August | 2015 | BulgingButtons

August 22, 2015
by BulgingButtons 4 Comments

One Week Down (not quite) and a Million Weeks to Go

Hello my dear readers. I’m sure you’ve been waiting on the edge of your seats to find out all about the visit I paid to the nutritionist last week. Well, here it is in a nutshell: it didn’t suck. I expected it to, and I was pleasantly surprised.

Some reasons why it didn’t suck:

She was nice.
She asked me what I like.
She DID NOT make me hop on the scale first thing.
She DID NOT make me ban anything from my diet.
She asked me where my motivation was on a 1-10 scale and was fine with my completely honest 7.
She DID NOT ask me to keep a food diary.
She showed me specific numbers from my most recent blood work and explained how my diet affects those numbers.
She DID NOT treat me like an idiot.
She took her time explaining things to me and answering my questions.
She was nice.

Honestly, I knew some of what she shared but I learned some new things too. I came away armed with some strategies that are totally do-able and somehow that 7 has ticked over to at least an 8. And yes, I did get on the scale before I left, because I wanted a starting point. I made a follow-up appointment too, and so far, so good. I have a feeling that appointment will go well.

August 20, 2015
by BulgingButtons Leave a comment

Hello Zambia

It’s always such a nice surprise to peek at the blog stats page and find that a visitor from some unexpected place has stopped by. Today that place is Zambia. Now I’m fully aware that it doesn’t mean that some wonderful person from Zambia has actually read this blog, it might be that someone with an IP address from there is phishing, but I like to imagine otherwise. I know that real people in many parts of the world have actually read my words, and I find that remarkable.

The world has definitely shrunk since I was a kid. I remember having a pen pal in elementary school, and we would write about once a month. I lived in the Northeast U.S. and she lived in Puerto Rico. It seemed so far away, and so exotic. The thing that struck me, though, was how similar our lives were. We both wrote about school and family and friends. I imagine most of our readers in “exotic” locales have the same interests and concerns as the rest of us.

Right now one of those concerns is trying to follow my nutritionist’s advice. Yes, I’m at it again. Now the focus is on lean protein and healthy fats, with many vegetables and few carbs. So far, so good, but it’s only been a couple of days. Still, I feel like I’m hitting a reset button somewhere inside my body, so I’m not craving as much garbage food. I wonder if people in Zambia have food addictions? Do they have Hot Tamales candy? Probably not, but I’m sure there are other things they deal with.