that's just fine, stomach bug, cause I wanted carbs ANYWAY

So naneey naney poo poo to you.  Because my tummy still hurts from puking my guts out two days ago, I have had to say "to hell with it" as far as low carb eating.  FINE.  See if I care.  Cause I'm going to the Jersey Shore, and I'm gonna eat at Surf Taco, and I can actually enjoy my tacos for once!  Not that I'm going to get the hot sauce or anything like that, but I can actually eat a taco, while enjoying the shell.  Yum.

Yeah, I'm a little worried about how bloated my stomach is becoming, and why it still hurts, and...have I done some sort of permanent damage to myself by eating low carb for so long?  I mean, I have lost weight, my clothes are looser, I even have to return some summer things that I bought a month ago.

Oh well, maybe if I keep eating carbs I'll keep the clothes and just have a chubby ass summer!

the stomach bug did me in, for real this time

Nowhere in the "Protein Power" book, do I see anything about what you are supposed to do when you are puking your guts out, or the day after.  The thought of eating a hot dog today is about as appealing as the dead bug I see upside down on my bedside table, only I'm too weak to do anything about it.

So much for the low carb diet for now.  How am I supposed to do that when I can only pretty much eat afew crackers and half of a banana?

Truthfully, I'm sick of it all anyway.  I would like to lose weight, but I'm damn sick of dieting.  I can do without sugar and junk food, but I just want to eat like a normal person again.

Eating in bed

It's my dirty secret, eating in bed.  I love it.  I think it's some sort of regression, back to my teenage years, when I would lay in bed in the morning and pretend to be sick.  Then after my mom went to work (sorry mommy!), I would pull out my secret stash of yodels, turn on the Howard Stern show, and revel in my comfort.  I loved that feeling, of not being at school, eating chocolate, and listening to the sometimes slightly scandelous Stern.

I am such a hypocrite.  Here I am with my plate of meatloaf mush and pureed cauliflower, which is pretending to be mashed potatoes, sitting right next to me on the new comforter.   Yes, the new one!  If anyone else in my household so much as thought of eating a crumb in their beds, (unless they have a bad sickness,)  they know there will be hell to pay.  Hell, in this house, you can't even get away with not sitting down at the table for snacks.  No living room eating, no standing up eating, no floor eating, no no no.

Maybe that's why, when I found my 11 year old's secret candy drawer, I pretended not to know about it.
Life is full of contradictions.

Battle of the books

He keeps shoving it in my hand, oh gee, how funny and charming it is (sarcasm).  I have a good argument, no?  That he hasn't read any of the books I've read over the past 10 years that have shaped my diet to what it is now?!!!  Fine.  I agree, I will read your book, "The China Study,"  IF you read mine.

Now the question is, what are my books?  There have been so many, which have led to various cookbooks of various and opposing philosophies.  I went through the grains and beans phase, I've got "Skinny Bitch" (catchy title!)  I've got lots of Moosewood (which I still love,) but the mother of my book collection that is what finally and completely made sense to me is "Real Food" by Nina Planck.  I just love her.  Reading this book was one of those "aha" moments.  It finally made sense!!  Especially since I have been through so many food phases, as she herself had as well.  I also grabbed my copy of "Pasture Perfect" but it's been so long that I can't remember what it says.

I should add that by "diet philosophy," I mean what I eat when I am trying just to maintain weight, rather than to lose it, as I am now.  Although the low carb approach can sort of fit in with the Real Food/grassfed meat approach, kinda sorta.

Also, our two dieting philosophies don't disagree on everything, there are actually some common intersecting ideas, which are the obvious ones:  don't eat sugar, don't eat refined crap like white bread and rice, don't eat processed crap with added crap like corn syrup and chemicals and, of course, don't eat crap.

Did I mention that I married a lawyer?

Well here I go, I better study up for my case and review my facts, because a showdown's a comin around.

what the f*((&*&*((&* is wrong with my husband???

So kiddo 1.0 comes home looking upset and says his stomach is really hurting him, so I assume it's the dreaded stomach bug, and hustle him upstairs to the toilet.  When he doesn't throw up immediately, I tuck him into bed with the big metal throw up bowl, towels, and rinsing water.

"Ow."  He clutches his stomach.  "It really hurts."  I decide if he doesn't throw up right away, maybe some bland crackers will soothe his tummy, just a couple though. 

He wolfs them down.

Okay, how about some applesauce, some ginger cookies to soothe the nausea?  Hell yeah, he wolfs them down too, stops crying, and looks a big more optimistic.  "How's your tummy now?"  I ask.  Apparently it's getting better by the second.  He bounds downstairs saying, "wow, that applesauce was GOOD."

