Wednesday Weigh In - Starting A New Year Edition

Okay, for the last month and a bit between Thanksgiving and New Years, I tried less and less hard to keep on the GF diet. I'd done a whole month on, then most of the month after that, and I had proven to myself that it is something useful and healthful to myself--and then the holidays happened and I was doing okay until Cooking Making Day. And Cookie Swap Day. And I decided that Family Traditions going back to years before I was born are more important than feeling at my absolute best through the holidays, so I made cookies. And I ate them. And they were as delicious as I remembered.

At first, they were excellent because of what they were--we traditionally make Tollhouse Chocolate Chip, Oatmeal Scotchies, Peanutbutter Thumbprint and Sugar Cookies*. And we made all of those in one massive pile of cookie making that went from 4pm to 2am and it was like old times. 

And then, as we ate our ways through them and the gluten started making me feel baseline funky again, and I saw how they were affecting me, they made me really want to go back on the Diet and then figure out how to make the same cookies in a GF way. So over the next year, regardless of how well I manage to stay 100% on the Diet**, I'll be trying out various GF recipes that claim to be the same, and I'll document them here. It'll help me totally relearn baking, which has been an annoyance to me--I mean, I've been baking since I was 8 on my own, and since I was 5 or 6 helping my mom, and now all of a sudden I don't have that instinctual knowledge of how it works--GF baking is way different and a lot more...chemistry than regular baking. So I have to learn it all over again, and Cookie Day will be a good way to do that.

I was expecting, after Falling Off the Wagon for so long, to have regained all the weight I lost and to have gotten way sick again, but I only gained back some and only got a little sick. I mean, I have a harsh cold now, the first I've had since I went off, and I'm blaming it on the gluten because I'm feeling gross and uncharitable, but that could be coincidence. I can definitely tell that I'm not Right--the greasiness and flakiness has come back to my skin, made worse by winter weather, the problems getting to sleep and staying asleep are back, made worse by holiday stress, the foggy brain is back, the motivation and energy problems, whatever. But none are as bad as they were before, so I think I've retained some of the good I did, and I'm hoping that means it'll be easier to stay on.

So here's my goals:

• To beat a month and a half totally GF--and then to beat whatever that score is
• To only Fall Off when I have already told myself it's okay--when there's birthday cake, or at traditional family gatherings, or when I'm not in control of my food, and not just because it's a Tuesday and I'm lazy
• To use GF living as a jumping off point and to gradually healthy-up the rest of my life, over the course of probably more than this year, but to also make headway this year
• To lose the weight I gained and to keep losing until I'm somewhere closer to A Healthy Weight--or, even better, my Goal Weight, which is 30lbs less than where I am now

These are sort-of New Years Resolutions, but they're also the goals I've had since I decided to figure out what's wrong with me back last summer, so I think they'll be okay. I just might require reminding every once in a while, so I thought it's a good time to document them here, in a public forum, right?

What're your health goals this year? Or even just this month?

Notes:

*We use the same recipies, my mom, my sister and I, from an ancient cookbook handed down from the 50s when my mom got married and copied when we all moved out, and yet they're all a little different. Like, I use butter in my sugar cookies and my sister uses Crisco; when did that mutation happen?

**I'm focused, but weak-willed; I'll probably fall off more than once over just not wanting to impose on others, let alone when I'm just too poor to afford the special food I need or when there's no other option, or when I'm just craving something so bad that I just say "fuck it" and eat a pizza.