More re Weight Watchers

Oh, a couple more things.

Differences: 

First of all, I think there is a lot more discussion and conversation in the meeting here - partly because the meeting is longer, partly because there are fewer people, and partly because our leader really encourages it, and goes around the room and tries to give everyone a chance to talk.

Secondly, where people in my meetings in the States were always talking about going out to eat, and I was thinking who goes out to eat that much? here the people are always talking about cooking, cooking, cooking, and I think, who cooks that much? They all know the names of things they all cook and they all cook them a lot, and even if they live alone they cook, and they seem to cook at least two meals a day - i.e. they're not having sandwiches or cereal or other things that I eat at a lot of my meals (salads, a piece of fruit, soup out of a can or a box, whatever) - they are cooking.

The cupboard:

I mentioned that there are cereals and grains etcetera. More specifically, in the main compartment that is all more or less at eye level, and all behind one door:

on the top shelf there are cereals as in breakfast cereals (the boys' different kinds of cold cereal and granolas, and my oats for making oatmeal)

shelf 2: whole-grain rice, white rice, parboiled rice, wild rice, and several kinds of beans

shelf 3: packaged weight watcher soups (they come in little packets here, just add water, it's basically like a little broth with some pieces of veggies and things - I like it a lot and so does my mother-in-law), also canned weight watcher soups, and some other weight watcher thingies like weight watcher chocolate bars

shelf 4, not really eye level anymore, miscellany such as peanut butter (fortunately not something I go out of control over), extra bottles of walnut oil or something like that - I couldn't tell you exactly what's on that shelf)

***********

And finally, after putting up that post a little while ago, I got inspired and went and pulled out my clipboard where I had put all the things from my Weight Watcher wall at home - and I took them off the clipboard and put the rest of them up on the wall here. Here's what there is:

- two postcards from Pam, who was my leader in Bloomington when I made goal weight (Mary was my leader when I made lifetime I think, and anyway Mary has been my leader this last while and was also substituting for Judy the first day I walked in in January of 2004, so I've got continuity there; of course Judy was my first longtime leader except when Mary substituted): the postcards say "Hang in there, you are almost to goal! Have a wonderful week. Pam" and "Congrats on reaching your goal weight! Pam"

- an article from Psychology Today, May/June 2008, called "With dieting, Success is in the Details" all about how to enjoy the particularity and the flavors of what you are eating so as to enjoy what you eat more, savor it, and not feel the need to go chasing after more

- My list of "How will I stick with my program, no matter what?" 

- my weight watcher inspired list in big blue type:

- eat wisely

- think first

- move more

- attend weekly meetings

and then added by me:

- sleep plenty

- my list of "ten reasons to lose/maintain weight" including "so I can run" and "so my knees won't give out" and "so I have more choice in clothes" and "so I can fit into the world better (airplane seats, restaurant booths, hospital gowns, etcetera)" and "so I can learn not to just *use* food and learn the other self-care lessons that are required" and "so I can hear what other women are *really* talking about and *really* thinking" and "so I can lead a Weight Watchers meeting someday" and "so I can live a long time and feel good when I'm old" (there are several more - 14 altogether in this list of ten)

Also on the wall: my list of ways in which I have already changed my habits and thinking; also "10 things to do to make your marriage better" (I know, I know, sort of a different category, but also worth working on!)

Weight Watchers in Berlin - found myself a good meeting, losing the weight

I promised Mary, my Wednesday morning Weight Watchers group leader in Bloomington, that I would send her updates on Weight Watchers - how is it different, how is it the same - here in Berlin. (I was supposed to write to her about the Weight Watchers in Oakland I went to this summer, too, but never managed.)

OK, first of all, super briefly, here are the big differences:

Here, fruit is zero points. At home, it ain't. I'm eating tons of fruit!

Here, meetings are officially 45 minutes long and often go longer. There, they're 30 minutes and stick to it.

