MOLLY'S DIET RANTS! (ranting, raving, motivating & more)

RANTING BURNS CALORIES!

This is an open, ongoing, support-encourage-motivational-RANTING thread. Feel free to skip to the end, or spend days reading through all of this ...

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I have decided that "Diet" is a 4-letter word.

I find myself muttering and uttering the word around my house these days with loathing and vehemence previously reserved only for comments directed toward liberal politicians. In fact, I seem to be talking to myself a lot more these days .... sort of a running, sarcastic commentary on all the foods I can't eat, or on various other related topics. I wonder if there is a link between calorie-deprivation and Tourettes Syndrome? Grrrrrrrrr.....

I am now on Day 8 of the dreaded D-word. This is already the longest period of time that I have ever successfully remained on a diet. And I seem to be growing grouchier and feistier each day..... at least when I am alone and no one is around to hear my running rants. (My wonderful DH has heard some of my more memorable rants on the subject of broccolli and reports that I am hysterically funny when I am hungry!) I am counting carbs. I am counting calories. I am counting fat grams. Sheesh ... now my math anxiety is about to kick-in!

Mini Rant #1 .... what masochist decided that the serving size of cereal was anything less than 2 cups? Have you ever measured out 2/3 a cup of cereal? Or even a full cup? And placed it in a bowl? Those few little flakes and pieces just sit forlornly at the bottom of the bowl, shivering and lonely, even when we dribble on a few meager droplets of skim milk! Sheesh. Well, I can tell you that there is simply no way that my oversized body is going to be happy with that tiny amount of cereal ... so I have been eating TWO servings for breakfast. SIGH. And while the side of the box says that I can supplement the cereal with some fruit, they probably don't mean eat 45 cherries with your cereal -- much less 1/2 a watermelon, huh?

Mini Rant #2 .... Things NOT to say to someone who has told you that they have just started on a diet:

1.Good, you sure needed it.
2. It's about time.
3. Really? It doesn't look like it.
4. Again? Haven't we heard this before?
5. Gosh, how much weight do you need to lose?
6. What do you weigh? I've always wondered.
7. I never need to diet, I have a fast metabolism.
8. Really? I can eat all I want and never gain weight.
9. Is THAT why you are so grouchy?
10. I sure hope you plan to exercise a lot more.

AAAUGGH! All of these responses are just the thing to make me even grouchier .... so just smile and say something encouraging and supportive, ok? I will let you know how it is going.

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=^..^=  Molly 

WELCOME TO MOLLY'S MOTIVATIONAL RANT / CHAT THREAD ... FEEL FREE TO SHARE YOUR RANTS, TOO!  YOU CAN EITHER READ FROM THE BEGINNING OR JUST JUMP ON IN ON THE LAST PAGE ... JOIN US! 

You've got to watch out for Tracker sometimes, but she really does have great knowledge and wisdom in many things, and is a really great person to get to know. She can be a nut though, so watch out. Oh, Tracker, Hi! I didn't know you were here..
*slips back out sheepishly*

hee hee hee ... y'all are pretty funny with your "unsolicited advice!"  

I must agree that the plum sauce from mu shu pork is quite tasty.... I think it is a lot like putting grape jelly all over my grilled vegetables. (Hey! That sounds pretty good, actually!) I am sure that I will mellow out as I get further into this little adventure in dieting .... I am only on Day 17 and -- frankly -- I am still in the paranoid stage. (My poor DH gave me 3 almonds and then had to spend 20 minutes helping me figure out how to log 3 almonds on the food logger!!!)  For those of you keeping track, 1 almond is 1 gram (and 6 calories). These would be standard, salted almonds -- not giant, mutant almonds.

I wonder how grape jelly would taste on brussell sprouts?

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=^..^=  MOLLY ( have you eaten your brussell sprouts today?)

Thanks, now I am craving brussel sprouts. I always make a big ordeal making them (my daughters love it this way) Trim the hard part off the stem end, criss cross cuts on the stem, Blanche them in boiling water, toss them in a baking pan with lemon (vinegar works too in a pinch), a smidge of olive oil, roast them. Eat whole. Glad I gave up watching Martha Stewart years ago or all my meals would be too ordealing (not a word?)

