Tag Archives: diet

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Every year around September I opine that there isn’t anything more useless that a formal performance evaluation. Every spring, though, I’m reminded that I’m wrong, because truly it’s impossible to imagine a more pointless “management tool” than the yearly midpoint assessment. It’s all the aggravation of spending time putting paperwork together and none of the remunitative reward of getting a performance bonus. Midpoints are a 100% paperwork drill out of which there’s no significant accomplishment. If I’ve been a turd for the last six months and management hasn’t said anything, they obviously don’t care. If I’ve been an all star for six months and don’t know it, than that’s 100% my own problem. All the midpoint process does is ensure my copy, paste, and update skills are just as sharp as they were a year ago.

2. Last week included new computer day at work. This week has involved a pretty extensive amount of trying to figure out how my own personal workflows will function in a Windows 11 environment. After two days of hunting and hoping and yelling at this computer, I’m absolutely not loving it. In fact nothing is currently working as seamlessly with this new system as it did with the old one. I’m not saying new tech is necessarily bad, just that when the powers at echelons higher than reality decide it’s time to roll it out, they very rarely consider much beyond “ohhh, new and shiny.” I’m sure this will all be functional at some point in the future, but currently it’s causing no end to aggravation. Truly it’s a death by a thousand cuts.

3. Breakfast. This morning breakfast was a “lower carb” everything bagel and precisely two tablespoons of reduced fat cream cheese. Breakfast used to be a proper bagel, slathered on regular cream cheese, a couple of eggs, cheese, and maybe a bowl of cereal. Sure, that’s the diet that has probably killed me, but for starting the day satiated and relatively happy. Look, I know I can’t go back to eating that way, but it doesn’t mean I’m ever going to be fully satisfied with this “reasonably healthful” approach to food.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Stalled. My quest for more weight loss has been stalled for almost two weeks. I haven’t made any changes from what has worked consistently for the last nine months, but I’ve spent the last 14 days losing and gaining the same pound and a half. I’m trying to be a good sport and going after the 200-pound goal the docs seem to want me to hit… But I’m already sitting at an 1800 calorie a day hard limit and frankly I like eating too much to go restricting that much further. I should also note that I’m prepared to garrote the first person who chimes in and says “you just need to exercise more.” Bugger directly off.

2. New computer day. Wednesday was new computer day at the office. Under most circumstances I’d say that was great. Except the new computer they’ve decided on is a desktop that will live permanently at the office while we take out laptops to live permanently at home. Instead of two work computers it means I now am signed for three separate pieces of equipment. It also means that in order to work between home and the office, I’ll be relying on “the cloud” properly being able to host two decades worth of work product instead of it living on my local drive and simply being backed up to the cloud. I’m not a fan of this for a lot of reasons. Color me curious to see what the response is going to be when our elderly laptops start dying off and someone has to be on the hook for machines that live at home being out of sight and out of mind.

3. Some weeks are busier than others. This one has felt like every time I knock something off my list of things to do, two or three more rise up to take its place. It hasn’t been debilitating, but it has certainly been obnoxious as this trend managed to cross all lines between work and home. It’s the first April in a very long time that hasn’t been entirely consumed by working as an advanced party and event planner. It seems that finally having chucked that one large thing over the side, maybe it’s just a natural effect that 57 small things have come along to eat up that white space on my calendar. 

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Water. The guidance from the medicos is to drink water and then when I think I’ve had enough water to go and have some more. That’s fine. Wonderful. But honestly, if you want me to drink 647 cups of water a day, water should actually have some kind of flavor. I never had any problem drinking copious amounts of tea, or coffee, or gin, but the common factor there was that all three of those things tasted like something instead of just existing as being wet and “good for you.” The amount of things I’ve spent the last nine months doing on the ephemeral promise that it’s good for me yet with no other obvious tangible benefit is honestly just a little bit horrifying.

2. Better living through chemistry. I’m still adjusting to the most recent medication changes. It seems that this round is all about reminding me of the virtue of incremental change, as each day I seem to feel every so slightly better than the day before. The first day or so of the change was downright insufferable and now we’ve moved on to somewhere between annoying and obnoxious. The head fog and general feeling of disaffection is absolutely real. I’m trying to go along and remember that it can take a month or more to really adjust, but frankly sometimes that month really just sucks and it feels marginally better to say it out loud for an audience.