Oh. My. He doesn't have the stomach bug, he was hungry.  So hungry that he was suffering from, apparently unfamliar, extreme hunger pains!  "What did you have for lunch?" I ask......"Only half a sandwich and one chicken strip, that's all that daddy packed for me.  Plus just half a bowl of cereal for breakfast."   I am rage.  This preteen, who has grown through two clothing sizes in the past six months, needs calories!  He needs fuel!  He needs to eat, dammit!  He is not a vegan or a dieter!

Now, dad is not the kind of parent that I would call neglectful or abusive at all, unlike those very sad and horrifying cases that we hear about in the news.  This is a man who reads shelfloads of books about proper medical and emotional development of children at every age and follows it to the tee. 

So it makes little sense, that kiddo was suffering from hunger pains!  So I submit this as further evidence that, the vegan diet has driven my husband insane.  I mean, what (otherwise) sane person does stuff like that?!

the kids are not on a damn diet, and they are not vegan either!

It's okay for them to have whole milk, eggs, and meat.  They are not on a diet, dammit.  Stop trying to make them into starving supermodels and stunt their growth.  When they are grown up enough, they can make their own decisions.  Like how, in my 20's I lived on white pasta and paid the price for it but it was my decision and that's the way it goes. 

It's not like I feed them cookies all day, no I don't give them crap to eat, we don't even keep crap in the house.  The grains are whole grains, the chicken is free range, the veggies are organic.  Sure, I wish they eat salad, but what kid eats salad?  Actually, I have to admit I have seen some kids eat salad and for me it was like witnessing a miracle.

They are growing, if they are hungry, let them eat!!!!!!  Am I so wrong?

hey kiddo, when you're at school, I'll play your video games

Now, go to school and learn stuff, so I can stay home and play Wii fit!  Yes, while you are bored in math class, I will be comparing the statistics of my ultimate high schore on the obstacle coarse, and see if I beat any 11 year olds in the boxing challenge.

Yes, the stomach bug seems to have run it's coarse.  Amazingly, somehow I don't seem to have gained any weight, yet.  And I'm back to reality now, what with the realistic realization that I just don't lose any weight at all...unless, that is, well, I exercise.  But who wants to do that?  Everything is too tight and my butt looks too big because I'm overweight, so there's no way I'm going to go a walking outside alone, and the power yoga is so, well, it's complicated, I'll talk about it later.

I feel like an absolute complete idiot, and I am also very aware that I am acting like a total teenager, but I like me some Wii fit obstacle coarse.  And it works, it gets my heart rate up, I'm sort of sweaty and winded, and I can continue to hide myself in my cocoon until I'm properly showered and dressed.

stomach bug has defeated me

I have met my mortal enemy.  Everyone has one, or some, and this seems to be mine, as least as far as a low carb approach is concerned.

There were many warning signs.....like, when a kid actually stops eating a chocolately chocolate mousse birthday cake because he says it tastes funny.  (warning!!!)  Okay well there were others but that really is the main one.  And then, midnight, drifting off to sleep in a luxury hotel, (the first one I've been in, for 10 whole years) (and by luxury, I don't really mean luxury, I just mean kinda not crappy, and the sheets feel nice.)

"My tunny hurts!"   Bleech.  All over the sheets, the blanket, soaking through almost to the mattress.  Panicked run to bathroom for more towels, and then, again.  Bleah.  Desperation calls for the ice bucket.
(I can never use an ice bucket in a hotel again, now that I realize their true use.)  Let's just say I left a very large tip for housekeeping.

And now me.  And what can I eat?  I seriously ponder the possibility of not eating anything, since I can't stand the thought of meat.  I gently caress the box of crackers that I've given my youngest pukey son.  I try not to resent him, gazing up at me with his deep dark sickly eyes with dark circles underneath, surrounded by his sweaty smelly curls stuck to his forehead.  How come he gets to eat all the good stuff.

In the end, it's the box of wholesome O's (they are pretending to be Cheerios).  I pour in the milk, and.....I don't think I've ever enjoyed a bowl of cereal as much in my entire life.  Sorry, low carb diet, I guess there's just some situations where it just does not work.

I'm stressed and I want food

I am stressed and I want food.  Good food.
Crunch crunch

I don't have a job
crunch

Don't have no dollars
crunch

and other things I won't talk about
crunch crunch crunch

Oh chocolate, where can you be.  Even a bunny ear, would be so sweet.

