bearing blog

Looking them in the eye.

So a couple of days ago I posted that I am going to work on a single new habit: looking my children in the eye when I talk to them or when they talk to me.

 Which is a sort of embarrassing resolution to announce. It's one thing to say "I'm going to quit eating between meals" because, hey, we all know everyone does that. Or to say "I'm going to start doing a load of laundry every day instead of letting it pile up till the weekend." Because there's nothing wrong with having a laundry day on Saturday, you know?

 But I realized after I hit "post" that I had basically just announced to the world, "I don't look my own children in the eye when I talk to them." 

Yup, I habitually give orders, receive kisses, explain schoolwork, and distribute discipline with my eyes fixed on some other thing, namely whatever I'm busy with at the moment. I just can't keep my attention fixed on my little people. The whole time they are talking to me I am thinking about stuff I have to do, or maybe what I was doing before they interrupted me.

I'm like diners in one of those restaurants with a TV up on the wall in every corner. They try to keep up their end of the conversation, but they can't help letting their eyes drift up to the screen they can see over their date's shoulder. I'm like that, but my eyes keep drifting back, not to a TV, but to a cutting board, a notebook, a list, a pile of sweepings, a computer screen, a diaper.

The first day wasn't hard at all. In fact I was a little bit giddy with the new freedom of only having ONE very specific improvement to focus on. And for once it wasn't "I mustn't spend so much time on the computer." So I actually enjoyed spending, well, a LOT of time on the computer that day.

 All I was trying to do was this: When a child came up and spoke to me, I turned all the way away from the computer or whatever else I happened to be doing, looked the child in the eye, gave her my full attention, listened and spoke to her like she was a human being. Then I waited until she was done and went away again before I turned back to my work.

 No, it wasn't too bad, although I found that a couple of times I had to only pretend that I was listening to the children, because my whole brain was consumed with "don't turn and look at the screen, don't turn and look at the screen, don't turn and look at the screen."

The second day, today, was a little tougher because when late afternoon rolled around, I had been out of the house all day, I was tired and overstimulated, and I desperately wanted to "veg." Which at least for me is code for "ignore every other human being around me, unless by chance they are bringing me cups of hot caffeinated beverages."

So I let the kids play computer games and hid with the nursling in my room for a while, hoping the others would not come looking for me. I figured that if I could make it unlikely that they would interrupt me, then I wouldn't have to worry about paying attention to them, and I would still be keeping my resolution. That worked pretty well.

Eventually, however, I had to feed them dinner, and that was pretty rough, habit-wise. When we eat and my husband isn't around, like at lunchtime, or this particular evening for dinner, I tend to dish up dinner in the kitchen and then carry my bowl over to the computer to read blogs while I eat. I am a big believer in the family dinner hour, but for some reason I don't walk the walk when my husband isn't around. (mental note: later, strengthen habit of family dinner hour to include business-trip evenings; it is not called "husband dinner hour" after all.)

 I ate my salad in front of the computer, but then I went back for a bowl of chili and when I got to the kitchen the children started telling me all about the latest nature movie they had watched. We hit the zoo this morning with Minnesota Mom and her kids, hence my overstimulation, and I guess while I was hiding in my room they had been inspired to go watch some of the BBC nature programs.

So I found myself standing in the kitchen holding a bowl of chili and trying hard to appear that I was paying full attention to my 9yo's explanation of why some bird eggs are white with brown speckles and other bird eggs are black with white speckles. And then I had to pretend to pay attention to my 6yo's monologue on the habits of bower birds. And all the time I was painfully, ashamedly aware of how much I wanted to eat my chili in front of the computer screen instead of marveling at bower birds, or egg speckles, or even nine-year-old and six-year-old bird enthusiasts.

About halfway through it occurred to me that I might be able to fake my attention more convincingly if, instead of pretending to the boys that I was paying attention to them, I pretended to myself that I was listening to a narration for schoolwork. That I had assigned the boys to go watch the nature movie and then come back and tell me everything they knew about egg speckles and bower birds. That actually worked pretty well. My teacher brain turned on and started looking for questions I could ask them to test their comprehension, and that made me have to pay actual attention to what they were saying.

