Friday, February 13, 2009

Friday... Clothes and Complaints and Food and... Everything!

Ugh. I still seem to be sick. That throat thing that made me whiny on Tuesday has recurred with a vengeance, and so here we are... whiny part II. The sequel. I need to be healthy! At least by Sunday, because I'm playing racquetball with my old r-ball buddy who I haven't really seen in ages. So, cold needs to be gone, hip needs to be ok.

Anyway... all sort of not-exactly-fascinating things are happening. The first one... ok, this is marginally exciting for me... is that I actually found a bra that fits (you were really expecting something better, weren't you?). I stumbled across something the other day that was talking about how something like 6 out of 10 women wear bras that don't fit properly, which made me think about the fact that none of my bras really fit properly... and so I started ordering bras looking for something that Actually Fit. The trouble with bras, as any woman knows, is that you can have exactly the same size, different brand, and it will fit totally differently and probably not right, and this is worse in larger sizes which are harder to fit properly. I am not posting my bra size here, but if you're a full-figured lass, try a brand that I've never heard of... Elomi. They turn out to be a UK company, but you can get them through Bare Necessities, and I have to say that this bra fits better than anything I've tried on in my entire life. Not inexpensive, but I'm thinking, worth it.

Not if I can only find a pair of jeans that fit... this my other issue, because I have relatively fat thighs and a relatively narrow waist, and so things that fit my thighs are far too large at the waist, and this is only made worse by the current below-the-natural-waist styles. Honestly, you'd think that clothing designers would figure out that making a larger size does not just mean scaling up everything in the same proportion. It's not like making a model train. People do NOT get fat proportionately in all the same places. You should see some of the worst t-shirts that we had when Michael was at his fattest. Body fit fine, arms looked like a bat costume.

Another consumer topic... on some cooking show I was watching the other night, someone said that if a customer likes a restaurant, s/he will tell 3 or 4 people, but if s/he hates a restaurant, s/he will tell 7-8 people. You'd really think that this would lead people to think a bit more about the impact of customer service. Here is my "don't go there" rant... but it's furniture, not food.

Last summer we bought a La-Z Boy lift chair at a local (Rochester, NY) furniture store called Furniture Fair. I can't quite tell if they're part of a larger chain or not. The actual buying experience was great; I had nothing but nice things to say about them, and I had planned to go back there soon, when our remodeling is done. About three weeks ago, the chair broke. Just stopped working. It's under warranty, so I called the store for service. They got the (very nice) technician out right away, and, ok, it was going to take a little while to get the part from La-Z Boy, but I was ok with that, not their fault. And then everything went to hell. They promised to call when the part had been ordered. No call. So I called the next week. The part had come in the day before, and no one noticed. They said they would schedule the technician. Technician comes in to get the part, discovers that they ordered the wrong thing. They reorder and assure me that it will be in by (last) Friday. No call. I call Wednesday... no part, but it is expected Thursday. When? We don't know, because they have no idea when their deliveries come. Huh? I know when my deliveries usually come, and I bet they get things more regularly than I do! Finally nice tech guy calls, about 8 p.m. last night, to say he will be coming Friday evening. I am just hoping that he's right about what this is and that the chair actually gets fixed. But the real thing that I have an issue about is the whole attitude of everyone (except the tech guy) about this. "It's not my fault." "We can't do anything." "It's not our problem." All delivered with a tone of "leave me alone, lady, I've heard this a million times before, and I just don't care." Especially from the guy who seems to be the manager. I do realize that they have limited ability to magically acquire parts... although ordering them correctly would help. But attitude... sympathy especially when you have a customer who is frantically worried... says a lot. I won't walk in the door of the place again, because I know how I'll be treated if there's ever any kind of real problem. It's this kind of thing that's the difference between a single sale and repeat customers.

Ok, rant done.
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Food.

Quiche/protein shake breakfast.


