Bottom Line: Needing to scale back my eating

Time to order some stretch pants, perhaps? Looks like it, unfortunately, from all angles.

I’m not counting on a close friend to tell me this, because I know this firsthand, and for a fact, too. It’s been several months since I’ve seen the better side of 160 pounds.

I started this pseudo-cooking blog almost six months ago. I have kept up with the cooking, but have not kept up with the blogging. More on that, momentarily. But first I return to my biggest problem, my habit of plain eating too much.

Few months back, I discovered the joys of steel-cut oatmeal. That, plus sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, flax seeds, honey, raisins, walnuts, Greek yogurt, bananas. Everything on top but brown sugar. Then I’d mix it all up and devour every last bite.

Did I care that, for mornings on end, I was consuming about 1,000 calories at once? Just for breakfast? Nope. It was all raw and healthy, right? No wonder a few hours would pass, and I still was feeling full.

Since I started cooking and consuming more hot food than I’ve ever been responsible for in entire my lifetime, I’ve been enjoying too much of a good thing. The pounds piled on, not-so-slowly and very surely.

I wasn’t minding the bathroom scale, because, you know, I was eating hot and healthy.
scale

Except, that’s become obvious to everybody else, too. My backside has been in the back of my mind for some time. And now, it’s beyond time to order those stretch pants.

You know, the Land’s End kind that us more-than-middle-aged women can cover up with a longer sweater that falls below the waist. The kind for which we’d never again consider tucking in our shirts.

Time for one direction or another: Either I order stretch pants, or just stop eating so much. Especially all at once.

Take, for example, the week of the SuperBowl in early February. Those are the days when we celebrate avocados and guacamole. Avocados are loaded with good fats, remember?

My problem was, my new-found skills at making guacamole from scratch was just too inviting. As in, I would make it, then eat it all at once. Yes, in one sitting.

Better to be eating one’s homemade guac, I figured, than paying nearly $5 for a small bag of it that you squeeze from the top. Which is exactly what I had been doing for years — simply because I didn’t know how to make my own (having never even tried).

All that has changed now, but so has my shape.

My homemade mix of avocados, onions, tomatoes and lemon juice just compelled me to scarf it down. Then, it was gone before I knew it. And, I admit, I wasn’t sharing it with anyone. And I certainly wasn’t saving it for SuperBowl Sunday.

See? I got to be like that. Make something in my kitchen, something I had never made before — and then eat it all at once. Oatmeal and guacamole goodness are just the top of my list for which this has been happening all too often.

I didn’t realize that limiting portion size, and allowing for leftovers that could become entire full meals for the rest of the week, should be part of the kitchen routine. Well, I knew better, but I wasn’t going to concede to that kitchen rule just yet.

So, I am ready for some kitchen-lesson revisions.Such as, eat less, always; and, just because it’s warm from the oven or stovetop, doesn’t mean you have to eat it immediately, or even all at once. And if that ever happens again (which, I know it will), I could hope to walk it off. A little exercise never hurts anyone — me, especially.

My cooking good food has been consistent in the last few months, if my blogging about it has fallen short. I’m still making good food choices — I’m just not writing about it once or twice a week, as I intended to.

But, I will, again. I have had plenty of new food experiences to write about lately.

One takeaway from my current cooking journey is that — it’s hard to work a full-time job, have time outside the house for friends and activities, add in a few community obligations, and, oh, keep putting healthy, homemade food on the table.

That’s what I’m doing these days, quite happily. Thing is, I don’t have that family or husband who’s always looking for the next meal. How other working women around me managed to do everything, every day, for years, and for many others beyond themselves, just astounds me.

Back to the original premise of this piece — my new proportions. My new interest in cooking well has brought me to my current weight.

Now, going forward, I just want to keep the good food habits, and lose the bad ones. Plus a few pounds, too.

Katherine Cassidy

About Katherine Cassidy

Making meals is an everyday occurrence for everyone else, yet this writer has gone years without making much of anything in the kitchen. On the verge of turning 56, she is committing herself to learning to cook at last -- both late in life and in public. Watch her as she ventures beyond boiling an egg,