Saturday, September 18, 2010

diets and such

Speaking of gaining weight, which I was in my last entry, let's talk about my diet history.  
Cliff and I have gone for as long as two or three years eating properly and maintaining our weights.  After his open heart surgery, we were especially conscious of doing it right.  Then, little by little, we became careless.  
Oh, I still cooked the good stuff.  But we'd eat out now and then, which is something that people like us just should not do, especially not at buffets; before you know it, "now and then" became twice a week.  If we were eating out, or if we had company and I cooked fattening stuff, or if we went to someone's home for a meal, I didn't fill Cliff's plate for him; and I really didn't want to be telling him, in front of everybody, "You shouldn't have that."  
"I'm not your mother," I told him at home.  "You need to take some responsibility for what you eat."
I'd see him eat three plates of spaghetti away from home, or two pieces of cake or pie (I love to make pie, I'd whine to myself.  I never get to make pie because he shouldn't eat it.  Now here he is eating pie, and it isn't half as good as mine would have been).  
Then he'd mention he'd been hitting the snack machine at work, getting junk food.
Now remember, I'm getting plump right along with him, but I haven't had heart trouble, so that's OK.  
Marriage can be a slippery slope.  
Please realize I am not griping about Cliff.  This is a two-way street.  It will be a cold day in hell before I belly-ache about my husband to people I've never met.  I'm just trying to get you to see the psychology that is involved here.
Recently, once again, my husband said, "I can't even get up and down without difficulty; I have GOT to lose some weight."  
So I'm back to cooking 100% healthy meals, and only having pizza and McDonald's frappes when the oldest granddaughter spends one of those nights when Cliff is at work.  
Cliff's overalls had begun to get looser.  
And then they had a record month where he works, and they served a steak dinner to the employees, with all the trimmings.  
Last Saturday we went to a family reunion and fish-fry where the desserts were to die for.  
Today we'll meet with some of Cliff's cousins in Sedalia at Golden Corral.  Yep, a buffet.  
Oh, and there's another free dinner scheduled at work to celebrate all the money they are making.  Why don't they just share the money with us, and stop with the dinners?
I might as well have taken an ad in the newspaper saying, "Cliff is trying to lose weight, so would everybody please go ahead and sabotage his efforts?"  
We both know how to lose weight, and there's only one method that works for us:  calories in, calories out.  Diet and exercise.  
Over the years I've heard people raving about various fad diets, and I do see them lose weight.  Two years later, thought, they are fatter than ever.  If you don't believe it, just look at some pictures of Oprah over the years.  
Do you know anybody who ever went on the Atkins diet and actually KEPT the weight off?  Seems to me the Atkins diet makes people fatter in the long run.
I just can't help it, every time a yo-yo dieter tells me about his new, wonderful diet, I am saying to myself, "I wonder if it will last this time."    
The same is true for me and Cliff, with our sensible counting-calories diet (I write this as though I'm eating properly right now, and I'm not, except when Cliff is around).  
I think that's the one thing that causes me to stay overweight.  It has never lasted before, so why bother (one excuse is as good as another, and fat people must have excuses).  I may as well just enjoy myself.  I shall continue to try to keep temptation away from Cliff's door, though.  I would like to see him live to enjoy retirement.  
If only the universe would join with me in my efforts.  


By the way, I do know the real reason I don't try lose weight:  It's hard to deny myself, and I'm not disciplined.  I want what I want when I want it, and I want lots of it.  Those, my friends, are the cold, hard facts.

8 comments:

  1. I've seen the same thing happen over and over, myself included. For every diet you go on I think you can extra pounds back afterwards. I guess it's all in moderation. An occassional spluge is not going to hurt if for the most time you keep it healthy. And the fact is you have to maintain that. Finding an ideal weight and keeping it is not easy at all.

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  2. I'm with ya.....the best diet is to eat healthy and exercise....

    Enjoy

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  3. Anonymous1:11 PM

    You are good with the real facts. I like that in a person.

    I'd never think you were *itching about Cliff. The way you have explained him over the years, I think we all love him & are sure of how much you do.
    ~Mary

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  4. One can quit smoking because we don't need cigarettes to live, and one can quit drinking because we don't need alcohol to live, but it is really hard to "quit food". And it gets really tiring day after day not being to eat or that or... I definitely know where you are "coming from!"

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  5. Oh, yeah. I HAVE quit both smoking (1976) and drinking (about 1994, don't remember exactly...). No problem, no serious urge to go back.

    In 2005, I got serious about a diet after a REAL tongue-lashing and threats of expensive medication from my doctor. Lost 40 pounds, from 225 to 185. Swore my weight would NEVER start with a "2" again. Felt great, looked like hell with all that extra skin.

    Well, I've been back over 200 for a couple of years now, and a couple of months ago, came in at 218.

    Got serious, lost 15 pounds. Then I found out I was gonna lose my job and used "stress" as an excuse to start on the junk food again.

    Still working on it, but keeping weight off is an every-day-for-the-rest-of-your-life thing, and I'm not at all sure I'm up to it.

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  6. Oh, lordy -- two posts on the horrors of the diet cycle, gaining weight and not losing it -- and those sacrimonious people who actually do manage to be thin. When you wrote that you didn't plan to diet anymore, I so identified. Eating healthy is a good thing -- cooking healthy really helps with that -- but the problem, of course, is that you are actually required to C O O K. And we seem to be so bored with that around here. If you multiply 2 meals a day (one simply can't claim we eat 3 meals at home even though I do take my lunch to work) by the 38 years we've been married . . . no wonder we're bored with cooking. We're even bored with grocery shopping. Just how many green salads and corn on the cob and catelope have we eaten in the past 38 years anyway? However, those cheap and plentiful buffets really are deadly on a weight-loss plan. Good luck. And if you find an alternative to cooking that actually takes off weight -- and tastes like Frito's -- let the world know! M.

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  7. Jennifer7:13 AM

    I have good food all around me everyday and I still manage to eat junk. I'm happy where I'm at though (round and all) so I don't really have much incentive ;)

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  8. I'm like Ma says...everything in moderation. ANd like you Donna, I do NOT believ those fancy smancy diets work for long...I believe your body REBELS! lol
    So yeah, all things in moderation...and get out and walk a little.
    love ya,
    carlene
    ps...and I am FAT not stout, nor pleasingly plump!!! But I don't need the skinny-minnies to point that fact out to me either!!!lol

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