Decaf Coffee, and Other Forms of Horror

I survived day 1 and day 2 on the Atkins diet. Whew! Amazing.

For me this is huge. Gigantic. Ginormous! I usually seem to always cheat (myself), and when it comes down to it, I'm pretty far from a meat-atarian. In fact, for many years I didn't eat red meat at all (technically a lacto-ovo vegetarian). That worked well until I wound up in the hospital with anemia. So, even the doctor said that my 'diet' was ridiculous. Needless to say, I was bummed, but I learned to eat a hamburger now and then and I ate chicken.

Many of you have heard that when on the Atkins diet "if it has a face on it, you can eat it." That pretty much sums it up. Truly. And, for yours truly here, a non meat lover, this is tough. Really tough.

While at Yuppie Mecca (Costco) yesterday I about nearly keeled over dead just smelling all the fatteningly delicious baked goods: they were baking those damnable muffins while I was there. Curse you, Costco Bakery!! I even went so far as to be muttering "I'm going to die" under my breath. It is amazing just how fantastic of hearing my child has--the three year old got all freaked out and said "Mommy, you going to die?" I had to assuage his fears that, in fact, mommy wouldn't literally keel over that second. Fun. So, I had to suffer in silence, all while pretending to be happy about purchasing cheese, bacon, and tilex.

I have found, through a little creativity, that I can indulge in veggies--to a small degree. On the 'free list' of foods, salad greens show up. This is a happy thing, as I can have 2c. of mixed field greens topped with shredded cheddar and some grilled chicken breast for lunch, while leaving me an 'allotment' of 1c. of salad greens with dinner. The no fruits part of the diet is proving to be more challenging than I thought.

Just like me to pine away for apples or bananas while on the diet, whereas when I could eat them ad nauseum I could care less about them. I call it the 'Disney World Syndrome': every day of my life I can drink as much free, clean, drinkable tap water as I can handle--consequently I don't want it. I want coffee, soda, whatever, just not water. While at Disney, where the bottled water is roughly $6 a pint, I want nothing more than to chug it by the gallon. Go figure.

On the positive (maybe?) side, I have not had a single, solitary, drop of coffee [caffeine] since Saturday. I am seriously jonesing (bordering on 'triple shotgun murder'), so this morning I went to Wally-World and bought (gulp) decaf coffee. UGH! GAG! RETCH! But, at least I get to smell coffee-scented air, and have that hot, bitter liquid touch my tongue. At least my olfactory bulb is happier.

So far, so good. Keep rootin' for me. It helps (and probably the sub-lingual B-12 tablets, too!).