Okay - I'm getting nauseous just reading about brussel sprouts.  Nevermind how they taste, I can't get past the smell of them cooking.  My husband loves them (all cooked greens), but made the mistake of cooking them in MY house only once!  We've been brussel sprout free ever since.

Hmmm .... a girl friend keeps trying to be helpful, and keeps sending me brussell sprout RECIPES. Hah! She knows I can't cook ... and I am certainly not going to start on some mutant, stunted cabbage-y thing! By the way, may I add that "Brussell Sprout Tacos" just sound WRONG?  And there was also a recipe for peanut butter brussell sprouts. EEEEEK!

I was thinking of just washing them, cutting off the hard edge and outside leaf, arranging them in a nice big bowl, and then nuking them into submission in the microwave. Then I planned to top them -- still warm -- with I can't believe it's not butter spray, McCormick Vegetable Seasoning, and some fat free Feta cheese. I think that is about as adventurous as I am feeling today.

Unless I switch the fat free feta with some grape jelly! (giggle)

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=^..^=  MOLLY (Cook? I only have a kitchen because it came with the house!)

Brussel Sprout free!  THAT's my goal!

Thanks, Pammy!  You've always got my back!

Danagrl - you and I could have a meal together... No brussel sprouts (with or without plastic orange sauce)... no cauliflower... no peas... and absolutely don't even suggest Lima Beans... (I'm pretty sure God created those for heathens!)

....No brussel sprouts (with or without plastic orange sauce)... no cauliflower... no peas... and absolutely don't even suggest Lima Beans...(I'm pretty sure God created those for heathens!)

Ha, Well, at least the BS. I don't understand why every healthy veggy either has a bad smell or makes me have a bad smell. God must have a sense of humer.

I've been craving beets, well, kinda, as much as one can crave a beet. I hated them until I grew them fresh. Now I rarely eat them because I don't garden anymore. But they sounded good the other day. I forgot to get them at the store so I must not be craving them too much. Anyway, they are supposed to be good for thyroid trouble. My nutritionist a couple years back told me to eat them. I think I put lots of butter on them, which kinda defeats the purpose. I use Smart Balance now, it's supposed to be healthy with it's omegas.

I can honestly say that I've never craved a beet.  In fact, I detest pickled beets and the way that they "bleed" beet juice all over a plate and/or other food.... icky icky icky.  I've never even seen a beet prepared any other way. (Hmmm.... beet tacos?) 

I was disgustingly healthy at dinner tonight .... 2 Gardenburger veggie patties, whole wheat light bread, Punjab spinach sauce, artichoke AND brussell sprouts. It was laden with vitamins and fiber. I think my formerly pale-as-a-ghost skin (ok, semi-pale with lots of freckles) is getting a faint pale green cast to it from all these verdant veggies.

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=^..^= MOLLY (it's not easy being green)

Lately, I've purchased a variety of frozen meatless items from the vegetarian section of stores.... Boca burgers and Gardenburgers and fake chick'n cutlets and breakfast style sausage-flavored breakfast patties. (They are all lower fat and lower calorie than their "real" counterparts -- and I am really trying to be adventurous in dieting, you know?)  And, for the most part, they LOOK reasonably like the "real" thing ... especially covered with ketchup or melted non-fat cheese or hidden between two slices of light bread toast.

Anyway, at our house, the oft-repeated, never-forgotten rule is "DON'T LEAVE FOOD UNATTENDED ON THE COUNTER."  Why, you may ask? Because we have some might sneaky felines who are zippy-fast little carnivore thieves who've been known to make these drive-by grabs and run off with burgers, bacon, hot dogs, chicken breasts, etc. (Yes, we feed our kitties .... they are NOT starving!)  The kitties are NOT allowed on the counters (and they know that), but they do tend to congregate in the kitchen and purr and meow when we are in there, hoping against hope that we will trip over them and drop an entire can of tuna across the kitchen floor.

Well, the doorbell rang this morning as I was preparing my breakfast of whole wheat toast with Sugar-Free maple syrup (I pretend the toast is a waffle) and two meatless "sausage-flavored" veggie patties. (They are less calories and less fat than actual sausage, so I thought I would try them.)  In my excitement about getting to pretend I was having a real breakfast of waffles and sausage and my hurry to answer the door before our yappy watchdoglet Minnie had a coronary, I forgot that I'd left this yummy, tempting food on the countertop .... unattended.