3. All you can eat. I grew up in what I’ll always consider the golden age of all you can eat dining. Within a dozen miles from home we had a Western Sizzlin, a Western Steer, wings at every local fire department on various nights of the week, a Pizza Hut lunch buffet, and a whole damned salad bar at Wendy’s. There were buffets everywhere. I don’t remember them being particularly food safe but I remember them being tasty. I had a dream about a fictitious all you can eat joint that never was – a big neighborhood bar and grill that pulled out all the stops with everything from burritos the size of your head to every carving station imaginable. It was a happy dream… but as it turns out. I’m a little sad that my days of drinking there in this bar of my imagination are over (perhaps temporarily), but that my days of all you can eat are in all likelihood dead and gone forever.

Bait and switch…

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Back in July of last year, when the medical appointments were coming fast and furious, the doc advised me to, among other things, drop 100 pounds. I weighed in at 330 that morning. I can’t argue that I hadn’t been carrying around too much weight for too long. 

At last week’s follow up, I tucked in about 8 pounds short of the goal. I was feeling reasonably proud of myself for not immediately reverting to old habits the moment I started feeling a bit better. 

That’s when the old boy did a bait and switch on me. 

I know we talked about an even hundred, he said, but I want you to take it down another 30 from there. 

Two hundred pounds flat is where they want me now. I’ve been trying to play along with all this like a good little trooper, but fuck me. 

I was close enough to taste a meal that didn’t have to have every ounce of joy sucked out of in an effort to stay under an 1800 calorie daily limit while not being ravenous enough to ponder gnawing off my own arm. And then they moved the fucking goalposts. 

I woke up this morning with 33 pounds left to drop instead of the 3 I was expecting. Bet I’m not just a little bit salty about that.

Of McRib and self-denial…

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In my mind I’m sure that “diet” will always be among the most unpleasant 4-letter words in the English language. Over the last five months, though, I’ve learned a lot by tracking every bite and morsel that’s found its way into my mouth. Calories, macronutrients, I’ve plugged them all into my fancy little nanny app after giving everything a proper weigh and measure. It’s certainly changed how I view a “serving” size… some for the better, but most for the worse. 

The most important thing I’ve learned in tracking everything, however, is that over time I’m found ways to continue eating a fair number of foods I enjoy. Not all of them, of course – a Chipotle burrito and a big slice of my home-made lasagna remain well out of bounds – but I’ve been able to start re-introducing some old favorites. 

For instance, I found that if I scale back hard on breakfast and lighten up a bit on dinner, I can manage to cram in a McRib value meal for lunch.

I know that doesn’t exactly sound like an accomplishment for some people. Hell, the European Union probably doesn’t even consider it food… but I’ve loved the damned thing since I was working the grill at my local McDonald’s way back in the late 1900s. Its arrival each fall is something of a minor personal celebration here.

Yes, the sandwich and fries are a touch high in calories and saturated fat, but not prohibitively so if I tweak the rest of the day’s menu. In my mind at least it’s something well worth doing if only as a reminder that at some point I’ll again exist in world of food beyond variations on baked chicken and brown rice. Sadly, I’ve had to replace the Orange Drink with a Diet Coke. I haven’t yet come up with an acceptable way to offset the calories in a fully loaded soda yet… but it’s a compromise I’m willing to make if it means I get to enjoy the rest.

I wish I could say this process has been some kind of life changing, electrifying wonder experience. The reality is, though, even as I begin slowly adding back foods with flavor, it’s been mostly drudgery. Necessary and probably long overdue drudgery, but none the less, not an experience I’ll spend a lot of time remembering fondly. 

I’ve still got miles to go as the poet said, but I’ve suffered though much longer than I figured I’d stick with it. The real question now that I’ve passed well beyond the halfway mark is how much longer I’ll manage to stick with fairly rigid self-denial. It’s not an activity I’ve ever been particularly well suited for and one that still feels decidedly unnatural. 