Here, there's only the flex plan (count your points); no core plan (where you are more limited in kinds of food but don't count points). On the other hand, they have 18 "Sattmacher" ("full makers; satisfied makers" - i.e. things that satisfy you) - things you can eat as much of at a meal as makes you comfortably satisfied (not stuffed!) I haven't really started using those yet. There are carbohydrate ones and protein ones. I'll tell you more about that later.

The number of points you get seems to be about or exactly the same. However, you don't get the 35 extra points to play with per week; instead, you can save up 5 of your basic points per day and use them later in the week. (Maybe this is because the fruit is zero points?)

I think those are the main differences.

Oh yes, and you have to wear your shoes when you weigh in!

And after you hit goal you have 2 kilos grace weight rather than 2 pounds (2 kilos being 4.4 pounds). (Because of the shoes???)

***********

So much for the thing in general. Now about me:

I flailed, flailed, flailed at the beginning (starting to sound familiar). There's a very convenient meeting place near us, it's almost at the end of the Kurfürstendamm, the Causeway of the Electors, nearest to us - on the bus it's 10 minutes from here. Very convenient. And rather than a meeting in a church or some kind of public place as many of them here are, it's a little storefront dedicated to Weight Watchers, run by two women together - and they have 6 or 8 or 10 meetings a week. But most of them are in the evenings, and I didn't want to do that: a. I'm too heavy in the evenings, and b. I'm usually doing stuff with the family.

So I hit on Saturday mornings. First I went at 8:45, which has its advantages because I could be home and do family stuff. But I have to get up awfully early to go for a good jog first, which I like to do.

So then I tried 10:30 Saturday morning, which was nice because it was a much smaller group, easier to connect and talk and be part of the group - and I didn't have to get up so terribly early - but on the other hand it was the middle of the day before I rejoined the family.

So then I didn't go for a couple of weeks, and finally I hit on the Tuesdays. That's also nice because it connects up with my Weight Watcher beginnings, Judy Pennington's Tuesday morning group that I went to with my buddies Boo and Sue. 

So here's what I did:

- went on a Tuesday

- declared it was a new beginning, so nobody could sneer at the very large number on the scales

- had breakfast first, because it turns out I'm going to have to weigh in every week, not just once a month which is what I would have to do in the States as a lifetime member if I get in under the limit the first week - if I skip breakfast first once I have to keep doing it because otherwise it throws off the comparative weight of course! - and if I skip breakfast once every week I am really messed up in terms of rhythm and balance.

Then, after that first Tuesday morning meeting, I came home and:

- completely rearranged the cupboard, putting the sweets (cookies, chocolate, cakes) and nuts and raisins, all that kind of thing, down below - it's two shelves on the bottom that have their own separate door; and putting all the grains and cereals and pastas and rice at eye level, and below that whatever else is in the cupboard. So now when I reach in for my morning oats for oatmeal, or I reach in midday to make Felix some pasta or something, I am not staring right into peanuts or cashews or chocolate or cookies. 

- reread a thing I got off the web called something like the 20 healthiest foods for under a dollar

- supported by the cupboard rearrangement and the web document reading, went shopping and bought no cookies, no chocolate, and lots of local seasonal vegetables (enormous leeks very cheap! enormous turnips I think they are also very cheap!), filling my shopping cart and spending half what I usually had been spending

- came home and put some of the things on the wall that I used to have: my big piece of paper where I keep track every day of whether I did my stretching, whether I took my pills, how many steps I took, and any other projects and agendas I have for the day (the first few days I then wrote: do not go over points! and that was helpful) - along with some other inspirational things I write on the wall. Still need to put up some more things - some of my lists (why am I doing this? how can I stay on track?).

Then, for the next week, I proceeded to REALLY stay on track. If you read my first post, you'll know that I lost big-time weight for 3 or 4 days. In fact, I can say it now because I have regained the proper humility, when I lost a kilo a day for the first 3 days I was already worrying about how awkward and embarrassing it was going to be to go into the meeting the next Tuesday and explain how I had lost 7 kilos in 7 days. What would they say? What would I say?

