Unsafe at Any Size

Secret Pumpkin Stash

Pumpkin shortage?  Hah!  Not at my house!

I don’t know if the news is true.  I don’t want to know.  Sure. there may be enough pumpkin to get us through Thanksgiving, but what about Groundhog’s day?  Or Fourth of July?

This pumpkin fan is taking no chances.  Yes, I’m a pumpkin hoarder.  And at Thanksgiving sale prices, how could I resist stocking up?

I’m thinking I should buy more now, and then sell it at twice the price on the black pumpkin market that is inevitable  (And no, that doesn’t mean people will be selling black pumpkin.  Though I wonder what black pumpkin would taste like…).  My pumpkin is now in a secret location (we’ll call it the “marage”) so don’t think you can just break in and take it.

PLUS, now we finally have some earthquake supplies.  It would probably take The Big One to make the rest of my family eat pumpkin.

Which means, YOU GUESSED IT!  More for me!

Mwaa ha ha! World pumpkin domination!  All your pies are belong to us!

Not my feet, not my scale, not my weight

Whaddya know!  Tracking works.  You know that, and I knew that.  I know it again, too.  I lost 2 lbs this week, for a total of 113 lost.

I know that tracking works, so why did I stop?  Because it was all too much.  When I was originally tracking, I was doing flore- eating core foods but tracking points.  I wouldn’t eat my weekly points or my activity points.  Not surprisingly, it was very effective, but also hard to maintain.

When I got down to 22 daily points, I panicked.  This isn’t the way I wanted to live my life!  So I stopped tracking.  For the most part, my diet has changed enough so that worked well.  But after the Halloween debacle, it was time to get serious again.  Not too serious, though–I’m going over my daily allotment of points by a few each day.  And that is ok!

I’m hoping Thanksgiving won’t be very challenging this year, even though I’m not doing the cooking.  We are traveling to LA, and my sister and mother in law are both doing Weight Watchers.  We’ll have pumpkin pie for the kids, but we’re going to try Hungry Girl’s Pumpkin Smash.

Speaking of pumpkin, I now do a variation on the Hungry Girl pumpkin pudding, but instead of using premade pudding I use an immersion blender and blend in a can of pumpkin into 2 cups of milk, vanilla or butterscotch pudding mix, and some pumpkin pie spice.  Add a little lite Cool Whip, and you’ve got a fantastic dessert.  No, it’s not pumpkin pie, but it’s great for every day.

But oh no! Apparently, we are looking at a pumpkin shortage this year! Ohhhhhhhhh noooooooo!  Should I go and buy a crate of pumpkin now?  Screw the Eggo waffle shortage people; this is serious.  (Serious=it affects me.)

At least half of the Hungry Girl recipes feature pumpkin; why, I’m eying a chocolate and peanut butter fudge recipe on her site right now that uses a can!

I AM going to clear out the local Lucky.  If you can’t find pumpkin to make your pie, you can blame me and my pumpkin hoarding.

Not my feet, not my scale, not my weight

Despite my nut eating adventure earlier in the week, I still managed to lose 2.2 lbs, for a total loss of 112.6.  I actually lost more, but wore a sweatshirt to my weigh in, hoping to keep the loss at 2 lbs so the e-tools on Weight Watcher’s wouldn’t scold me.

So why the sudden success?  My idea of allowing more weight loss to be provisional is helping the most.  I’ve made so many changes, and have been reluctant to make more that may be too difficult to sustain.  I’m trying out new things, but if they’re too hard to sustain I’ll be ok with stopping them and returning to where I’m at now.

Which is a damn fine place.

The new changes I’ve made that apparently are making a difference are:

1. Adding a daily walk to the mix. As a manager, I always have a lot to do and not enough time to do it in.  But let’s face facts; working through my lunch won’t add up to that much extra work done.  I’m not getting any mystical wonder worker brownie points (not a good metaphor… tofu points?  carrot points?) for denying myself a 30 minute walk in the middle of the day.  So long as I don’t walk to Berkeley Bowl and buy nuts, it will improve my health and my mood.  As I wrote in a previous post, recess isn’t only for kids.
2. Asking for help. DH has substituted all of the old snacks in the house with portion-controlled 100 calorie snacks, a definite improvement.  But instead of having just one for dessert, I’d been having one of each.  I don’t like making choices for dessert; give me all of them!  I asked him to put them away so I don’t have to see them, and have made a promise (to myself!) to not look for them.  I also wrote about how asking for help isn’t easy, but people genuinely want to help if you give them a chance.
3. Substituting new foods. I’ve started eating apples with low-cal caramel dipping sauce.  I’ve NEVER eaten apples before, but find they are ok if dripping with caramel (really, isn’t everything?).  It makes for a very satisfying snack.  I’ve also started making the Hungry Girl pumpkin pudding.  She makes it from the premade jello pudding, but I make it from “scratch”: one can pumpkin, one carton jello instant vanilla pudding, 2 cups milk,  one teaspoon pumpkin pie spice, one carton lite cool whip.  Mix together the pumpkin, pudding, milk, and spice, and chill.  Add cool whip and eat.  It’s dessert AND a vegetable.

Speaking of pumpkin, it’s off to the kitchen!  I’ve got a nice big kabocha that I’m going to turn into Morroccan lentil stew and other yummy things.  I think I’m going to turn orange again with all the orange veggies I’ll be eating!