After returning from the door (a neighbor child was selling carwash tickets), I discovered not one, but TWO prowling cats sitting on the counter, next to my plate of fake-syrupy toast and fake-sausagy patties. They looked pretty disgusted. They had not (as far as I could tell), nibbled -- much less run off with -- either pristine "sausage" patty. Somehow, my discerning cats knew that .... despite the fact that my plate APPEARED to have real meat on it .... it was some sort of suspicious "FAKE MEAT."

Hmmmm ..... maybe my cats are trying to tell me something?

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=^..^=  MOLLY (beware of any food your cats won't eat)

I was never a beet fan until the year my Dad grew some in his vegetable garden. 

Fresh from the eath, cleaned and steamed OMG they were the best ever!  Never had any as good as those..

You guys are reminding me of my forlorn bag of beets from the farm. I should really do something with those. I love beets- boiled & sliced is my favourite, I don't even want margarine. Just lovely, beety flavour is enough for me. I also love plain 'ol steamed brussels sprouts. In fact, I crave them. I'll be sitting on the bus, salivating at the thought of brussels sprouts.

I just got back from the farm (they didn't have brussels sprouts :(), bringing with me fresh eggplant, carrots, tomatoes, onions, corn on the cob and assorted chilies. The family that runs the farm is so nice, and the lady who was helping me today gave me one of every kind of chili- including a habenero... if I'm feeling adventurous I might, err, smell it. They were also sampling some ammmmmazing peaches. I love produce season! I'm going to go into serious withdrawl when the snow starts falling.

Thought for the day- If you eat fake meat and fake waffles and fake syrup, seems to me like you could call it a fake breakfast.  Wonder if calories count in a fake breakfast... Hmmmm.

I thought it was funny about how the cats refused to steal your "meat".  A couple of weeks ago, I was watching my friend's 6 year old daughter and had to make her breakfast.  I don't have kids and am not used to their pickier palates, nor did I have the usual kid friendly fare in my pantry.  So due to limited resources, I made her an egg and a Morningstar sausage.  I figured she wouldn't know the difference.  This is the same kid we can take to a sushi restaurant and she will eat all the shrimp, eel, and roe (fish eggs) in the place.  She wouldn't even touch the sausage. (I even fried it up in the pan, to make it "look" more authentic)  She KNEW.... I don't know how, but she KNEW....  Even told her mom that I tried to give her "funny" sausage.  Little snitch.  Her mom laughed at me in that "oh you so don't have kids, do you?" way....  I'll remember that the next time I buy her kid fish eggs at the sushi restaraunt :)

I LOVE BEETS!  My mom used to give me pickled beets when I was little.  My dad HATES them.  I think she made them when she was mad at him :)  Found fresh beets later in life and asparagus too, since my dad didn't like asparagus either.  Mollymouser- New green vegetable for you- asparagus... I love asparagus!  Gotta go to the store to buy my beets and asparagus.  Yum!

Hmmmmm..... I know I have canned asparagus. Think I will bravely try that first, before I invest a small fortune in fresh asparagus.

For those of you keeping track, I did have vegetables at dinner. Once again, we went out for Thai food .... oh, yum yum yum. I had spicy beef salad (lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, a little bit of lean beef in a very spicy dressing), green curry soup (lots of fresh veggies, including chinese eggplant and green beans... also very spicy), and I had a very small portion of DH's Phad Sieuw Beef (broccoli, beef, onions, noodles.) It was sooooooo fabulous!!!!  I really watched my portion size for all of this, and -- once again -- ended up just guesstimating at a calorie amount to put on my food log.

My evening snack was a cup of fresh blueberries (85 calories) plus 20 calories' worth of light whipped topping ... 105 calories of delectable yumminess.

Why can't I like broccoli as much as I like blueberries????

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=^..^= MOLLY (are you drinking enough water?)

Good job on your food choices!