 I learned that the surface of the eggs get speckled after the shell forms in the body of the bird. I learned that the bower bird does not actually live in the bower.

All in all, I am glad I am trying this. It is surprisingly challenging, and I am more firmly convinced now that the problem with ignoring my kids is not the computer, or any other one thing that I happen to be doing, so much as it is a problem with my attention to whatever it is I happen to be doing. I get really focused. I have to un-focus myself unless I have created a special time and place where I can be focused. And I think this exercise in permitting interruptions is going to help me learn how.

It's like trying to unlearn everything I absorbed from countless productivity tips over the years, though!

Garbage yardage?

After Leo turned six weeks old and I got into the pool for my first postnatal swim, I floundered.  It felt so good to be back in the water again after close to four months off.  It felt so awful to have lost so much ground, to know I'd have to work hard to "get back to where I was."  Those first few times I couldn't bear to think about any sort of a workout plan.  I got into the water, I crossed and re-crossed the pool, and when my time was up I climbed out. 

There's a term I have encountered in reading about swim training:  "garbage yardage."   The derision is aimed at, well, aimlessness.  It is pleasant to get in the pool and swim at a comfortable pace for forty minutes or an hour, not trying to go particularly fast, not working hard, just racking up the yards.  Undoubtedly it is better than not swimming at all, good for my heart and for my muscles and for my mentality.  It's not a waste of time. 

But it won't make me faster.

And it's kind of boring, too.

I felt more grounded as soon as I had a goal.  My longish-term goal is now to swim a mile in fifty minutes.  My shortish-term goal, since I'm stuck with shorter workouts for the time being, is to swim a half-mile in twenty-five minutes.  So I'm working on speed, not sprint speed but steady pace.  I have a stopwatch.  I have a plan:  so many intervals, so many seconds per interval, this much of a warmup, this much of a cool-down.  Each time I cross the pool I have some mini-goal in mind, mostly a part of the form:  This lap I will concentrate on controlling the roll of my body.  Next lap I will slice my hands into the water at the right angle every time.  The lap after that, I will be sure to kick forcefully all the way across the pool. 

This is not garbage yardage.  This yardage has a point.

Every physical activity has its form of garbage yardage.  I don't mean that aimless yardage is truly "garbage," as if it doesn't help at all.  It's relaxing, and it's better than sitting on the couch.  Relatively speaking, though, improvement requires a challenge.  How much it takes to challenge you depends on what you're used to.  Strolling around the neighborhood is fun and good for you, but is not a challenge... unless you are so unused to walking that it leaves you breathless.  For me, now, running 30 minutes at four miles an hour would be garbage yardage.  Fine for a day when I feel sore or headachy.   Much better than nothing.  But if my workouts were all like that I wouldn't improve.

The size of the challenge does not matter.  It can be quite tiny.  Just a little bit longer.   Just a little bit faster.  Just a little bit harder.  It can be the tiniest measurable increment:  I'm going to run at five-point-nine instead of five-point-eight.  I'm going to add that teeny little free weight, the one that looks like a CD, on to the stack of weights I lifted last week.  I'm going to finish one more lap.

So if the tiniest self-challenge counts, then even your very first day of deliberate body motion, no matter what it is, is worth something.  Get out and move.  Challenge yourself (1) to begin and (2)  to make a challenge for next time. So there will be a next time.

That is how it starts.

Mantras.

There are a few mantras I find myself muttering from time to time, mantras that remind me to stay on track.  I'm not sure whether tossing them out to the Internet would be helpful to anybody else, though.  I didn't find them in a book or even sit down and compose them; they bubbled up out of my
subconscious, and some other part of me -- my conscious? -- repeated them.  Over and over and over again.

Here we go.

(1) "I don't do that anymore."

