by Marcia Purse
My alarm went off at 7:00 a.m. on this Saturday morning - UGH! But I had not had a manicure since before surgery - a month ago today - and without professional nail care I develop very irritating hangnails - and 8:00 in the morning was the only time Inna, my manicurist, could fit me in. So I shook out the cobwebs, had a cup of coffee, and took off.
The rest of the day was awful.
My guess is that the reason I found myself in a fog of depression was mostly exhaustion. I had an Atkins shake when I got home (Mom had to open it for me, due to fresh manicure), and after my nails were good and dry I went back to bed for about 3 hours. When I got up, I just sat at the computer tring to drum up enough enthusiasm to do anything - and could not. I just got more and more depressed. Around 3:00 I realized I had forgotten all about lunch, so I ate a couple of cheese sticks and polished of a jar of peanut butter - not the healthy "natural" kind, either, because I can't stand that stuff. Fortunately, there hadn't been a lot left in the jar. At 4:00 I went back to bed again and slept until dinner.
Mom had made veal stew - with noodles. It was wonderful! Of course, white flour pasta isn't allowed anywhere in the South Beach Diet, but - well, there it was, it was dinner, along with brussels sprouts, one of my favorites, and I ate it. I've realized that until I am well enough to assist in grocery shopping, I won't be able to conform strictly to the SBD rules.
After dinner, a small triumph in an otherwise bleak day: I was able to confine my habitual chocolate serving to just four York Mints. I used a trick my friend Jo had reminded me about, and ate each mint in tiny bites to make the chocolate experience last longer. After that I drank a great deal of water and Fruit2O for a couple of hours to keep my mouth busy and flush my system, ate my salad late as usual, and went to bed without reading. No reading in bed means no munchies! I hate to give up that time with a good book, but since reading in bed has developed an apparently unbreakable association with food, this seems to be the only answer.
Day Seven
Got up at 7:10, had two cups of coffee with non-dairy creamer, and didn't drink breakfast (Atkins shake) until 11:50. Within a couple of hours I was starving and made myself the good old chicken-feta cheese salad, a big one, and ate every bite. Then I ate one (1) York Mint.
I don't think I had an afternoon snack - took a nap from 4:00-6:30 and then ate dinner, leftover veal stew and tons of green beans. Mom gave me the top half of an English muffin for a pusher, and I'm proud to say I did NOT eat even one bite. After dinner I had three (3) York Mints, then fought the chocolate craving - and WON - for the next two hours. Finally ate my tossed salad and finished with cocoa ricotta crème. South Beach Diet's recipe for this dessert includes 5 semi-sweet chocolate morsels, but I left those out.
My mood was a lot better today, so I'm sure all the sleep yesterday was what I needed. I managed to get some computer work done and one load of laundry, although manipulating laundry from washer to dryer was rather painful.
I ate the salad and ricotta dessert quite late last night, so this is bound to be reflected in tomorrow morning's official weigh-in. Still, I'm proud of the progress I've made in curbing chocolate intake and giving up bedtime-with-a-book munchies!
