Date Love

Ha–catchy title, huh?  I’m referring to those sticky little brown fruits.  I always did like dates, especially stuffed with a walnut and rolled in sugar…and periodically during the past 4 years I have read about what healthy foods they are.  But i usually discarded them as they were pretty high in calories.  Not enough volume for me.  But I bought some at Christmas, probably because some of you were posting something about them.  And I am in love with them.  And this came to light for me yesterday after a momentary indiscretion…I went to Round Table Pizza.  I wasn’t going to blog about this, darn it!  I thought about it [going there for lunch] long and hard.  But I really wanted to go…for the pizza, for the garlic twists, for the salad bar, and especially for the cinnamon twists.  So, I don’t exactly regret going.  I wish I could go without any regrets.  I have to say the salad bar was tasteless.  How do you take the taste out of salad?  Even the beets didn’t have flavor.  Very disappointing! 

Anyways, back to the dates.  Here’s what I learned, I hope.  After I had my fill there at lunch time, I knew I would get right back into my good eating.  And I had a couple of light options in mind for dinner.  Well, dinner time came and went and I was not hungry.  So finally, about 8pm, I just had a little greek yogurt with walnuts, and cut up one date to sprinkle on top.  And the thought that came to me was, ‘this sticky sweet date is even better than that sticky sweet cinnamon twist that I had been craving.’  Now to imprint that on my brain.  Because my brain has 50 years of sticky sweet cinnamon roll imprinted on it.  There’s the rub.

This morning, I had steel cut oatmeal.  And decided to try a date on top of it.  Well, it was so good, I didn’t want my splenda sprinkled on top.  And that is really something for me.

So this date love just goes right along with the way I am trying to continue changing up my food choices a bit.  Adding in a bit more  protein, and a bit more fat.  Trying to choose whole foods over processed foods.  Working on NOT needing volume ALL the time.

Mizfit’s post this morning is excellent, and right along these lines.  Hey, Miz, I put some flax seed meal in my oatmeal this morning!

And a little more about my friend, Oprah.  Her show yesterday was MUCH better.  Very worthy, if you ask me.  Dr. Oz was on with all kinds of good advice.  He said a couple of things about sugar that I thought were interesting.  First, he said that having too much sugar in your blood stream (think diabetes) was like having ground glass floating around your body.  Boy, I thought that was a excellent illustration.  That is why/how it devastates every part of your body.  Then he said the reason you are hungry after you eat sugar is that your brain is still seeking nutrition, and that made sense to me too.  He said it a little bit better… He also talked about how getting enough sleep was very important to weight loss/maintenance.  I hope you saw this, my sleep-deprived bloggy friends!  This probably weighs into my lack of resistance at work, since I am usually sleep deprived those days.

Okay, I know you all are so intrigued about the ‘habanada’ quote (Jill–the 60s or 70s–how old do you think I am LOLLOLLOL!!).   Habanada is from the show ‘Everybody Loves Raymond.’  Raymond was describing to his wife Debra, on his first date with her, how the grandma at the Chinese Restaurant  says ‘habanada’ to everyone when they leave, and he has no idea what she is saying.  And Debra explains to him, she is saying ‘have a nice day.’  It cracks me up every time I think of him telling that story.  I say it to my sister all the time.  

HABANADA, my friends!