This is what I say to myself when I am driving home, alone, and it occurs to me  that I could go through a drive through and get a cheeseburger or something, and I could eat it, in the car, and nobody would know but me.  I also find myself repeating it to myself when I wander past a vending machine and pause, regarding the bags of Chee-tos and pretzels.  Basically, any time that I have a little bit of free time available and it occurs to me that one thing I could do with that free time is buy some food and eat it:  I hear myself say, "Remember?  I don't do that anymore."

I'm sort of  amazed at the power of this statement.  I pronounce it neutrally.  There's no judgment or shame directed at my former self; it's just a true statement.  And yet it is a remarkable statement, because it is self-fulfilling.  The simple act of repeating it and intending it to be true helps make it more true, every time I say it.  I can't remember a first time, but you know -- it could have been true the first time I said it, even if my last binge had been only that morning.  It can become true at any moment, for anyone.  Think about it.

And I can feel its power growing:  The more I repeat it, the deeper a  groove it wears in my subconscious, the more distance I put between myself and the old me. 

(2) "I've already had my treat; I don't get another one."

I use this most days, I think.  It's a sort of bookmark:  reminding me that moderation means stopping, that treats are rare by definition.  I can have a square of chocolate after lunch if I want, sure.  But if I find myself reaching for a second or third, I often find my hand pausing as this sentence comes to mind.  I've already had my treat; I don't get another one.

Too, It helps dispel that awful temptation that says, "You've already had a bunch; what's one more?"   Because with one stroke, I've declared it all one thing -- all of  the "bunch" I've already eaten -- whether it's two cookies or a whole bag or some of all the different kinds of leftovers I had in the fridge -- all that added up to one thing, "my treat," what I've already had. And the next bite, however small, woulde be "another."  What I don't get .  You see, the line can be drawn anywhere. 

 Sometimes I have to remind myself that I've already had an "extra" even if it wasn't very treat-like.  My kids had soup and saltines for lunch; you know my weakness for saltines.  I polished off the crackers left in the sleeve after the kids had had their fill, while I was waiting for my own lunch to heat up.  After I finished lunch, when I wandered into the kitchen thinking about a square of chocolate, I
remembered the handful of crackers, and said to myself:  I've already had my treat; I don't get another.  I turned around and headed out again.

I think it's important to note, again, that there isn't an element of judgment or shame here.  I'm not punishing myself for the sin of eating crackers.  I'm just  trying to practice reality-based eating: 
I already chose a treat and now I live with -- live on -- the treat I had.

(3) "A piece of cheese is like a truffle."

Now this little food-specific gem, I know where it came from -- Hannah suggested it to me.  I liked it so much that I adopted it, and I repeat it to myself almost every time I have a snack or a meal in which the protein source is mostly cheese.  Which is almost daily, in fact.

Cheese, of course, is more nutritious than chocolate truffles, but it's about as dense, rich and satisfying -- more satisfying, really, since there's much more protein and hardly any sugar.  Those calories aren't empty.

The reason I repeat it, though, is that I spent many years eating enormous amounts of cheese at one sitting, for a snack, on crackers with mustard.  It was one of my favorite snacks.  And yet I probably didn't even really taste it.  Should have just eaten the mustard off the spoon, I guess. 

I repeat this mantra to keep myself honest and to remind myself that it isn't okay either to eat cheese without enjoying it or to binge on huge amounts of cheese.  Since I eat it often, the effort adds up.

A "serving" of cheese is, of course, one to two ounces.  That's where the  truffle comes in.  The imaginary truffle is about the same size as the cheese I ought to be eating.  And the image of a single chocolate truffle is a reminder to slow down; to let the cheese come to room temperature for full flavor; to take tiny bites; to enjoy it.  And to leave it off of dishes where its contribution won't be noticed:  a cheesesteak is  worthy to me, a hamburger really isn't.  What with the mustard and all.

(4) "One egg is enough eggs for breakfast."

As a former consumer of countless three-egg omelettes, I can attest that this mantra is necessary. Does it sound more like a rule than a mantra?  But I adhere to it almost obsessively, and I really do repeat it to myself.  I am positive that I don't need to be eating two or more eggs at breakfast, ever.  If I ever catch myself starting to cook two eggs for myself in the morning, I'll know I'm in danger of returning to my old habits.  Not.  Going.  To.  Happen. 