Well, it didn't turn out to be a problem. I weighed in at 1.8 kilos less on week 2 of my new start. (And for the record, week 3 weighed me in at 0.3 kilos less than week 2.) So it's still rocky, I'm still not just sliding down the weights.

Here's the thing about me: as I was telling my grown-up son the other day, from the time I wake up till about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, I'm generally eating because I want to. It comes from inside me. Then, if there is some kind of a dinner, I eat it because it is expected - but in fact I could easily skip it! So therefore since it seems an awful lot easier to skip what others are expecting of me than to not eat when something inside me is screaming eat, EAT; and since if I don't skip one or the other I will definitely gain, not lose, weight, I would rather skip dinner (I eat wonderful breakfasts and lunches and get all kinds of fabulous nutrition and check off all the boxes in my weekly points tracker).

The downsides about this are that it kind of puts a spanner in the family-dinner works. Don't know how to figure that one out. Also that it's tricky when we're invited out.

Also, useful for me to know and register: the inner thing screaming "eat, EAT" is a lot calmer and quieter or shuts up entirely when I have had plenty of sleep. Which is why I do try awfully hard to get plenty of sleep, even though it really eats into our social life and my time with husband and with son #1. 

Also, as I have intimated before, sometimes an enormous amount of exercise is counterproductive for me - if I don't plan well, I end up eating so much afterwards that the scale goes the wrong way. And in general, in the long run, if I have to choose between sleep and exercise sleep is better. But I do try to arrange things so it is not either/or!

one other thing our Rosh Hashana celebration did

sorry, I just thought of this - I think it was also a way for us to continue our identity as a family in this uprooted manifestation of ourselves - we may be in a completely other place with different cityscape, difficult language (for three of us), long way to the store, friends from home all not here and still working gingerly on the new set - but at least we have our own family and we are who we were, and we do things we did - the new part was that we were hosting it here, that it was a smaller group, that we read the Bible - but the familiar part was that we did it at all, that it was festive, that we said the prayers.

lost my blog for a day!

yesterday morning I was finally going to write my Rosh Hashana post and then I woke up to a message from google saying my blog was suspected of being a spam blog!

Specifically, they suspect you of a spam blog if the blog's content is repetitive, vague, or irrelevant. I felt like saying, excuse me for reporting my life the way it is!!!!!

However, I went through the administrative steps required of me to prove I am a real, actual, individual person and not a machine and so now I get to post again. My friend Ellen told me it might have been because there are other blogs with the same name.

Rosh Hashana in Berlin

Rosh Hashana! I've been wanting to write about our Rosh Hashana and tonight at sundown Yom Kippur starts, so it's now or never.

If we'd been in Bloomington we probably would have gotten together with our neighbors, several of them Jewish/non-Jewish hybrid families like us, and done something. Something lovely. Before we moved to Bloomington we never celebrated Rosh Hashana at all, but in the first weeks we were in Bloomington we were invited by the fabulous Jenny'n'Michael neighbors to join their group of families who celebrated together. And it was a wonderful thing to be taken in there in that early, hard, somewhat lonely time in Bloomington.

So here we are in the early, hard, somewhat lonely time in Berlin. But now we celebrate Jewish holidays almost as a matter of course. That group in Bloomington is basically the reason why my kids consider themselves pretty Jewish. Culturally. Or something. It's still constantly up for debate and definition. Being pretty much unreligious, and culturally Baptist being a relatively unavailable category, they do feel a belonging as Jewish. (Interesting conversation last night with their cousin who grew up here in Germany, has a Jewish *mother* unlike them so theoretically gets a better chance, but at this point anyway does not feel Jewish at all.)