I am absolutely starving today.... or at least my head thinks that I am. So after Michael went back to bed for a while, not feeling great, I had this... which is pork rinds and 3 chicken wing segments but should be better titled GUILT because I really don't think I need to be eating this. Which is kind of why I took a picture of it. But, I suppose that it's at least good that I did take a picture, and that I sat down and ate it rather than nibbling from the refrigerator.

Then for lunch, I had this salad, which is all greens and stuff plus some chicken from last night.

Before dinner, I had a cracker with about 1/2 ounce of cheese, and a glass of red wine.

And then for dinner, I had Brussels sprouts sautéed with a little bacon (an idea I stole from the latest Jacques Pépin book), shrimp in a light cream and sundried tomato sauce, and just a little Dreamfields pasta, which is a low-carb pasta. I am kind of wary of this stuff even though it is supposed to have very few digestable carbs, and on the whole I think it's better to wean
yourself off this kind of thing rather than replace it with synthetic substitutes, but Michael is having some canker sore issues, and so soft stuff like pasta is a lot better for him.

Weight: +0.4, doesn't surprise me at all
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I have been thinking hard about cognitive stuff about food behavior lately. The trouble with this is that it's very hard to talk about. Not emotionally hard, but difficult to convey in a way that doesn't just sound stupid. It's all kind of like when you have a few too many gin and tonics and realize that you've figured out the secret of the universe, so you write it down... and in the morning, you read the paper, and it says, wow, friends are nice. Or something equally inane. This all kind of seems like this to me.

I've been dieting all of my life. Since I was about 8, anyway (and, yeah, you could well argue that if a slightly chubby eight-year old had not been constantly hounded about weight, she might have naturally outgrown that, and there might have been a far different story). I cannot remember a time, ever, when I was at the weight that I wanted to be, and I'm not talking some unrealistic weight, just, say, what the doctor would think reasonable. I am not a petite little thing; I come of good peasant stock, and the thin women in my family weigh about 160-180 lbs. I have probably tried every diet known to man. I have invented my own diets. I have read about compulsive eating and binge eating and psychological disorders and so on. The last time I really approached my target weight, I was 13 years old... although I came close about 10 years ago, maybe 40 lbs. away. And I've been a lot fatter and a lot more out of shape than I am now. I am probably 100 lbs. above my target weight, but I beat my 20 year old students at racquetball.

But I would like this all to be done one day, and not because I am dead. Because I am at or near that target weight, and because I am done with these constant food issues. I have been working on this hard for the nearly three years that Michael and I have been married, because, let's face it, I do loads better with accountability. But it's only been lately that I'm starting to feel like something fundamental is changing.

I have to say that the thing that really set this change in motion is reading the Beck Diet Solution, which I talked about here before. I have not read all of the book, and I have not done most of the things that you're supposed to do, and I admit it, I am a terrible student. I think I'm smarter than the book, I have little patience with rules, and while I realize that you must practice cognitive change to make it work, I think I've spent enough years on this to have some insights about what I do and do not need to do (I know, you could argue that if I really knew that, I wouldn't be here, but still...). I also think that everyone is different, and that although there are commonalities, it is hard to find a set of characteristics that applies to ALL people who are, let's say, unsuccessful dieters.

But there's this one thing that just slammed home to me, and I said this before, but I'll say it again... it's the idea that people without food issues don't see hunger as a crisis, a problem that has to be solved, don't see cravings as something that need dealing with, don't obsess over food. And sometimes the solution to something is absolutely all in how you think about it... just like, yesterday, I psyched myself into feeling claustrophobic during the massage, even though there was absolutely nothing that should have triggered that. And since I've been thinking about this "hunger is not a crisis" idea, it's been a thousand times easier to recognize this for what it is.... that I can walk away from the need to do something about this thing that is not truly a problem.

This is kind of profound for me, but like I said, it sounds sort of stupid. Like, duh, what kind of revelation is it that you can recognize that you're not starving?
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And this is my other cat, who is neurotic as hell but adorable when asleep.

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