I repeat the one-egg mantra to myself whenever I make eggs for breakfast, whenever I order eggs in a restaurant.  Yeah, I know, I could still overeat even if I stick to only one egg.  I could get the Sunny Side Up Special with four links of sausage, Belgian waffle drowning in syrup, ketchup-laced hash browns, and one egg.  And yet...  I am never really tempted to order such a thing, unless I am dividing the breakfast up between me and two of my children.   What I *am* tempted to do is eat the second half of that Eggs Benedict.  This mantra keeps me from doing it.  One egg is enough eggs for breakfast.

(5) "A twelve-hour fast feels better than a seven-hour fast."

What I tell myself when I'm deciding whether to have a snack before bed.  It's true for me, too -- I really do feel better in the morning if I have fasted since dinner.  Sometimes I wake up ravenously hungry, and then the most mundane of breakfasts is fantastically delicious; buttered toast, heaven on earth.  Other times I wake up only feeling light and quick and sunny. 

 I don't feel bad per se, if I've had a bedtime snack, but it just isn't as good a feeling as having fasted since dinner.  Heavier and slower.  It reminds me a little bit of a hangover -- there's no headache or dizziness, but instead there's a sense of something unpleasant sort of lingering in the system.

I don't always avoid bedtime snack.  My husband and kids always have one, and sometimes I join them.   But I always pause and repeat this to myself, to remember that it's a choice with a consequence.

That's not all, thanks to another important word in that mantra. In part because of it, I have come to think of the period between dinner and the next day's breakfast not just as a time when I don't usually have food, but as a literal daily fast -- a positive decision I have made to give my body something it needs, i.e., a rest from eating and some of the work of digestion.  There's a reason we call it "breakfast" in English, after all.

These five mantras are specific to me and might not help anyone else.  Do you have any truths or mottoes you regularly remind yourself of to keep yourself on track?

The remains of impulse.

I was obese for my entire life, up till age 33.  That year, for no apparent reason, I had an epiphany:  a new desire. 

The twin desires for a better body and better health, I'd always had those.  As long as I remember I alternated between wanting thinness badly enough to work hard at trying to lose weight, and trying to resign myself to the "fact" that I likely never would do so permanently. 

Something new came along in that thirty-fourth year.  I can't say for sure why.  But what popped into my head that year -- it was in May -- was a new-born desire, not to look different but to live differently.  I have described it before:  All of a sudden, I got tired of eating so damn much.

It was as simple as that.  But it was also much more than that. 

I had a desire to behave differently.  But I still had two problems to solve.

First, I didn't know what I should be doing instead.  All I knew was that I wanted to get away from "eating so damn much."  I wanted to eat less.  I didn't know how much less I wanted to eat, or how often I wanted to eat, or even exactly what I wanted to be eating.

Second, and this is the key point I want to stress, I still felt the impulse to eat, as frequently and as strongly as ever.  I desired to eat less.  I was disgusted by how much I had been eating.  And yet none of my impulses had weakened:  I still felt an urge to nibble on my kids' leftovers. I still wanted to extend the pleasure of a tasty meal into second helpings and thirds.   I still longed on lonely evenings for the comfort of eating an entire pizza while staring at the computer screen.  I still thought about going through a drive-through all by myself for a secret cheeseburger.   None of that was any different.   

The only thing different was a sudden, gut-level knowledge that I didn't want to do those things anymore.  Or at least I didn't want to feel the urge to have those things any more.  Or ... I wanted the power to resist the urges.  That is what was new.  A counterbalance.  I had never really wanted that before.  Before, I had wanted to be thinner, but I hadn't really wanted to give up the secret cheeseburgers, the comfort of the pizza, the extra helpings.  Eating too much food had always meant experiencing more of the pleasure of tasting and swallowing.  I had never stopped, really, until it hurt to have more. 