You wanna know what irritates me? Well, I'm gonna tell ya. You want to buy something in a store, a really nice shirt and it says One size fits all. I say, All of What? All of one half of my body? Or some say, One size fits Most. Again, Most of what? Most of one leg? Do people not understand that most of us pleasantly plump folks like to wear fashionable clothing too? Not just tents with zippers and buttons? You know what else? Have you seen those plus size catalogs? Clothing up to 6X, but they have a size 6 model showing them off. How can you tell what it will look like on a very large person if it's a small person modeling it? Or how about those toilet stalls? Some are a decent size, but I tried to get into one the other day that I had to be a gymnast just to get into the stall and close the door. I don't even want to describe the ordeal of trying to do the rest of the job. It was not a pretty sight. What about when you go to the doctor's office and the scale is out in the middle of the hallway. Now, can we talk? You get on the scale and try to privately adjust the scale yourself to weigh with the nurse looking on to record your weight. Do the rest of the staff and other patients need to know what you weigh? No of course not. But the nurse might as well be using a megaphone when she loudly proclaims "348" I'm thinking, "Did you really need to yell that out for the world to hear?" But these same people, if they come into your office to fill out a form, when they tell you their age they whisper it so nobody can hear, "32". What's wrong with this picture?

OK, Rant is Over, thanks for listening. Have a great day!

I'm a liberal and I'm not sweating changing my diet. Maybe Molly's problem is her politics...

heh heh heh heh ..... it is still too far away from any election for me to rant about politics (even if that DOES burn calories!) (grin!) 

Pam .... I discovered long ago that "One Size Fits Most" means "One Size Fits Most Skinny People!"  But I hear you about tiny bathroom stalls as well as getting weighed at doctor's offices!!!

Clothing sizes --- now THAT is something worth ranting about! Whatever happened to standardization? In some brands, I wear one size. In other brands, I wear a larger size. In still another brand, I wear a smaller size. And, of course, at any given time -- I REALLY and ACTUALLY do expand/contract and need different sizes .... the end result is that I end up with as many as 4 or 5 DIFFERENT sizes of clothing in my closet .... sheesh! When I did the great closet-cleanout-its-time-to-declutter last spring, I think I Freecycled clothes in 5 different sizes!!!! The end result was nice, though .... clothes that were all in good shape, well-fitting, and in colors and styles that I like.

And Mondays .... I think we should get to rant about Mondays, don't you?

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=^..^= MOLLY  (cats are nature's way of saying your furniture is too nice)

2 mini rants, inspired by all of you lovely people...

Last week, we were having a meeting at church, and of course there was pizza.  Well, me and one of my friends (who is pleasantly plump as well) had already eaten, so we weren't hungry.  They were passing around the pizza, and when they got to us we said "No thank you."  The lady passing out the pizza said "Oh, you two must be on a diet."  Really?  We MUST be on a diet?  Is that the only conceivable explanation for why we didn't want pizza?  It wasn't possible that we just weren't hungry?  Oh, I forgot that it is impossible for fat people to just not be hungry sometimes, because all we do is eat.  My mistake.

I agree with you Pam about the skinny women modeling plus size clothing.  What really gets me is how Lane Bryant (please don't sue me!) uses those skinny mannequins in their stores, and therefore have to pin the clothes back super tight to fit them.  How insulting is that?  And, the fact that the smallest size in that store is 14/16 tells you how skinny those mannequins must be.  So then when I go to put on that shirt that looks SO GOOD on the mannequin, it looks like CRAP on me!  Ugh, I just don't understand why they do that!  I refuse to believe that no one makes plus size mannequins....maybe that will be my next career venture...

Rant over...thanks for reading.

Oh don't get me started on skinny models wearing plus size clothes.  Do they think we think we look like that if we buy it?  I would much rather see someone wearing my size, so I will know how it will look - but that never happens.  It doesn't help that I am short!  They never have short people in catalogs!

Anyway - on a more positive note - asparagus - yum that's a vegetable I can get into.  Molly - you can wrap it in some fake bacon and grill it on the grill - then dip in some fat free Italian dressing  - Yum!  I have to admit, I've tried it with turkey bacon, but not meatless bacon - that was pretty tasty! 

OK, here's MY rant for the day:

I took bags of fresh produce to camp to share, and many complimented me and thanked me for providing healthy snacks. Those same folks, when shared mealtime came around, badgered me to "try just a bite" of bad-for-me foods! Did they think I brought the healthy stuff so I could stuff myself with their junk??

A lot of polite "no thank yous" or "I can't eat those, sorry" wore down MY resistance, not theirs...GEEZ!!