Ugh

I nearly got past this total ugh I'm feeling right now. I went to a lunchtime concert at Millenium Park and for about five minutes there, I was really loving being able to rock out with Le Loup for my lunch.

And then I had to go back to work, where I have no motivation.

No one should have to work in the summer. And yet most of us do.

Oh.

While it's true that I eat a lot of very healthy, tasty vegetables and fruits, I have realized I supplement this with an enormous amount of sugar. I love me some cookies, cupcakes, sweet stuff in any form. Ironically, the very evening I was congratulating myself on such healthy evening, someone brought oatmeal chocolate chip cookies to rehearsal.

That were still warm.

I probably ate 9 or 10.

So, perhaps instead of being astonished that I can't lose the last 10 pounds, I should be thrilled that I don't weigh and extra 40. Eh?

Blueberry Pie

I had a fantastic evening yesterday - ran three miles on the lakefront, made a blueberry pie, tired to finish learning my lines (we're off book for two shows as of today). The pie....hmmm. While it is quite tasty, and a valiant effort, I am perfectly aware that I'm making blueberry pie to remind me of my grandma. Since I don't have access to huckleberries (wild blueberries) and don't have her recipe, I'm unlikely to hit the same taste. At least not on the first try.

But it is still very summery and kick-ass to make a pie with fresh blueberries.

However, this brings up a depressing thought. I've been trying to lose about ten pounds for a while now (three years?) - sometimes I get close, and then a special occasion comes around or free food is offered to me or my husband makes something truly amazing. Or, of course, I make myself a pie. (Or a coconut cake - see 2007.)

It's tricky - I eat pretty well, lots of salads, lots of vegetables and fruits, and when I'm not rehearsing 24/7, I exercise regularly. And yet my two modes of food are: eat whatever takes my fancy, or diet. Usually when I "diet", it's just a means of restricting myself. If I allow myself to eat cookies, I'm not capable of eating just one cookie. So unless I'm in diet mode, my food whims probably outweight my ideal caloric intake.

So here's the depressing thought. In order to truly lose the last ten pounds for all time, I basically always need to eat as if I'm on a diet. Forever. Because I'm cycling through eating too much and eating healthy, and the math never works out. I can't make up for huge overloads of calories by cutting down for a couple of weeks, only to load up again.

So technically, I should NEVER make a blueberry pie. Or eat a cheeseburger. Or have fries. Or bake chocolate chip cookies.

Or maybe, say, once a year I could eat those things. One each quarter.

If you look at what the food pyramid tells you, it's really all fruits, veggies, lean protein meats and whole wheat. There's not a lot of room for snack food or sweets or any of the really tasty stuff lots of us actually eat.

Ok, I might be exaggerating a bit. I just went and played around with the MyPyramid.gov menu planner, which is pretty cool. My diet plan is a very high-protein diet that I follow on advice from a personal trainer when I'm trying to lose weight. According to the MyPyramid site, I'm doing a great job eating fruits, vegetables and protein but I need more grains. Interesting. I'm going back to full-carb tortillas - the low carb ones just taste like cardboard.

So if my "diet" mode is well within guidelinesand should be losing me weight, that means that when I let myself go off the rails, I must eat a ton of junk.

Tricky...'cause you know I really like me a good cheeseburger.