You have to understand, if you are where I was, and if you are hoping that someday the impulses will just disappear, or that you can kill them... that they may never disappear, and yet even though they persist, it is possible to learn to ignore them.  You see, I still have them.  I still think about secret cheeseburgers.  I still remember the prolonged pleasure of six slices of pizza.  I still pause to study the contents of vending machines.  I still get an urge to pile on the seconds after my plate is empty, every time.  The impulses are not gone, they are not less frequent.  If they seem weaker now (even though occasionally I do give in -- I am not perfect, after all), I believe it is only because I am stronger now, after close to two years of resistance training.  In the beginning they were just as strong as ever.

I didn't gain willpower overnight.  But I did, it seems, gain a will.  And the will to live differently was enough to drive me to find a way around the obstacles, the impulses.  It was suddenly so obvious to me that to follow these urges would still feel good, but would be the opposite of what I desired -- those paths would not just take me the opposite direction from what I desired, they would BE the opposite of what I desired.  I wanted to feel the steeper trail beneath my feet, not just the smooth downward grade.  I wanted more than the view from the top.  Though the effort would hurt, I wanted to climb. 

That desire is something that seems to have come out of nowhere, a pure gift; the closest thing I have ever come to understanding what grace is.  I believe there is more yet I can learn from it.  I believe I know what I am to do with it next. 

Will I?

**** Update.  Erin asked in the comments for a recommendation for a kitchen scale.  The key features for one to keep on the counter are, for me, (1) looks good, (2) wipes clean, (3) battery powered so it doesn't take up an outlet, (4) tare button, (5) not very large.  I use this one in black, for $24.

The power of memory.

Oddly enough, one of the skills I have had to cultivate in losing weight, maintaining it, and now losing it again postpartum -- is my memory.

Here's an example.  Today after a full dinner (sauteed mustard greens, raw sugar snap peas and apple slices, and egg-cheese bake), I had a couple of pieces of homemade cinnamon raisin bread, with butter.  Dessert, I told myself!  

(To tell the truth, they were the last of the breakfast loaf, and I wanted to get to it before the children did.)

But I was very well aware as I was spreading the butter thickly on the bread that I was thereby disqualifying myself from having anything else the rest of the night.  I can have treats, I can even have dessert; but I can't have treats at every hour of the day.  

So as I was enjoying the sweet bread with its salty slip of cool butter, I was thinking to myself:  Remember this.  Remember that you are choosing to have this, and also choosing not to have a snack before bed.  Remember that you already made up your mind.  Remember that right now you are sure that this is what you want.

I concentrated on that for a moment along with the taste and texture of the raisin bread, making a memory strong enough to carry myself through the evening.

Because it's surprisingly easy to "forget" when my stomach is growling later, that once upon a time, long ago, hours ago, I quite logically knew that what I wanted was NOT to have a snack later on.   But if I tell myself firmly enough this is what I want, and it will still be true that this is what I want later on, when my will is weaker, the memory of that firm will lingers long enough for me to stay true to it.  Or at least, truer than I might hold had I not taken a moment to make the memory.

Easter resolution.

I wrote a little while ago about how I never give up anything food-related for Lent anymore.   Still, it's a good practice to make some kind of Lenten sacrifice.  The one I chose this past Lent may seem a little wussy, though, since it was just a part-time sacrifice:  I gave up using the computer, especially the web browser, between 8 AM and 4 PM.

(Mostly.  There were a couple of times where I had to check Google Maps or print a school worksheet I'd forgotten to do ahead of time, and once or twice in the rocking chair with the nursing baby, I simply gave in to temptation and peeked at something or other.  Nobody's perfect.)

"8 AM to 4 PM?" you may be thinking.  "Heck, I'd have had NO trouble giving up chocolate between 8 AM and 4 PM.  You call that a sacrifice?"

Well, it was, because 8 AM to 4 PM is, roughly, my school day.  

And I had gotten pretty used to wandering over to the computer when I found myself with a spare minute while the kids were working on something.  I'd just check Facebook, and the spare minute would stretch into five or ten, and the children would notice my distraction and flee. 

