A Holding Pattern

Diet update, for those playing along at home:

We got home from vacation late Sunday night / Monday morning (a bit after midnight). The entire time I was on vacation, I stuck to the preliminary week instructions of "no sugar, no flour, no caffeine, no alcohol". I was going to start the official six weeks while on vacation, but the rest was so difficult to stick to while out of my element (and while in the South where everything is battered and deep fried and delicious OMG) that I decided to just stick to those rules until after I got home, was back in my own kitchen, and had a chance to grocery shop and stock up for the 'official' plan. I didn't count calories or anything, just stuck to the rules, and it turns out I lost four pounds in the ten days we were on vacation. I ate whenever I was hungry and stopped when I wasn't. Four pounds in ten days... VS seven pounds in FOUR MONTHS when I was counting calories and exercising. I felt a lot better too (with the exception of some cravings at first and some occasional bitterness over not being able to eat delicious vacation foods... but not TOO much bitterness because I know how those foods make me feel!).

I didn't really drink that bottle of SoCo, I just *wanted* to.

So I grocery shopped yesterday and came up with a rough outline of things I can eat for each meal and snacks. Now, in addition to no sugar, no flour, no caffeine and no alcohol, I'm also on no dairy, no fruits (except 1/2 cup of berries a day), no grains of ANY kind, and no starchy vegetables. It's not a perfect system... there are some questions the book leaves kind of ambigious (for example, no sugars of ANY KIND, but then raw honey is in quite a bit of the recipes? So I guess it is OK?) and I'm just trying to use common sense and pay attention to my body. Started today, and already had low blood sugar this afternoon. I'm hardly taking any daytime insulin. Likely going to have to adjust down soon. This is a good thing, but it's a scary process overall.

Another complication: our nephew is staying with us for ten days. He was on vacation with us in North Carolina, drove back home with us, and will be flying to his home in Texas next week. So it's kind of like having another ten days of vacation on my hands. I have some advantages - I'm home, we're not eating out as much, I can cook more and control many of my food choices. Some of the vacation 'disadvantages' are still present though - I'm entertaining another person most of the day, we're going out a lot and trying to make it a fun visit for HIM, my entire schedule is completely thrown off.

Finally, I feel guilty making all these 'weird' dietary changes and dragging the kids along. Especially my ten year old nephew who doesn't know us terribly well (he lives in Texas; we live in Illinois; we don't get to see him very often) and who just wants, say, a bowl of cereal for breakfast. I'm trying to strike a balance between having healthy but still kid-friendly things in the house (cereal and milk for breakfast, bread for lunch sandwiches, etc) and steering them towards the new diet I'm on. Aside from feeling a bit guilty for just springing it on them, I'm also left wondering how healthy it is to restrict foods so much from young kids. I will have to read up on that some more. The severe restrictions won't be for terribly long so it's probably OK in the short term, and as I just noted I AM keeping some things in the house for them that I am not eating, but it's definitely a challenge to be the main food and meal provider for an entire family when we're not all quite on the same plan.

I haven't even had time to revisit the book itself and see what other things I'm supposed to be doing. I've got the food rules down pretty well because I planned that out before leaving for vacation. I know there are things like exercising, meditation / relaxation, and supplements I'm supposed to be integrating at certain points... that's all going to be difficult with my schedule being so extremely thrown off the next week. Hell, we haven't even finished unpacking from vacation! My husband went back to work right away, and he hurt his back really badly a few days ago (not sure how; he thinks it might be a pinched nerve), so the poor man just wants to Ben Gay and lay down when he gets home. I've been trying to entertain the kids AND make new meal plans AND grocery shop for a whole new food lifestyle (I spent a lot more time grocery shopping yesterday than usual!) AND get the kids registered for school AND get all the school shopping done today AND cook a bunch of new, healthy meals with ingredients I'm not familiar with. I trashed my kitchen, it's still recovering, and while I got caught up on all the vacation laundry, I have at least half the bags left to unpack. We'll be out and about the next few days exploring the city with my nephew; I just don't feel like I'm going to catch up anytime soon!

Next Wednesday he flies home AND my kids start school. So while I'm going to continue following the food rules, as far as the rest of it goes, I think next week is really going to be when I am back on a mostly-sane schedule and will start 'officially' counting the six weeks and doing all the other things he says to do.

Right now it's all I can do to stick to the food rules!