Annoying bedtime facts

He is silent, brow furrowed in worried concentration, holding up The Book 3 inches from his eyeballs as he reads it in bed.  I am trying to enjoy my mindless game of online backgammon, the only time in my day when I can enjoy mindlessness, as nobody (i.e. Children) are asking me relentless mundane factual questions about the nature of the number Pi, or informing me about the different levels of minecraft (online video game) because I really really really need to know these things.  No.  They are asleep, and nobody is bothering me, and my mind is at rest, joyfully scanning those little computer circles.

Uh oh.  He turns his head to me.  Silence.  Intake of breath.  "You know....."
Pause.
Already, I hate the damn Book.

"Animal fat can cause breast cancer."

"I hate you, don't ruin my backgammon game," I think silently.  "Hmmm," I say instead.

And three more factoids like that fly at me, as I am trying to relax.

"You really should read this book, you know."

Until finally I lose it, and start quoting my own damn facts, and point and gesture to the whole shelf of books that I have read over the past 7 years about my whole entire eating philosophy.  By then, he remembers that it is not a good thing to do, to interrupt my sacred end of day quiet time.  Too late, I am tense and hyperventilating, not at all relaxed, and we are about to get into a big fight.  He backs off, but the effect remains, and it takes me another 45 minutes to calm down enough to go to sleep for the night.

it's the "cave man" diet???

This is the first that I have heard this term in terms of the low carb diet.  And can I just express how very much I utterly and completely dislike this term!

What woman wants to strive to be a cave man!  Doesn't exactly conjure up the most attractive of images, now does it?  Most people probably have the same sort of picture in their minds as me, from some bad 1970's movie, a hairy, hunched over, growling guy with a club.  Not to mention, no manicure, no pedicure, no soap whatsoever, terrible dental work or rather complete lack thereof.

I was going to say the ripped loincloth was also unattractive, but that has been disproven, due to the movie "Blue Lagoon" with Brooke Shields, and that blonde guy.

Can't there be some other, gentler, more polished term to describe a low carb diet?  How about, gleaming soapy smoothness.  Or, insulin reducing fantasticness.  Whatever.  I'm not very good at this.

It makes no logical sense

Why I would be enticed by the advertised deal at IKEA, to get a free meal, if I spent $100.  Boy, I am EVER their target customer, and then some.  I was so excited by this idea, that I could combine their various entrees (I got three of them) in order to make myself up a complete low carb meal.  Excluding the high carb sides of carrots and potatoes, I got cooked yummy white fish, some ceasar salad, and some lox!  What fun!

Psychological experts, those Swedes.  Because I was in such a good mood from all my "free food" that I went and spent about $400 on mediocre curtains, and lamps for my kids that look like aliens after you work for 3 hours to put them together!

It's all fun and games, until you have to go back, and deal with the returns department.  (And let's not even talk about how un-fun those credit card bills are gonna be.)  Then you find out.  "TAKE A NUMBER".  (the number machine is broken, I protest!)  Try to be nice as they look at you accusingly, like "How stupid are you to not know how to fix the number machine, plus, we know it was probably you who broke it.  Idiot."  Then you sit there for an hour, trying to resist the smell of cinnamon buns.  Then you find out, if you don't have your receipt, you can only get a credit for your merchandise, which only leads to more shopping, and so the vicious cycle continues.

George Harrison would have been terrible at dieting

And, I would have made a terrible 1960's rock star!  Let me explain.  I just read the Pattie Boyd autobiography titled "Wonderful Tonight," you know, the gorgeous blonde who was married to George Harrison.  And I cannot help but wonder about the extremes in his behavior.  According to her and her book, he would spend months holed away in his meditating room, hardly speaking to anyone, immersing himself in chanting and holiness.  And then he would go on a bender, with the drinking and the drugs and the women, all at once, (much to poor Pattie's unhappiness.) 

Is this not too much unlike dieting?  Or rather, the dysfunctional cycle that so many of us women, and some men, seem to put ourselves through?  We cheat on our diets by giving in and feel like "to hell with it," and before you know it, we've eaten a whole cake.  Then the next morning, we feel guilty and don't eat anything except celery until we can't stand it anymore.  And on and on it goes....

Don't get me wrong, I love George Harrison, he was my favorite Beatle.  And I can feel some sympathy for his behavior (especially since I wasn't married to him), since it just seems to come from the same inner spiritual void that we all seem to feel.  I really think that if I'd been a male 60's rock star, I would have acted in exactly the same manner.