I had also gotten used to surfing the web while eating my lunch, getting my "necessary mental break" from the day and from the kids, which freed up the kids to scarf down the tastiest part of their lunch and run downstairs to start a movie.

Basically, between 8 AM and 4 PM I didn't really have any good reasons to use the Internet most of the time, unless I had planned poorly.  On the other hand, I couldn't really just disappear from the Internet entirely.  It would seem uncharitable not to return anyone's emails for 40 days, or to have to deal with a mountain of an inbox on Easter Monday morning.  

This isn't the first time I've tried to limit my own Internet access to develop a little more self-discipline and harvest more time in my day.  But it is the first time I've set the limits by the clock:  simple and direct, no Internet between 8 and 4.  Always in the past I've set them much more amorphously -- things like "no Internet after the kids wake up"  (was that one kid, or all three?) or "no more than 2 hours a day" (who is keeping track?) or "only while I'm eating lunch" (hoo boy was that a mistake -- like I need another incentive to get second helpings?!?)

And what I discovered was that it worked wonders.  The clock limit meant that I wasn't "entitled" to the Internet access time -- if there was something else I needed to do or chose to do, and missed my chance, well, I missed my chance.  I couldn't get my "deserved" time later when I ought to be busy with something else.   

And I suddenly had So. Much. More. Time.  We got school done with little fuss most days.  The only downside was that I tended to binge on it between 7 AM and 8 AM, and thus miss the coffee time with my husband, and again in the evening.  So I think it will require a little bit of tweaking (for example, I probably should do a midday email check, and I should probably structure the schedule so as not to incentivize spouse-ignoring).  But I may make this a new tradition:  daily blackout hours.

I guess I'll start by blacking out 7:30-12:30, 1-4, and 6-10:30.  Will let you know how it goes...

Hey!  That means I've got to stop right n

Diet (!) lunch.

Look, I saved half my sandwich from the restaurant last night.  So it counts.

No, really, it does count.  I got a sandwich and a salad, and I put half the sandwich on the side plate and asked for a box.  And now it's my lunch.  So I don't care if you don't think a breaded eggplant panini sandwich, with roasted red pepper and tomato and piles of spinach and herbed cheese, counts as a weight loss food.  I only ate half of it at each meal and I say it counts.

The rest?  About 12 ounces of brussels sprouts, with a bit of butter; and some tropical fruit cocktail (yeah, it's canned -- we never have any fresh fruit left right before the grocery trip) with Greek yogurt and a little unsweetened coconut on top.

(Sandwich by Kafe 421, where we went to celebrate the completion of our midwifery appointments surrounding Leo's birth.  The kids also took half their giant "children's" entrees home and had them for lunch today.)

Abundance.

Even after working hard for almost two years to overcome my toxic overeating habits, there are still a couple of things I find very difficult to deal with.  One of these is the abundance of choices I have.

It's not the fairly common problem of  "I can't throw food away, and so I eat it."   This isn't such a problem for me, though I understand it.  It is undeniable, after all, that to throw away perfectly edible food is wasteful, and maybe even offensive.  The error is in the assumption that it's somehow less wasted if it is eaten by someone who doesn't really want or need its food value.  It's wasted either way.  The way to avoid wasting food is not to buy, open, or prepare extra food in the first place.   The way to respond to food-that-will-go-to-waste is not to dump it surreptitiously into the nearest available esophagus, but to take notice of it, learn, and make less food next time.

I know this isn't my problem because I get this agitated feeling of needing to eat up what we have at the beginning of the week.  Not at the end of the week when the refrigerator has lots of odds and ends of leftovers that "need using up." No, at the beginning of the week, right after the grocery-store trip.  

When the crisper is full of fresh fruit and vegetables; when the pantry is stocked with crispy crackers and tasty tinned things; when we have fresh milk and eggs from the farm, maybe a couple of wedges of local cheese; when a new flavor of ice cream appears in the freezer at eye level; when there are tomatoes on the counter and bananas in the fruit bowl, and homemade sourdough and honey-oat bread in the bread box:  that is when my head spins and I want to taste everything all at once.

