was “We don’t have the money for . . .” Regardless of the object of desire, the answer was always the same.
Lest there be any jumping to conclusions, I want to make it clear that this WAS the reality. I had no miserly mother who saved every extra penny for her own clothing, booze or cigarettes. Mom did the best she could with very, very little. When she said we could not afford it, it was because there were not enough pennies in the cookie jar to buy bread, much less the new style of jeans, the latest record or the new Nikes that all the “cool” kids were wearing. Thus, I became used to the mantra and tried to keep my chin up despite the taunts of other kids and the deep-seated sense of being less than my peers. The only thing that saved me from serious psychological damage, at least in my opinion, was that I grew up in a home rich with love. Positive reinforcement, loving touch and acceptance were as plentiful as cash was not.
So, starting at an age younger than I can remember now, I began my own mantra. A handful of words that represented a respite from the unfairness of our privation. For every gift-laden store window, every school trip that left without me, every trip to the secondhand store, I repeated these words: “When I grow up, I will have whatever I want.” This was the magic spell. The hope of things unseen that helpe
d me survive on potatoes, cheese and two-dollar tennis shoes from Kmart. “Whatever I want.”
Twenty years have passed since I became able to work and earn my own money and provide things for both myself and my loved ones that we hadn’t had for so long. What greater joy than to walk into the burger restaurant and order one . . . no, TWO . . . of the biggest burgers they had, as well as the largest french fries and the super-sized drink. To look at the menu and present myself with “whatever I want.” No one could tell me we didn’t have the money; why, I could pull the bills right from my own wallet and order everything on the menu (and sometimes it seems that I tried).
What greater proof that the days of want and lack were gone forever—to banish that fear and self-loathing—than to swagger down the junk food aisle and grab all the jumbo bags of chips, all the Oreo cookies (and not the cheap, stale knock-offs) that I wanted and toss them into the cart? Big, colorful bottles of Coke were far more satisfying than ten-for-a-dollar packages of generic Kool-aid. Delivery pizza was expensive. Poor people couldn’t afford to have an extra large with everything on it brought to their door, right? Therefore every call to Dominoes reinforced the proof that I could have whatever I wanted. And every extra burger, every ice cream cone, every jumbo bag of chips was a time machine that whispered comfort back over the years to a little boy sitting at a worn Formica table with nothing on his plate but a baked potato.
Every dollar spent, every mouthful of food was a silent cry that I would not spend the rest of my life as it had started out, in poverty and want. Deep in my mind, in my heart, did I think I was doing it for him? Did I really believe that every overindulgence on the part of the teenage me, and later the young-adult me, could somehow justify the faith that a little-boy me had placed in his helplessly frustrated mantra? You bet I did. You see, I owed it to him. The only way to justify his lack was in my own abundance. The greater my excess, the less he haunted my dreams. And it had to be reproven every day, every hour, every time the opportunity arose to either deny myself (We don’t have the money for . . .) or to slake my hunger, thirst and desire (whatever I want).
I was thirty-five years old and growing rapidly toward 400 pounds before a stronger, more insistent voice finally drowned out the mantra. This voice was the fear of death. Within three months I had been diagnosed with diabetes, high blood pressure and a cholesterol level so high that it couldn’t be charted. I could barely cross the room without losing my breath. At home I had a wonderful, loving wife who cared for and supported me, a church full of people who I loved and who loved me, and the first steps taken toward my dream of being a novelist. The only thing that stood in the way of being a healthy, happy, successful man was a little boy in a dingy apartment kitchen repeating over and over, “Whatever I want. . . .”
And by some miracle, by the earnest prayers of my loved ones, I finally listened to a new voice. Another year has passed since then and I’m now several weeks out from my Roux en-Y (RNY) surgery. Forty-five pounds have disappeared since the operation, as well as forty before, and another pound follows almost daily. But I still hear the continuous calling from the pantry and refrigerator, and the whispers as I drive past the seemingly innumerable fast-food joints between my work and home.
So I must remember whose voice it is that I’m hearing. Food has no voice, I remind myself; it is deaf, dumb and dead, a collection of elements and nutrients that cannot act on me unless I act on them first. No, food does not call to me. I call to me—a younger, lesser version of myself who only understands that he is being told, once again, what he cannot have. I struggle to teach him a new mantra, as I struggle to justify his deprivation: “When I grow up, I will have whatever I need.” And after all these years I begin to realize that maybe that is what he really meant.
Perry P. Perkins
Finally, Success—A New Me!
The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.
Buddha
No one except my doctor really knew how much I weighed. Every time I had to renew my driver’s license and was asked if anything had changed, I said “No” and wondered if I could go to jail for lying to the secretary of state. Now, for the first time since I was about thirty, I’m legal.
