Sweet Potatoes and Why 60 Isn't the Magic Number

One of my favorite breakfasts for the past several years has been hashbrowns with over-easy eggs. Only, before, I would fill the entire huge skillet with 'browns and toss 3 eggs on top of it. Moderation, my friends. Moderation. Now, about a cup's worth of hashbrowns and one egg, approximately 150 calories of goodness. But today, I grated some sweet potato instead and made homemade sweet potato hashbrowns. Sweet potatoes are about the same number of calories of regular white potatoes, but have more fiber and less starch. Basically, they'll keep you feeling full longer and won't cause you to crash and burn come lunchtime. The verdict? Semi-successful. They came out a bit soggy on the inside and a little burnt on the outside, but I think they were too water-logged. I think drying them out on some paper towels before cooking (over just a spritz of Pam, natch) would result in greater success next time.

Lunch today will be yogurt with marionberries again, a berry which Lulu has discovered and loves just a bit frozen. Of course, Thor looks at them like they're tainted and smashes them, but at least one kid loves these anti-oxidant rich berries. And then tonight is the Girls' Night Out, and I managed to convince bff to change the venue to a restaurant with healthier options. She was game, so making a healthy choice tonight should be a simpler task.

So, one might wonder why it is that my weight loss goal is about 45-50 total pounds rather than 60, the amount that I gained. I'll explain why. Before, I was thin. Very thin. Size-fours-were-too-big-on-me thin. Mind you, I am not a big-boned person, so my healthy BMI should be on the lower-to-mid point of the BMI scale for my height, but I was beyond the lower point. The explanation is simple and complicated and has a lot to do with Thor, actually.

To say the least, Thor was a colicky baby. He was diagnosed with reflux a couple weeks after birth and within a few months, we had him on the max amount of reflux meds with only a little relief. While other babies his age slept hours at a time without a peep, he woke up screaming in pain every half hour to hour. Saying my heart was broken is an understatement. Z and I felt helpless and lost, not knowing what to do to keep our precious son feeling well and not in pain. Meanwhile, Thor's weight kept slipping lower and lower on the infant percentile charts. He got down to the 3rd percentile for several months.

At this point, it is necessary to add that I was nursing Thor at the time. Lulu had nursed until she was 2 years old, at which point the kids' pediatrician said that Thor was just too tiny to allow Lulu to steal any calories from him. Weaning her was difficult on both of us and involved a lot of Lulu-branded temper tantrums, but she got used to Thor being the only nursing child in the house in time. We waited for his weight to go up, but it didn't. Meanwhile, his weight percentile dipped lower and lower. At this time, I was also become sicker and sicker myself with my rheumatoid arthritis. My appetite plunged, as I was too miserable to feel hungry. There was speculation amongst Thor's doctors that due to my poor health, my breastmilk was suffering and although I was producing enough, it wasn't rich enough in calories and nutrients.

Before making the decision to send Thor to a pediatric GI doc, his pediatrician wanted to try one more test for allergies. After assessing several of his diapers, the conclusion was clear: he had blood in his diapers (invisible to the naked eye) which was almost entirely conclusive of milk/soy protein intolerance (often mislabeled as allergy, but is an actual intolerance as most children outgrown it in time as their little bodies learn to process the proteins better). I had two choices: either cut milk and soy out of my diet completely, or switch to hypoallergenic formula. Having nursed Lulu for two years, I felt I owed it to Thor to try eliminating dairy and soy from my diet to see how he did. This meant I couldn't eat *anything* with milk or soy, including most breads, cereals, many spice mixes, and the obvious things like cheese, tofu, etc. I had to home-make almost everything on my plate to ensure that everything I ate was completely soy and dairy free.

The result? A completely new baby, an improved and happier Thor. Within three days on the new diet, he was sleeping hours at a time, hardly fussing at all, and began smiling and laughing. Smiling and laughing! Things I never thought I'd see him do! When something with dairy or soy got into my food (such as when I went to a party and was promised something was safe, but learned later it wasn't), he reverted back into Old Thor. We had found our problem, and I couldn't be more thankful.

But I was still sick, and now I was on an extremely restricted diet. My weight plummeted. I was buying new clothes every month or two as I shrunk out of the previous size. Factor in a dose of postpartum depression (courtesy of my, Thor's, and even Z's [a story for another time] health problems) and I had no reason or even ability to chow down. Finally, breastfeeding gobbles up oodles of your body's daily calories, a fact that resounded nicely back in my desire-to-lose-weight days, but wound up perhaps being detrimental later.

And then, Thor got better. He outgrew his intolerance, as evidenced by his ability to take just tiny amounts of soy and dairy at about 12 months of age. I weaned Thor, which meant I no longer was burning calories by nursing. My health got better, thanks to prednsisone, and my postpartum depression turned into an elation that I had a healthy and happy family. And I ate. And ate some more. Made up for all the lost time, used my prednisone as a (generally valid but still over-attributing) excuse. I gained those 60 pounds, no problem. After gaining the first 15 or so, I got compliments that I looked better, and this leads me to the final point that it's not 60 pounds I need to lose to get down to my optimal weight, but probably 45-50.

That was a long story made...long. But it's a pivotal story and explains my weight fluctuations the past year and where my mindset is. I'll take a healthy little boy any day of the week over anything else, but now I can have his healthy *and* my health. If I can have both, I will. My health means being able to be there for my kids in a way I couldn't before. I can do things with them I couldn't before, and keeping my weight down means more years with my original joints, more years to be active and healthy. I had a dream last night that I was confined to a wheelchair, something I want to avoid for many, many decades, even forever. Maintaining a healthy weight just means giving my body a little break from carrying too much around, and that buys me time. Time for myself, time for my family. It's easy to get negligent when it's only yourself at stake, but when it comes to one's family, the decision is more critical, and that is what drives me today, and that is what will make me healthy in the end.