This morning, for instance -- we shopped yesterday -- I felt panicky about the strawberries.  Strawberries were on sale, and we haven't had them in many weeks, it seems.  Mark had bought just one box.  I just knew that if I didn't get some of those strawberries today, the children would eat them all up right away and I wouldn't get any of them at all.  But I didn't remember that until after my full breakfast of toast, fried egg, and tomato juice... and I didn't really need to eat the strawberries on top of that, just to make sure that the kids didn't eat MINE all up.   

(I managed, though, by making fruit-and-yogurt parfaits for the children's breakfast, using up MOST of the strawberries, and saving a bit back for my afternoon snack, already sliced, in the back of the fridge.  Still, it was touch-and-go there for a few minutes...)

When lunchtime rolls around I'm often paralyzed by choices.  Should I have a green salad or steamed greens?  Should I have homemade bread (it won't stay fresh forever, you know) or crispy, satisfying Swedish crackerbread?  And what to put on it -- Mediterranean-style sardines, or a BLT, or cheese melted in the toaster oven?  Should I have the local raw-milk Monterey Jack that's been piling up in the fridge since the kids decided they didn't like it anymore, or should I eat that wedge of aged Gouda Mark bought me as a special present?  Should I finish my meal with a tiny bowl of premium strawberry ice cream, or one of these ice-cold clementines, or maybe a piece of dark chocolate?  

No, wait, if I was actually paralyzed by choices, I wouldn't have a problem.  What I am is overwhelmed by choices -- and I want some of everything.  I need to eat the strawberries before the children get them, I need to eat the Gouda before mold grows on it, I need to eat up the Monterey Jack before next week's dairy delivery arrives and brings me more, I need to eat the tomato before it goes all yucky, I need to eat the sardines because Omega-3 fatty acids are good for me, I need to eat the homemade bread before it dries out, I need to eat the crackers because they are lower-calorie than the bread, I need to eat the ice cream because, uh, do I need to have a reason to eat the ice cream?

But I don't have too much trouble at dinner.  I plan dinners, prit-near compulsively.  If the week's menu plan says spinach-ricotta pie, marinara sauce, carrot salad, well, that's what we're having.  No problem.

Lesson possibly learned:  Plan breakfast and lunch too.  Ya think?

Another problem.  When I'm tired I have a lot of trouble resisting all those choices, and the new baby has deprived me of much sleep recently.  Two nights in a row of bad sleep left me wanting -- and eating -- handfuls of chocolate chips, and wedge after wedge of the Irish soda bread my nine-year-old made for his science project -- all white flour too.   Slathered in butter.  I'm not sure whether I was trying to give myself enough energy to get through the day, or wallowing in resentment; it seems that the reasons change with every handful I stuff in my mouth, whatever I am most tempted to soothe myself with in the moment.

Lesson possibly learned:  try to get enough sleep, and keep an extra pot's worth of coffee ready to go in the pot.  Even if it's half-caff or decaf, the placebo effect (plus the something-in-my-hands-to-sip) might help keep me from self-medicating with sugar and refined flour.

I'm actually doing pretty well by the numbers -- five more pounds to BMI-normal -- but I'm trying to clean up my act as my first goal.  I'm still only partway there.

Trial run.

Today I returned to running.  Not for very long:  I started with just five minutes.  But it was a good start.

I signed MJ and Milo into the child care, but Oscar came with me and Leo up to the track.  As we headed up the stairs we passed a quartet of women coming down, toting yoga mats.  One cooed at Leo.  "Oh!  So new!  How old?"

"Thanks!"  I said with a big smile.  "He's six weeks."

"Beautiful!" she said as she went down the stairs.  From around the corner I heard another of the women tell her, "That's her fourth baby -- can you believe it!"  I didn't recognize her -- I must be famous.  (Stairclimber sessions at 9 months pregnant -- to turn the baby -- will do that, I suppose.)  That comment made my day.