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Breakfast. Breakfast has historically been one of my favorite meals. I’d often have breakfast for dinner. Something about the combination of sweet and savory in breakfast foods just hits right. That, of course, was only true when breakfast was some combination of bacon, eggs, waffles, buttery toast, pancakes, gravy and biscuits, French toast… well, you get the idea. Breakfast is now the least motivating of my daily meals. I know I have to do this, but there’s not a power in all of creation that can force me to be happy about it. Sure it’s “healthy,” but Jesus what a cost. 

2. Eye exam. My annual eye exam is tomorrow morning. Based on how wonderfully the rest of the doctor’s appointments I’ve had this year have been going, I’m mentally preparing myself for her to tell me that my eyes are 15 minutes away from falling out of my head or some other dire prognosis. But hey, at least I get to gin up the anxiety again next week to check in with my primary care doc. Let me assure you, reader, I’m straight up not having a good time.

3. The word turned upside down. We have a Republican Party that doesn’t hide its support for Russian imperialism in Europe, an obnoxiously vocal minority of Americans who cheerfully side with Hamas and terrorism, and a country that feels increasingly willing to just let the world fly apart at the seams. I know it’s common for the aged to say things like “I don’t recognize this country anymore,” but I’ll confess I can see how it has become a trope. I’ve spent half my life so far in the 20th century and half of it in the 21st… and it’s my considered opinion that the 21st century is just stupid. 

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Shitshow. There’s a shitshow coming. It’s going to arrive in just about seven weeks. Although I’m nominally facilitating this burgeoning fiasco, you’ll find that I have little or no enforcement power. Sure, I can tell people when something needs to happen, but when they blow through the deadline without so much as noticing, I’m allowed no stick with which to beat them. To be sure, I can consult, encourage, and warn, but my powers of making anyone do anything are entirely fictional. As the walls close in, the best I’ll be able to manage is telling anyone who’s interested that it’s not going to be pretty. About the only tool I have in my kit at this point is to try lowering expectations to the point that anything more than not setting the building on fire will be considered a successful showing. Even managing that feels like a crap shoot. If this thing manages not to fall apart between now and the time the certain goes up, I’ll be entirely surprised… but if it shits the bed, at least I’ll have the pleasure of saying “I told you so.”

2. The equal application of justice. Here’s the thing… I don’t care if you’re the former president, the son of the sitting president, conned a bunch of little old ladies out of their retirement funds, or the crackhead who just knocked over the local liquor store, if there’s sufficient evidence that you have committed a crime to convince a grand jury that indictment is justified, I’m all in favor of the case being brought. I don’t need more information than that. I’ll never understand why that’s a contentious opinion just because the individual indicted happens to be from “your” side of the ideological spectrum. God, but don’t I miss the days when disgraced public figures had the barest degree of shame and would slink off quietly and never be heard from again. File it under the headline of “we were a proper country once,” I guess.

3. Snacks. I used to have proper snacks – chips, crackers, big hunks of cheese, pretzels (both hard and soft), the occasional Little Debbie cake, or quality Amish baked goods from neighboring Lancaster County. My “snacks” now are fruit or if I’m feeling particularly froggy, pre-measured portions of nuts or M&Ms. Have you ever really measured to see how small a “1 ounce serving” of peanuts is or how few M&M’s make the ounce? It’s goddamned embarrassing to even call it a snack. I’m not so much annoyed as I am enraged. There simply aren’t enough herbs and spices in the known universe to make a rice cake or a plum taste as good as a Snickers Bar or properly salted soft pretzel. At this point, I’m not sure if I’m actually doing anything to extend my life or whether it just feels longer because bit by bit we’re extracting every small bit of joy from it.

Not what I signed up for…

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A few months ago, my doctor started hectoring me to schedule an appointment with a nutritionist. The guy cured some recurring foot pain I was having years ago with the power of positive thinking, so I’m usually game for anything he wants to try.