Anyway, I thought, our group isn't here, our people that we celebrate with aren't here, so let's go to the temple for services, something we do not do at home. Sister-in-law J had been saying she was interested too, to go with her baby and her partner, and I thought we could maybe take along the boys' cousin. But then my own family rebelled, essentially for reasons of cultural sensitivity. The synagogues here are a little touchy about people coming to ogle and watch, be tourists. Understandably. Jews are a little bit of a curiosity in this country I guess, to go along with the more sinister underlying worry and fear. (The Jewish preschool around the corner from us has a police officer on duty all the time, patrolling in front.)

So my family thought we'd be basically tourists, voyeurs, and we had no place there. (There are I think 6 or 8 congregations here and online I had found the little one that is kind of progressive, where I thought we might be welcomed.) So it was on me.

And here's the interesting part: even though there was some tussling with the kids because I decided what and how we were doing things while they were away during the day, and communication was not perfect, and basically they were out playing soccer beyond the time when I wanted them home - even though there was that, and the evening ended up being a little much for them in terms of reading and talking - it was wonderful! 

As you know if you've been reading this blog, I've been flailing and unfocused and not knowing what to do. I wasn't really having dinner myself because of weight watchers the next morning, but I pulled together a lovely dinner for the family if I do say so myself, with lots of support from dear hubby, but even more so, it was festive, with one of the umpteen starched white bedsheets from the closet as a tablecloth (no tablecloths; also the sheet doesn't look quite as good as it did before), and candles, and I found the prayers on the web (didn't bring all our books and things), and what we'd never done in Bloomington, I found the Bible readings that go along with the day and we sat down and read them!

My children, not being Baptist missionary children, have had a childhood somewhat different from mine, and strange to say they aren't used to sitting down every day and reading the Bible as a family. (Felix was shocked when I said we were going to read - he said, do we have a Torah? It turns out we brought two Good News Bibles (one of them a Study edition) - since we Christians include the Torah in our Bible then yes, we do have a Torah.)

So we read:

Genesis 21, where Isaac is born to Abraham and Sarah

Samuel 1:1 to 2:10, where Hannah prays for a child, says she will dedicate him, has Samuel, and then her prayer following that, and finally

Numbers 29:1-6, which has a lot of numbers

Then we had the family meeting we had for some reason not been able to have the previous night (this was Monday and we usually have them on Sundays).

The kids were not thrilled about sitting down to read but they did like the festive table, and it was a lovely evening, hubby and I thought. This is the kind of thing where I don't flail but it makes sense to me to do; I can focus and make it happen. And even though I don't see us sitting down to read the Bible all the time I'm so glad we did it this time, and it was interesting to talk about the readings, and the context, and the background, and the stories. Also about the fact that my family did this every day when I was growing up - this is strange to the kids. 

That was Monday night of last week, first night of Rosh Hashana.

Night #2 we had more of the family - the baby niece and her parents, along with nephew #1.

The sheet/tablecloth was almost clean again, though in no way starchy like night #1.

Candles were out, table was enlarged, food was festive.

We did the prayers again, though the complication was that I had been unable to find a Hebrew/German set on the web (we had Hebrew/English for ourselves the night before). So for the German relatives we did our best to translate but it was tricky. (Sis-in-law remembered all the prayers from growing up and other celebrations in years gone by but we were trying to interpret and explain for her partner; we had a hard time with "repentance" but finally husband came in from the kitchen and said it was Buße [that is by the way the religious translation; the everyday word is "Bedauern", but then again, that is more for "regret", since "repentance" itself is a more religious word I would say].)

There you have it - our Rosh Hashana in Berlin. Here's what I think it did for us:

for me, gave me focus for a couple of days, something I could accomplish, pull together, care about, and do well. Sorely needed!

for husband and his sister, a sense of cultural belonging that could connect them back to their family of origin and that they could share forward with their kids.

for the kids, something to be annoyed by, but finally they do love the festive nature and enjoy the family get-together and, though they might deny it, the prayers I think, some parts of which are now very familiar to them - and for Felix specifically, since he is having Jewish religion classes in school it all connects and make sense.

for the baby, something to start to know. For her father, a new experience and exposure to some of his partner's traditions.

for our nephew, we wanted to also bring him in to become familiar with the celebration but he got here too late for the prayers and we didn't do the Bible readings the second night because there was too much else going on, I had to leave for a phone meeting, baby had to get home to bed, there was a belated birthday celebration . . . 