There's a little stretching area in an alcove off the indoor track, with mats and posters of muscular anatomy and a couple of Pilates balls.  I had Oscar sit on the mat, and Leo slept nestled on a folded sling in the V of his outstretched legs.  "Pick him up if he cries," I instructed him.  No worries.  Oscar read a chemistry book he'd brought, placidly earning a nickel a minute.

I walked briskly for five minutes, craning my neck to check on my boys at every lap, and then broke into a run.  It felt so good for the first couple of laps, all those muscles working the way I remember -- except my sports bra isn't nearly as supportive as I hoped it would be, darn it, there's another errand I have to run this week.  The next couple of laps I got winded, and after that I got pretty slow.   But I was huffing and puffing and had broken a sweat by the time five minutes had gone by, when I pulled the earbuds out of my ears and went to fetch Leo back from Oscar.

I scooped the baby up, and a white-bearded gentleman from the next mat said to me, "Oh gosh, that was such a great sight.  I wish you could have taken a picture of those two boys together.  What a great way to make sure you take care of yourself."

I smiled and thanked him as I stuffed Leo into the pouch sling.  Then I led Oscar out onto the track for an impromptu lesson in Running Track Etiquette and Safety.  The learning never ends, my friends.

Flipping the switch.

I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that, three weeks postpartum, I'm already recommitting to the eat-less habits that I cultivated in 2008.

Embarrassed?  Well -- I keep imagining voices chiding me:  

• "It's only been three weeks since you gave birth -- wait a few months.  Breastfeeding will surely take off some of the pregnancy weight without you having to think about it."
• "You need to eat plenty of good food to nourish yourself and your baby."
• "It takes time, thought, and energy to do all that planning and analyzing -- why add more stress right now, while you're still getting used to all the changes?"
• "People won't notice you're heavy again -- they'll notice the cute baby on your hip."

This is the sort of thing that I said, or wrote, to a number of new mothers who expressed to me a desire to drop their post-pregnancy weight.  Privately I wondered what was the hurry.  

Well.  The shoe is on the other foot now.  It's really remarkable how demoralizing the postpartum body can be!  Blah blah blah, perspective, gratefulness, patience.  (Platitudes!)  I am who I am, and as ever I hate lagging behind the person I want to be.  

But!  I will follow my own advice anyway -- the good part of it.

• Breastfeeding surely will take off some of the weight I've gained without my having to think about it -- but I can get back in the habit of thinking about it now, of eating mindfully instead of mindlessly, so that when (if) I do "have to" think about it, it comes naturally to me.
• I surely need to eat plenty of good food to nourish myself and my baby -- but I don't need to eat food that doesn't nourish me, and I don't need to overeat even healthful food.
• Indeed some of the things I did to lose weight required time, thought, and energy that I don't have right now -- but many of those good habits reduce my stress rather than raise it.  I feel less stressed when I am successful, so I deserve to have opportunities for success right away.  
• People surely won't notice my weight -- but the habits of moderation and mindfulness are worthy for their own sake.

All that being said, I do recognize that I should not lose weight rapidly.  For most of 2008 I lost about a pound and a half a week, which is roughly twice as fast as would be healthy for the mother of a newborn nursling.  Rather than try to calculate how many calories I need and count them daily, I'll keep an eye on the scale and make corrections as necessary.  That's one of the old habits, of course, although now "too fast" would be a bigger problem than "too slow."

So what am I looking at doing now?

• I'm back in the gym three days a week.  I'm the type who's always trying to do too much too soon (hard to believe, I know ;-) ), so I swore that until Leo's 6 weeks old I would do nothing but brisk walking around the track.  So far, so good.
• Weighing every morning and charting the weight.
• Lots and lots of vegetables at every meal.
• Scheduled snacks, prettily presented on a plate, perhaps prepared in advance.
• Stop after the first helping at meals and take time to evaluate satiety.
• Plenty of fluids.
• Reading about healthy, moderate eating to keep it front and center.
• Noticing my successes, several times a day.
• Responding to my frequent impulses to eat unplanned food or excess quantities with my old mantra:  "I don't do that anymore."

None of that is bad for the nursing mother of a three-week-old baby.  None of that causes stress.  I can do all this right now.