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.

Winter is getting the best of me

Forgive me for my ramblings being uninspired right now. Since Christmas, we've had snow, fog, and rain, and very little sunshine... perhaps three days' worth, all told. Yesterday the temperatures weren't bad for January, but it rained off and on the whole day. Now, any time I devote that many words on my blog to the weather, you know it's pretty bad.

On another note, Cliff starting eating properly right after the first of the year and has already lost ten pounds. I just jumped on that bandwagon last Monday, and so far I'm doing pretty well at sticking to the plan. I do avoid the word "diet", because really it's a full-time thing for us; we had just gotten side-tracked. It's so easy to eat too much of the wrong things when it's all around us, and so tasty, too.

I always cook the "good stuff" around here, my usual chicken, fish, and bean recipes. But we got on a steady down-hill run of eating out too much, not to mention the holidays. Then there's the petty side of me that sees Cliff eating everything other people cook, and thinks, "Hey, I want to cook that good stuff too! I'd rather make you nice, chewy, three-hundred-calorie brownies than make my lower-fat one-hundred-calorie ones."

And I do just that. Take THAT, you diet cheater!

Remember, I was raised as an only child, since my sister got married when I was two. So when I fix low-fat, nutritious meals all the time and then Cliff shows no restraint away from home, I throw an inner tantrum and bake a pie or two, make all the stuff I haven't been able to cook for a while (hello there, biscuits and gravy) and we're off eating like pigs again.

I'm just being honest here. Yes, I do have a dark side. I don't know how Cliff has managed to spend forty-three years with me.

When we're "eating right", we patronize Subway (too much sodium, but otherwise OK), with an occasional visit to Olive Garden for their soup, salad, and breadsticks. Or we'll split a meal at a Mexican place. No matter where you eat out, you're going to get overloaded on sodium; that's good motivation to eat at home.

We try our best to avoid buffets, for obvious reasons.

Speaking of Olive Garden, there's a new one under construction at Blue Springs! That's much closer than the one we've always patronized.

It seems like we're visiting a doctor all the time these days; we both have to go back to get prescriptions renewed next week. I can't believe three months goes by so fast! Maybe this time the nurse-practitioner will give me a prescription for a years' supply of blood pressure pills.

Yep, this is the most boring kind of entry, where I talk about nothing but weather and diets and doctor visits.

How the mighty blogger has fallen.