Not sure how much repenting actually happened. We are majoring in the form here, content still mostly to come, though at least we talk about it.

On to the next. Felix's religion teacher says he really shouldn't go to school tomorrow. He and I were talking about whether he might do a half-day fast, which apparently is what you do when you're his age.

finding my stride? the jog blog

oh I'm not having a very good day. It's 4:30ish p.m. in Berlin on Friday afternoon as I start writing this, a holiday here because it is the day of German Unity, and my children have united themselves in getting on a bus to Hamburg to visit their grandparents (my mother-in-law is much better, thank you), and their father has united himself with his bicycle (I am still almost completely divided from mine, though the built-in lock whose key was lost, thereby grounding the bicycle for a month, has now been sawed off - but that's another story) to go check out the Holocaust Memorial and, in the former East Berlin which is of course now part of the great glorious united capital, the German Museum.

That all sounds fine of course, but we started off on the wrong foot this morning and it has taken me all day to try to get back. I want to call sister-in-law #2 who had hip replacement surgery day before yesterday; I want to read more things online and start more books; I want to write e-mail to various dear friends, and call Cynthia, and think more about my novel and how planning the novel is and is not like planning a trip for my family (really!) - but I thought maybe a jog log blog would be the right thing for me right now, sort of emotionally neutral and yet finally very positive, so here goes.

Since the jog I last wrote about there have been several short jogs. And then there was yesterday's. But patience! In order:

last Saturday, 54 minutes, glorious weather, first half hour or so with hubby and then a little farther on my own

Tuesday, 50 minutes, 7400 steps (a little slow, should have been 7500 or more), cold, really quite cold, the first half hour or so. My fingers were very cold. The main interesting part was that I was jogging back along Berkaer Straße (which leads past a post office, which I had vaguely noticed, and several sort of shopping areas, and two big supermarkets, and some administrative centers) - anyway, I had jogged out along Berkaer and was jogging slowly back home and passed a woman who sort of said to me as I jogged past her, are you going to go past the post office? I wasn't actually exactly sure, I had a vague memory of having passed a large yellow building or rather a large building with bright yellow boxes and signs (generally the giveaway in this country), but I wasn't sure, so I said yes, but then I said where is it? She said up there, and pointed. So I said yes. She said nothing. So I said, did you have something you'd like me to mail for you? (I actually said "should I "reinschmeißen" something for you", i.e. should I throw something in for you.) She said yes, please, that would be fantastic. I took the postcard she held out, said happy to do it, and off I went. Then she called something after me, and I had to turn around to hear: You see, she said, I'm going to the school (I guess I was supposed to know where the school was and how that would prevent her, but it didn't matter to me, I was happy to jog the thing forwards). 

So I took the postcard along, I decidedly and assiduously refrained from looking at it because that would have been rude and robbing her of her privacy, and I tossed it into the mailbox (I did look to see whether it needed to go in the "Berlin zip codes" slot or the other one, and to tell you the truth I don't now remember which it was), and I jogged happily home having struck one for humanity and connectedness - in truth I did nothing of the sort, she made the gesture but I was tickled to be part of it!

That was Tuesday. I was warm by the time I got home. Also after that I went to Weight Watchers, and all was fine, and I will post about that as soon as I can.

Then came Thursday, which is yesterday, and here is what I am very pleased about: I jogged for 120 minutes. 2 hours, hooray. 17728 steps, again a little slow, should hve been 18000 (or put another way, that distance should only have taken me 118 minutes - but again, if I put it that way, wasn't all THAT slow - for me).

And Diane, no butterfly lanes for me this time, or red pine paths, or cicada ways. I did finish up with a trot out and back along the Path of Everlasting Woods, but before that I went jogging through city streets, very decidedly urban. 

