And tomorrow we diet

There's a little entry here, based on my Saturday activities.

My right knee hurts.  I'm not sure whether to be alarmed or not.  In my backpacking experience, at some point, every joint from my hips down has hurt at some point.  I'm just not sure how to proceed with this particular thing.  I don't know whether to rest or exercise or rest then exercise or what.  I think I'll look for an elastic knee brace later to give it some help.

I'd be more alarmed if my right knee and the muscles just *above* my knee didn't hurt a little too.  Generally, that means this is a minor abuse injury and I just haven't been using those muscles.  If find that a little odd because I've been walking and running regularly.  I guess I'm proving the adage that nothing really prepares you for backpacking up and down mountains other than backpacking up and down mountains.

Either that, or it's time to admit that I'm old.

Maybe it was better when I got winded going up hills -- it slowed me down.  I seem to have gotten over that somewhat, so I can just go and go with few rests.  I guess my knee isn't quite ready for that.

I did two weeks of dieting and I lost no weight.  I know what this means, and I'm not sure if I'd rather just stay at this weight or make the sacrifice to get below it.  See, when I quit dieting at this weight, it was mostly because I wasn't losing anything any more and I was pretty satisfied with the 40 lbs I'd shed.  Also, I've maintained with no problems, proving me theory that I hit a point that works for me.

But I suspect a point 20 lbs below this one would work for me too.  I just need to get past this.  What this requires is going down to 1200 calories a day (I did two months or so of that last July, then went to 1400 briefly and then to 1600).  It's not the sacrifice of the food that's the problem, really, I've just gotten out of the habit of preparing all my own meals, and let me tell you that it's virtually impossible to eat that number of calories and eat all your meals out.  Maybe it's easier if you're not a vegetarian.  I wouldn't know.

There's two big problems:  portion control and mystery food.  Good restaurant food is a total mystery.  I maintain (and everything I know about the restaurant biz agrees with this) that if you knew how many calories were in that food, you wouldn't eat it.  Or, a lot of people wouldn't anyway.  Unless you are lucky enough to become uncomfortably full very early on in your meal, you're going to eat more than 400 calories in a restaurant meal.  Portions are huge -- people don't notice this until they prepare themselves some small meals.  Suddenly it starts to dawn on your that your restaurant portion relatively plain pasta and marinara sauce has 800 calories in it.  

I have some problems when faced with a big plate of pasta.  I can and will eat most of it.  I have the same problem with well made salads -- I will eat every last bit of them because I love them and I know what an ass pain they are to make.  The problem here is that yummy restaurant salads usually contain parmesan cheese (which I also love) or nuts or croutons or good salad dressing or something else generally naughty, calorie wise.

So, like I said, this requires a lot of food preparation and I'm just not mentally there yet.  Also, last time I did this it was summer and I filled up on fruit.  Need I remind everyone that it is not summer now?  This means that I don't have nearly the choices of stuff I might otherwise have, which is a shame because I don't like fruit that much.  I tend to buy one sort of thing one week (mangoes and pineapples and bananas) and then something totally different the next (apples and berries) bouncing around so that I don't start to hate fruit altogether.

I like veggies, but they require more preparation -- for me, this means saladification.  No one except the Iron Chef guy sits down and eats a freaking bell pepper (and even he's grimacing).  Carrots I can eat like that, but not any other vegetable.

I will try Trader Joe's later for interesting frozen/quick veggie things.  Maybe that will save me some effort.  This is one of those times that I desperately wish Tino liked all the same foods as me, but I've never managed to fall in love with anyone who likes all the same foods as me.  That must mean something.

Man, I'm really going on about this.  Part of the problem is that stuff's broken here at work.  I was expecting that, but if I try and work, I'll just get frustrated and pretty soon I'll be making a pest of myself to the people who need my patience to fix what's broken.

D'oh.