Nutrition Class III

[howeird]

Tonight's class was such a total load of crap I'm planning on dropping out after the next session. I would drop out now, except the next session is the reason I signed up in the first place - it'll be a tour of a grocery store from the nutrition point of view.

The whole class was spent on touchie-feelie crap. Eating for confort, eating from stress, eating when something's eating you. I'm not sure which bothered me the most - the fact that the nutritionist is convinced that everyone overeats because of psychological factors, or the fact that the rest of the class actually did.

I eat because food tastes good. I eat the wrong things because that's the stuff which tastes the best.

As I've said before, if I'm angry or stressed or bored or need comfort, I'll bang on the piano.

She had told us at the first class that this session would feature a guest speaker. I was hoping it would be that very hot chick who teaches the class in the next classroom.

Boy was I surprised.

At about 7 pm, in comes, sideways, a man who looked to be about 6'5" in all directions. I'm guessing 500 lbs.

He was there to talk about how he lost almost 100 pounds. He's practicing meditation. He's learned to savor each bite of food.

Let me just say I was not inspired. Okay, it takes an enormous amount of courage for a guy this size to get up in front of a group and talk. But really, after his talk it felt like someone had thrown a wet blanket on the class. It was about as effective as having Evil Kneevil teach the motorcycle safety class. Or inviting Darth Vader to speak at a father's rights symposium. Gag me.

From class I went to Safeway to buy some groceries, and spent a lot of time in the butter aisle, reading labels. I was hoping to see some merit in the nutritionist's suggestion that butter is better than margerine, but the cholesterol alone was enough to kill it for me. The fats didn't help, either. I ended up getting Promise, which has none of the bad stuff except the same amount of sodium as all the others.

Comments

[figmo.livejournal.com]

Silly question OTD: Why are you taking this class?

It sounds like every other weight loss program I've come across where they assume you're overweight because you've got emotional eating issues. Like you, I don't eat out of emotion. I eat because my blood sugar is in the toilet, and like you I prefer to eat foods that taste good.

[howeird]

Good question. It's a longish story. When I went to get her to sign off on my application to have gastric bypass surgery, she assumed this is something this not-as-fat-as-he-could-be guy had his heart set on. She was going to just sign my paper and get rid of me. She is vehemently opposed to the surgery because people do die from complications, and it severely limits the nutrients the body can absorb, good and bad. She's one of these Luddites who thinks diet and exercise can cure the world. And she's one of those rare Ashkenazim who got the high metabolism gene.

So she had only allocated 5 minutes for our meeting, instead of the half hour which I expected for some good information. I insisted on her telling me why she objected, and giving me a viable alternative.

In a rush, she gave me the diet and exercise line, and then she gave me a Food Plan™ to follow. Since it takes months for Kaiser to approve bariatric surgery applications, I figured I would give it a try. When I got home and read through it, the plan looked seriously good. It was basically stuff I was eating anyway, minus the three scoops of light ice cream every night. The portions were actually larger than some of the frozen dinners I was used to.

Then she phoned the next day to say if I was really interested in learning more, she was offering this class, starting in a couple of weeks. So I signed up.

The class was postponed for a month. By the time class started I'd lost 30 lbs on the Food Plan™. It would probably be more if I got more exercise.

I was hoping she knew her stuff, being fairly young and not more than a couple of years out of school. My experience with medical people is the more recently they graduated, the more they had to learn to get their certs. It's been true of my diabetes care people and cardiologist.

But she's the exception. She doesn't believe in the genetic component in chronic disease, and she doesn't have any background in chemistry. She's been calling me the Rocket Scientist because I asked her a simple 6th grade question on the first night of class - what's the diff between simple and complex carbs. Her answer was basically "that's not my department". She isn't a scientist, and doesn't know how to think like one.

The short answer is she's hella cute, Jewish and single.
;-)