Yogurt...poison in a foil-covered cup

So it feels like my life right now revolves around food, losing weight and being sick.  These three things seem to fight with each other on a regular basis, which means that I feel like I'm in the middle of a boxing match.  Allow me to explain.

I am trying to eat right and get healthy, therefore I am counting calories and recording everything I eat.

Bill and I got pretty sick around the same time which completely destroyed our workout plan. This means I have to be extra careful about what I'm eating and make sure everything counts because I've only been up for walking Master Teddy.  I'm not going to "waste" calories on something frivolous because I want to make sure I stay at my chosen number of calories for the day.  (You would think that would mean I don't waste it on my coffee, but let me assure you, coffee is NOT frivolous.  I gladly exchange a morning snack for my beloved beverage.)

When you don't feel good, certain things sound delicious and other things sound crappy.  Most people don't crave broccoli when they are sick.  Or a grilled chicken breast with steamed asparagus.  When I'm sick, I want two things that I never eat otherwise: macaroni and cheese and apple juice.  I never waste time or calories drinking juice but when I'm sick, cold apple juice tastes so good to me.  I can't explain the mac and cheese.

And finally, the last element of this epic battle between food, losing weight and fighting illness is that you have to EAT to recover.  My weight loss diet is a sensible diet with lots of fruits and veggies, which will give me lots of energy and assist my immune system.  But it doesn't make me FEEL better.  

And to top it all off, my doctor recommends that I wash down the grape-sized antibiotic tablets with, gulp, yogurt.  I hate yogurt.  Yogurt, in my opinion, equals frivolous calories.  Most servings of yogurt come out to about 100 calories.  100 calories of sour, fake tasting yuckiness. The only way you can get yogurt to taste sort of palatable is to buy the whole milk, heavily sweetened kind, like Tillamook, which has a lot of sugar, fat and more calories.  I never feel satisfied after yogurt, I usually want something to wash the taste out of my mouth.  Like beer.

But even worse than yogurt (ear muffs, guys) is the dreaded yeast infection that usually comes along with taking antibiotics.  Especially the one my doc put me on, Augmentin.  It is pretty much a sure thing that around day 4 of taking the pills, the medicine has killed every spec of bacteria anywhere in my body and a yeast infection takes over.  Yuck.  So, I'm forced to choose. Shall I attempt to avoid the yeast infection by eating yogurt every day or shall I tempt fate and hope that this will be the one time the yeast fairy passes my bacteria-less body by?  (I imagine the yeast fairy is more like a mosquito than a fairy.  Something you want to smack or incinerate with a bug zapper.)

I chose the yogurt and bought some on the way home from the pharmacy.  I decided to buy plain yogurt because the container was the only one that claimed it "meets National Yogurt Association criteria for live and active culture yogurt."  (National Yogurt Association?  THAT would be a fun meeting to attend.)  The container also boasted "BILLIONS of live active and probiotic cultures!"  Oh goody.  

Listen up you billions of probiotic cultures!  If I am going to waste calories on you so you can counteract the bacteria nuclear bomb I'm ingesting in the form of a battery-sized pill, if I'm going to choke you down, fighting back my gag reflex so you can replace the innocent good bacteria I lose in this other kind of Cold War, if I'm going to swap some other yummy snack for the likes of you in the hopes that you will prevent a horrible yeast infection then YOU BETTER NOT LET ME DOWN!

Let that be a warning to you!