First I jogged Felix to school (he was on his bike, as usual; he went an hour later than usual because they were going on an outing and not to class), then up and along Hubertusallee and curving around a couple streets and hitting Bismarckallee above Johannaplatz, very pleased that I knew where I was and headed out along it thinking to go towards town, and finally finding myself back at the crossing where Felix always hits the button to get a green light to cross - I'd gone the wrong way, towards home and not towards town.

Got myself turned around, went urbanly jogging, through Rathenauplatz where the huge sculpture in the middle of the 6- or 8-way juncture is 2 large sixties-style cars embedded in concrete (one nose down, one pointing out), across the S-Bahn (Schnellbahn, = fast train - it's the other intraurban train system here besides the underground U-Bahn) tracks, and then along those same tracks for a long way along Seesener Straße (just somebody's name I think) and then curling back, just before hitting Hohenzollerndamm (Causeway of the House of Hohenzollern), crossing over Westphalian Street and Brandenburg Street at some point, and crossing the Ku'damm, the Kurfürstendamm (Causeway of the Electors!), Berlin's once-beloved and touristy and now rather rundown but still touristy artery leading to the Memorial Church and the zoo - anyway, I crossed the Ku'Damm a couple of times and I won't go into all the streets I went down and up because there were a lot of the time, but I thought as I jogged, I do have to reassure Diane it wasn't all butterflies, red pines, and cicadas this time. 

I was pumped. I was psyched. I was actually kind of tired by the end but not so tired I couldn't have gone another half hour or hour, I'm pretty sure, if there had been somebody to cheer me on. So I came home and googled runs in Berlin, and there's a 10K a week from Sunday, and a 9K through the woods in November, and another 9K through the woods on New Year's Eve and a 4K through the Brandenburg gate on New Year's Day - and Jenny might fly in from Bloomington to join me in the spring for the half-marathon in April or the 25K in May!

One at a time. I asked sister-in-law #1 about doing the 10K with me next weekend; she joined a friend for the last 8K of the Berlin marathon last weekend (jumping in as an unregistered runner is called "schwarz laufen" - "running black" - a takeoff on "schwarz fahren" I'm pretty sure, which is riding the bus or subway without a ticket) (fyi I'm quite sure this is not a racist expression but referring rather to going under the radar, i.e. unseen, i.e. in the dark . . .?) - ANYway, I asked dear s-i-l #1 and she was a little dube, also because she might be traveling down to visit s-i-l #2 at that very time, who will still be in the hospital recovering from her hip replacement surgery. So we shall see. 

Thank you so much for listening. I'm pleased about yesterday's jog. And Susan, inspirer of my pedometer, I can tell you that the total on the pedometer yesterday was 28981. I think I might have done more one day in Berkeley in the summer - it was Max and Kate's last night before going back to Bloomington, and after jogging and walking I guess during the day we went out for sushi at night. Felix was on his crutches still, and the first place we went was closed to kids as of 8 p.m, so we were going to go much further, so some went home for the car to drive him and get the wheelchair I think, while others of us just walked and walked up to the gourmet ghetto. That night I also walked around the block with Max for a little while before going in for the night, to have a little one-on-one chat and PUSH THE NUMBERS UP FURTHER. And yet, and yet - I gained weight that day in Berkeley.

Yesterday, post-jog, which all by itself of course pushed the pedometer numbers pretty high, I also walked to the grocery store and back with my weight vest on, and walked up and down the stairs a bunch of times, and walked over to the main building of this institute and back for a fancy dinner for the fellows and their families. And I didn't gain weight. but I might be today.

Feeling so much better now. Time to call my little sis-in-law.

Lost and Found: Found Poetry

This is the most wonderful thing I've seen on Sarah Palin. I found it in Slate magazine yesterday. Please do click over and check it out.

The poetry of Sarah Palin (from Slate magazine):

http://www.slate.com/id/2201342/