I used to claim my excess weight was postpregnancy weight, but since I’m now sixty-one with sons thirty-five and thirty-six and actually gained only twelve pounds with each pregnancy, it seems a bit ridiculous.
I’ve gone to Weight Watchers, TOPS and other weight-loss groups. I succumbed to everymagazine at the checkout counters that promised to share the secret of losing weight. I used incentives, like “the class reunion is coming up, I need to lose forty pounds in two weeks.”
Having been in the healthcare field, I knew how to eat properly and be healthy. I knew all the dangers of being overweight. But only when the scare of things that “could” go wrong actually became a reality did I wake up and smell the Columbian brew.
Each time I had a physical and passed (and I’m an overachiever, so I’m used to passing tests), I said a prayer of thanks and promised God I would give him a hand and help out in the being healthy department. I guess he got tired of listening to that tune because one day he threw me a real curveball.
My blood sugar was a little elevated, so my doctor ordered a glucose tolerance test. I’ll be darned if I didn’t flunk a test! She said, “Well, you didn’t stop at pre-diabetes —you’re diabetic.” The date was November 15, 2004.
I went home totally scared to death, angry and positive that any good quality of my life was indeed over. I read the booklets my doctor had given me, went to the pharmacy and purchased the little blood test meter. My husband took me out to dinner, where I ate like Miss Piggy on the way to the bacon factory.
I began counting carbs and testing the next day. Maybe because I hate math, I hate to count anything—calories, carbs, fat grams—losing ten pounds seemed like such a huge task. But I was determined. Not determined halfway, like before when I’d lose five pounds and gain them right back, but really determined.
Even before my consultation with the dietician at the diabetes clinic, I’d lost seven pounds. By the first of the year, I’d lost seventeen pounds—OVER THE HOLIDAYS! My blood sugar dropped immediately with the slightest weight loss.
When I realized counting carbs was easier than I thought, it became a way of life. I knew what I could eat. I ate three meals a day with three small snacks in between if I wanted, which usually I didn’t. I expected the dietician to give me a whole list of foods I could never eat again. He didn’t. It was all about portion control. What a concept! Of course, I already knew that half a box of spaghetti wasn’t really a serving. But, come on, two ounces of pasta! Show me someone content with that and I’ll show you a fuzzy little rodent in a cage with an exercise wheel. But, guess what? I am content with that.
I enjoy my food now more than ever because I’m busy tasting and enjoying it and not just shoveling it in. When asked my secret, I say, “I’m eating for one, not for Sandi and a third world country.”
I was still fat on my sixtieth birthday. The number stuck in my throat. I couldn’t even say it. Now, as I approach sixty-two this summer, I can say it with ease because I don’t look or feel my age. As I listen to talk of diets and weight struggles, I’m amazed at how truly easy it ultimately was.
So, that’s the end of my story, my fat story that is. This is the beginning of the NEW me story and my new healthy life. I wear a size 6 jeans—real zip-up jeans now, not elastic-waist-fat-girl jeans. I work out at the health club three times a week (I started out at five to six times a week). I walk two miles and work out on the weight machines. I go to yoga classes. I eat what I want to— portion control. I’ve lost sixty pounds and feel twenty years younger. I have unlimited energy, and most important, my blood sugar is totally normal even when I go a little higher on the carbs once in a while.
I
am healthy, energetic and happy. My doctor has changed my diagnosis, and she smiled when I said, “At my age, I want to be healthy and feel good. Looking good is the bonus.”
Sandra L. Tatara
The Mirror Doesn’t Lie
Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day.
William James
I was in the mall the other day, rushing to get errands done and pausing just for a second to shift packages from one arm to the other. For a fleeting moment, I got that feeling women are apt to get—a sense of being stared at, that a set of discerning eyes was looking and passing judgment. I shrugged the feeling off and continued on my way. When you’re fifty-something and have looked fairly dowdy most of your adult life—not just in an encroaching golden age—you get used to the looks, or lack of them. When you’re carrying more than a few extra pounds, you can find yourself teetering on a tightrope between people staring or drowning in a sea of invisibility.
Strangers pass judgmentwhen you’re obese. Itmay be as overt as a pointed finger or thoughtless laugh, or as subtle as pretending you don’t exist. I remembered back. . . .
“Is there something I can help you with, ma’am?” There certainly was. The clerk was my age, a handsome man with wavy black hair and solid, angular features. I’d been patiently trying to get his attention for some help with a wallet I was selecting for a Christmas present.
It was near dinnertime, and the shop was pleasantly near-empty. The only shoppers were me: short, solid and rather hefty; and a girl my age then—perhaps twenty— with perfect flowing hair, perfect hands, chiseled legs and a body with the flesh secured firmly to the bone. She was lovely, and the clerk was smitten.
Chicken Soup for the Dieter's Soul Page 4
