Carbohydrates

Curled up on the not-nearly-as-comfortable-as-the-sectional-that-has-already-been-moved-to-Austin faux leather (fleather?) couch (currently the only seating on the livingroom in Atlanta), sipping a glass of sauvignon blanc (my second though it's only 5:30). My time in Austin last week is already a distant memory and I am thoroughly, exhaustedly grounded in the now of Atlanta. The exhaustion is the good kind, the physical kind--not the mental or emotional kinds. It is due to the workout (on which I elaborate below) and to the roughly 1500 lbs of glass (5 lb jars of frit) that Becky and I boxed up in the studio today for this week's loadout. I am wiped. If I were not on point helping the child with her essay on the civil war (which is still not done after two weeks of "writing") I would be going to bed as soon as this post is done. But the civil war calls, and the first draft of the essay MUST be done tonight. I will get to bed around 10:00--if I'm lucky.

A less fragmented person might be wondering what carbohydrates has to do with all of this, but that person wasn't there at the beginning of my day today. This morning at 8:30 I had a half-hour session with Mario, the personal trainer I engaged at L.A. Fitness starting back in December to help me conquer the second half of my fifties. Even though I was in no mood to work out this morning and didn't have to get up to take the J to school as she has pinkeye, I trudged (in the minivan) to the gym and did a serious chest workout followed up with 30 minutes (sounds better than a half hour) on the elliptical machine with Becky. As I was doing five sets of benchpresses, Mario and I discussed the fact that I have not lost so much as a half pound since I started working out. My short-term goal for working out was to build muscle and gain energy with a long-term goal of weight loss, but, come on! Three months and exactly the same weight?

Mario suggested that for the rest of the week I not eat carbs after 10:00 am. I said sure, thinking bread, potatoes, pasta, rice, crackers, etc. However when I got home from my grocery store run this afternoon (the only thing I had in the fridge was cold pizza and I knew that had carbs so I had to shop), I thought I had better check to see what foods have carbs. I vaguely remember beer being high in carbs and I wondered if hard cider might have them too. Yes it does so no cider for me. Wine is good (virtually no carbs) but the reference I found mentioned that the carbs in the grapes were lost in the fermentation process. Wait a minute, grapes have carbs? I didn't buy grapes, but I did buy apples and lettuce and tomatoes--all of which have/are carbohydrates. Well this is distressing!

As I munched on a dinner of 1/2 lb of cold shrimp and 1/2 lb of imitation crab surimi and the first glass of wine, I discovered that peas, bananas, apples, grapes, and a swarm of my other go-to, eat well, lose weight "diet" foods are high in carbs. Of course I didn't think to look up the carbs in surimi until I was done with dinner... oops. At least I can still have cheese Gromit!

And now I am off to bed. The paper is as done as it's going to get for the night, and I managed to blog and do other computer tasks for the past five hours since I started this post. Whew!