Tag cheesecake

Meditation & Diet?

Paul - The Wry Eye Guy
Ponder the Puffy Clouds!

Lying on a beach, under the shade of a palm tree, cold one within reach … now that’s calm-inducing, stress-alleviating & the best kind of meditation, & medication, I can think of. Can’t do that, in Canada, during the Canadian winter, without some serious risk of frostbite!

But there must be an app for that, right?

I tried a few meditation apps & they just didn’t work for me. Worse, I actually found them stressful to listen to. First one I tried starts out counting a breath in on one, out on two, in on three & then this soothing voice tells me to carry on doing that up to twenty. On my own! Is she kidding me or what? Am I going at the right pace? Maybe she counts more quickly than I do? Will I get all my breaths in before she’s back with the next activity? What if she’s slower? Do I have to hold my breath ’til she catches up? OMG, I’m hyperventilating, this is driving me nuts!

I was a trembling wreck by the time I got to twenty. Enough of that nonsense, let’s try another one.

This time it’s a guy. Great voice. Calm, soothing, very relaxed & reassuring. We’re going to do this body thing, a routine that goes from the head to the toes. With some pretty peculiar internal organ stops along the way, I might add! But this turns out to be even more excruciating. First, he tells me to get comfortable & relax. Next he’s telling me it’s okay to move uncomfortable body parts. Pick one for cryin’ out loud! I know it’s really not okay though, & I’m just screwing up, am I not? And he’s just saying all that to make me feel better about it. Right out of the gate, he knows that I’m no Zen master & that I’ll almost certainly have to move. Maybe even all the time. That’s exactly what I did, of course. I just kept squirming. And I hated every second of that little medication exercise. Next!

Then I tried this one with an irritating little bell chime thing. I’m sure if you had a real bell, while sitting cross-legged in the Himalayas, it would work far better. You know what I mean, you’d have the right atmosphere for meditation all the way up there. With the monks & robes & whatnot. But the mind-numbing consistency of a mathematically accurate & repeatable digital ding just did my head in.

I know, I know … I’m probably doing it incorrectly. I know I should probably chill out & just try it again. But my heart rate is up, I’m sure my blood pressure is too, so I’m going to resort to something I have more practice with. Something I know works.

A slice of deep dish cheesecake. With a big blob of whipped cream.

And afterwards, when I’m cheesecake-calm, maybe I’ll try that meditation thing with the sound of the waves lapping on the beach. 😜😁

PS … Happy International Women’s Day to all the ladies out there. And to the National ladies too! 🤪😁

Results … Month #10

Paul - The Wry Eye Guy Leave a comment

Results … Month #10

Recovering from a fall!

Made an amazing new discovery this past month … it looks like it’s more difficult to lose 8lbs, than it was to gain that 8lbs in the first place!

Who knew!?!

After last month’s disaster, I wasn’t all that optimistic coming into the new month. It was the first time since I started this whole exercise where I felt that I really might have to force myself to “go on a real diet”. Considering I was going into the 10th month of the program, I was a little taken aback by that thought. Fortunately, it didn’t last long, & I was back to testing & tweaking again, within 3 or 4 days.

“Testing & tweaking” is how I try to add credibility to the act of me trying to figure out how to eat more bad stuff & not pile on the pounds. One of the new foods I tried this month was coconut sugar. It’s supposed to have a few less calories, a slightly lower glycemic load, a few more nutrients, & some other good stuff, like inulin, when compared to regular sugar. One of the best ways to test a sugar is by adding it to something that tastes nice … like cheesecake!

The cheesecake was pretty good. The darker color of coconut sugar gives the finished product a light caramel color. Makes it look like something far more wicked than it is. Not that a cake made of full fat cheese & sugar isn’t already a little wicked. Turns out it doesn’t behave quite like a glass of iced water when it comes to weight control. But, then, a life without cheesecake just wouldn’t be right, would it!?!

Bottom line is that I still haven’t recovered all of that 8lb gain from the previous month. But knocking off 4.4lbs for this month isn’t too bad. Besides, I generally didn’t feel up to working too hard at it. So it’s a bit like I got an almost-free 4.4lb pass for the past few weeks. Maybe this new month is the month where spring will finally be sprung. Maybe I’ll get rid of the rest of that rebound. And maybe we’ll soon get to those warmer months where I can start testing the dietary value of beer & wine on the deck. In the company of the little birdies, flapping & twittering around the treetops!

Roll on summer. Aaaahhhh!

PS … The cheesecake diet, even when the cheesecake is made with coconut sugar, will probably not become the next hot diet for rapid weight loss! 🙂

Why Do I Eat Cheesecake?

Paul - The Wry Eye Guy Leave a comment

Why Do I Eat Cheesecake?Cheesecakes

Because my daughter makes the best cheesecake. And I mean the best cheesecake. She reduces the sugar content in her recipe, just to appease me. But then she adds white chocolate chips (those little blobs of synthetic whiteness are probably about 90% sugar!) & the base is made from those very famous cookies. You know the ones, the two dark biscuits with that creamy white center. Some folk like to dunk them in milk. I don’t want to say the name in case I trigger a snack-attack for anyone!

Anyhoo, these single-serve (hah!) cheesecakes are to die for. And when my daughter makes ’em … I eat ’em!

Knowing I wouldn’t be able to resist, I decided, well before the olfactory symphony came wafting from the kitchen, to limit myself to just two. I had been eating really well prior to this latest round of baking. I was at a point where I was losing weight gradually. I was not feeling hungry. I was enjoying a designer binge here & there. The very occasional intermittent fast, mostly just skipping breakfast & lunch, was easy. Everything was puttering along beautifully. And then came the cheesecakes. I didn’t have just two, I had three. What can I say, you can barely pack three into a bowl but they look so nice fighting for space there. Naturally, I poured about half a cup of heavy cream over them. Maybe a little more than that. But it’s only to blunt the insulin response, you know!

That was three days ago. And it’s only today that I’m getting back to feeling as safe & as well as I know I can feel on my new diet. During that time, I had to cram a bunch of safe starch (potatoes!) into my face. Along with cream-covered fruit & nut desserts. Anything to avoid the potential of eating something worse. Needless to say, the scale doesn’t hide the truth from me.

On the bright side, though, I am developing some really good strategies for avoiding falling off the dietary cliff. You know, like the times when you have just one cookie. Followed by the rest of the pack. And then you’re suddenly calling for pizza delivery. And yes, please, I’ll take the two bonus one-liter bottles of pop for a dollar! We need strategies for handling such urges & mine seem to be working well at the moment.

In real life, there will always be those times when we will consciously, deliberately, eat something not quite right for us. And if that’s the case, we need to know how to survive those occasions.

So why did I really eat the cheesecake?

While I really love my daughter’s cheesecake … I love my daughter even more!