< & >

The epiphany was the sum of an equation, the adding up of two realisations.

No. 1: I don’t feel the same in my body — it’s just not as easy, as joyous to run or to pedal my bicycle, exercises I reveled in short months ago. So I opt to run, to bike less often.

No 2.: My face has changed — it’s a full moon again, round rather than waning into a shape more angular, chin and cheekbones a sliver of the shape they were.

The epiphany: something needs to change; something isn’t working. I’m not losing weight even as I’m ostensibly exercising and dieting. Stunningly, I’ve gained 25 pounds over the last 365 days, since early last May. I don’t know when. Probably the gain wasn’t in 2011, when I was training for my first 5K. It’s really been in 2012 that I’ve struggled to keep to healthful rituals. Late last year, I braved to start a business and in the absence of structure and in the presence of oh so much stress (the good kind I confess, the kind that comes with risking to strive for excellence, success, happiness on independent terms), I ate more and I moved less.

Not all is lost. Not all I lost is gained, that is. I’m still thirty pounds less than I weighed when I first started a healthful regimen, Weight Watchers and gentle exertions. 

Tonight, less and greater than (< & >) has a new interpretation: I’m less healthful that I’ve been but I’m greater than the weight I’ve gained, the mistakes I’ve made. I can  —  I will!  —  start all over again — first thing tomorrow morning. 

White Swan squash is the sweet, delicate partner of the dark acorn, that strong, sturdy gourd so associated with fall. The White Swan, though, is still a marvel, an unusual varietal. That White Swan I first awed at (I’ve never seen a white acorn before, I said to my own partner), then selected from the bin in a Port Perry grocery was almost lissom, pure of form as well as of colour. 

A balletic vegetable, an understudy rarely to grace tables (this, based on a quick search of the internet), the White Swan is a princess I crowned with a tablespoon of maple syrup, Canadian gold, studded with Autumn Spice, a blend (chiles, onion, garlic, spices, maple sugar & extract, sugar, sea salt) mister nabbed at Spice Merchants when last we were in Ann Arbor.

The beauty of the White Swan was then tested in an oven pre-heated to 375 degrees; her tribulation was, perhaps, forty-five minutes in duration. 

An enchantment: baked White Swan squash served with pork tenderloin that was, too, marinated in maple syrup and Autumn Spice (as well as a half-teaspoon of olive oil).

(The pork tenderloin was cooked, the glaze carmelised, on our George Foreman grill, a staple method of meat preparation at this address.)

Mister, averse to squash, tasted the White Swan and noted her flesh was, as you might expect, sweeter, more mild than the rest. Almost potato-y, he said.

Too, a fairy-tale ending termed as nutritional information:

A cup and a half of White Swan squash so readied is just 

224 calories, 58 grams of carbohydrate, 0 grams of fat, 3 grams of protein

and

1 Weight Watchers PointsPlus. 

(This, the constant caveat: nutritional information based on the specific brands and exact quantities that I used, that I tracked.)

All banalities: how the body is nourished, what foods in what quantities; how the body is strengthened through resistance and momentum, strength training and running. One’s life, and how it’s changed, in a series of blog entries – recipes, exertions, occasional exhortations – akin measuring existence in Prufrockian coffeespoons, the Sisyphean. A constant mess of dishes and sentences and sweaty gym clothes: www.lessandgreaterthan.tumblr.com. Yes, another caveat about my still-nascent efforts, this. And a promise: I’ll try to render these banalities with artistry, to swing between things quotidian like a trapezist in Cirque de Soleil. (This entry is a response to my last, that detailing a day typical, a simple dish requiring no recipe, no recipe at all.)

Just as a zebra is neither black nor white, I’m adamant food need not be either nourishing or scrumptious, good for you or good to eat, but both in extreme — the zebra’s black and the zebra’s white — to be in our repertoire of recipes. Mister and I, thus, have become avid readers of Cooking Light and Eating Well magazines in the two years since I earnestly committed to weight-loss. We’ve not ever had a dud from either, he observes. This, a curried chicken salad we adapted from an Eating Well recipe, was definitely not a disappointment.

(With apologies for the abysmal cell quality photo.)

Our riff on the recipe:

six tablespoons plain, non-fat Greek yogourt
two tablespoons plain, non-fat yogourt
perhaps half a teaspoon of agave syrup
one tablespoon Penzey’s sweet curry powder
four small apples, cubed (or rectangled, concave and convex circled, whateverwhathaveyoued)
one half cup dried cherries
one quarter cup slivered almonds, toasted
two chicken breasts, cooked, chunked

mix first four ingredients
spoon next two through
toast almonds 
cook chicken
mix last ingredients, almonds & chicken, with the first
serve with greens, in pitas, on gorgeous fresh bread — do what you will with the deliciousness

The nutritional information for two servings or half the recipe (without the fistfuls of mixed greens with which we ate our curried chicken salad):

539 calories, 39 grams of carbohydrate, 3 grams of fat, 63 grams of protein

&

12 Weight Watchers PointsPlus.

(Nutritional information based on the specific brands and exact quantities that we used, that I tracked. Nutritional information, thus, not scientific: a caveat.)

In my efforts to become less than, to lose weight again (over one hundred pounds in sum), too I’m trying to become greater than I am: physically and emotionally healthful. Since I’ve taken a holistic tact to my diet, late in 2009, I’ve lost more than fifty pounds — though I’ve struggled the last year, 2011, my weight a yo-yo on a tight string. I’ve lost and gained the same ten pounds or so again and again. Making real, lasting change, opting day after day for a healthful lifestyle, isn’t child’s play. It isn’t easy. 

To foster physical health, I’ve made a practice of choosing gorgeous whole and fresh foods and of swallowing at least eight glasses of water, a multivitamin, vitamin C, B and D daily. (I believe nourishment comes from food, but I also believe in supplementation intended to lessen the risk of sickness, colds for instance, and chronic disease.)  I use Weight Watchers and SparkPeople to track my food intake, my nutritional successes. And failures: I’ve been a binge eater since I was eight. I struggle still, in my mid-thirties, with the urge to numb myself with family packs of potato chips, I admit.

Too, I’ve made a ritual of running, three or four or five exertions each week, having done an independent learn-to-run program, a sixteen-week run/walk training regimen that started with 1:1 intervals, one minute of walking and one minute of running. I ran my first 5K, an act not long ago unimaginable, on August 27, 2011. But, since that date I’ve averaged, perhaps, one run each week. After that height, I’ve lost momentum like a kite twisted in a tree.

To focus on emotional wellbeing, I’ve sometimes made a ritual of morning pages, as Julia Cameron suggests in her books, The Writing Diet and The Artist’s Way. Too, I’m an advocate of psychodynamic psychotherapy, intent as I am to train to become a psychotherapist — eventually. In the midst, the meantime, I’ve made seeing my own therapist less a practice than perhaps would be to my benefit.

Less and greater than, the mathematical symbols my grade four teacher told me swallowed numbers smaller and larger. This entry, my equation. The sums, positive and negative, of my somewhat privated efforts to live better. I’m hopeful that this public blog might encourage exponential success, mine and maybe yours — if you, too, are intent to lose weight, to change your lifestyle. If nothing else, to blog might keep me accountable to others, my friends, as well as myself.