Let me start off by saying I could probably have gotten a cardiology appointment more quickly that I was able to get something scheduled with a local nutritionist. I made the appointment so long ago that I’d honestly forgotten about it. In fact, it wasn’t until my boss mentioned this morning that I was scheduled off this afternoon that I remembered it at all. That’s not the finest hour for my long-term memory, but I made it on time today so at least I have that going for me. 

I’m not sure what the doc expected me to learn. Eat less, exercise more, knock it off with the red meat and gin. I’m perfectly willing to admit intellectually that I should be exercising an hour a day or that I should be eating low-calorie, flavor-free foods. But the simple fact remains that a) That’s not how I want to allocate my limited free time and b) I like foods that don’t taste like someone smeared cottage cheese on cardboard. I’m well aware that I’m taking years off my life… but I’m not at all sure that the cost of adding years is worth what joys I’d be expected to give up.

This all would have been a fine use of an afternoon, except for the part where when I called requesting an appointment with a nutritionist, the nice people at Christiana instead made me an appointment with an endocrinologist. She was pleasant enough, I suppose, but far more interested in sending me off for a round of all the bloodwork than discussing how to make low-fat lasagna that doesn’t taste worse than the box in which the noodles arrive. I’m pretty sure that’s not what my doc or I really had in mind… but she said her office will be happy to refer me to a nutritionist, so I guess I’ll just go ahead and build a whole suite of medical professionals while I’m waiting on that to happen.

Sometimes it’s increasingly difficult to tell if I’m the sane one and the world has gone mad, or if the world is sane and I’ve lost my mind. Maybe it doesn’t make any difference.

I’ve been referred…

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I went into the doctor’s office this morning expecting the normal checkup and regular drubbing for being too fat, too in love with salt, and hating all forms of exercise that aren’t yard work.

I got those things, of course, but I also got three unexpected referrals. The first involves an as yet undetermined amount of physical therapy for a back that never entirely quits hurting. The second is for a dermatologist to take a look at a stubborn bit or rash on my arms that the doc now thinks could be an acquired allergy to one of my medications. The last, well, that’s the one that just adds insult to injury.

The final referral is for a consultation with a nutritionist. Apparently, the idea of most of my collected recipes being directly from the 1950s and 60s is abhorrent and “not at all” recommended.

Yeah, well, they all taste good. Which is inevitably more than I’ll be able to say about whatever diet cardboard with lite vinegar sauce I’m about to have recommended for me. I’ll try to go in with an open mind, but the first time someone tells me cauliflower is an acceptable substitute for bread, pizza crust, or rice, you’ll be able to hear my eyes rolling from wherever you happen to be in the world.

I’m not convinced healthy people really live longer so much as it just feels longer because they’ve sucked every ounce of joy out of living. Anyway, it looks like I’ll be burning off shit tons of sick leave in the near future, so at least I have that to look forward to.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. ​Not hungry. It’s a rare accomplishment but I’ve slid through the last two days being so annoyed that I’m not even hungry. Bowl of cereal for dinner. A cookie and a giant iced tea for lunch. Copious amounts of coffee at all other points on the clock. I’m assuming that’s not one of those healthy diets people keep posting on Facebook but it is what it is.

2. Unity of command. It’s another one of those exciting weeks where I’m not entirely sure which of six people I actually work for. I know who signs my time sheet and who approves my leave requests, those being the most important functions of supervision. Identifying who exactly is supposed to assign and prioritize my work, though, remains a vague bit of prognosticating. If only we had an organizational chart that spelled out clearly who does what to whom.

3. The challenge of being topless. When you climb onto a Jeep with its top and doors removed you leave yourself open to whatever elements come. You also leave yourself exposed to the other people on the road. Cigarettes flicked out of the window of the car in front of you suddenly have a much more present danger than they did when you were buckled up in a sealed, climate controlled machine. It’s also important that the people near you can actually both see every gesture you make and hear whatever it is you’re saying (or singing along with). That’s a helpful bit to remember if you’re prone to criticizing the skills of your fellow motorists in colorful terms… although the guy stopped next to me on the bridge yesterday seemed to particularly enjoy my repeated pleas for the police to just push the mangled vehicles over the side, let the asshats responsible figure out how to fish them out of the Susquehanna, and get traffic moving again.