Damage Control

11 November, 2013 Off By Renée

In order to turn this bus around I decided this morning to get on the scale and face the music. It’s not all that bad but it’s not good either as it’s not really going in the right direction.

As you know I tend to hover around 80 KG give or take one or two in either direction. Clearly the emotional eating or binge cookie in my face smashing is not doing a huge amount of damage as I’m still active. But … active as in the bare minimum and not the amount that I would like if I had a good balance of work – free time – sleep. The number: 81.6 KG.

So what am I whinging about? I’m whinging because I’m letting things slip out of control daily, I’m letting all of the stress and frustrations make the decisions for me rather than doing what I know is right. No harm in a cookie, right? Well, there is when it’s a 300+ calorie cookie that I’m eating every day (if not more than one). And there is harm when you are eating that cookie even though you told yourself that you weren’t going to have one, no matter what. There’s harm when I’ve eaten what feels like half my body weight in almonds because “well at least they are healthy”. The behavior is what I don’t like and the behavior is what needs to change.

I’ve actually logged into MFP again today and started logging my food. And… I have practically nothing left for dinner. This is the frustration part. Trying to eat healthy and in moderation, having all my fruits, veg, watching my carbs, even trying to limit my dairy intake (I am still convinced that I have a slight allergy to dairy), but I still need to refine this. I did have two soy lattes today and I could have just had one. So I found one thing where I could say 130 calories. That’s not going to help me with dinner. How do I change and not be hungry?

What I ate:
AM: smoothie: 250 mls almond milk, spinach, juice of one half of an orange, a small beet, an apple, a banana and some ginger, double tall soy latte, 3 rice cakes, 2 eggs, 1TBL of unox sauce (it’s a sort of mayo/mustard sauce), 2 cups of coffee on the commute

Lunch: two chicken thighs marinated in sweet soy, olive oil, lemon juice, spices and approx. 60gr of thinly sliced sweet potatoes

PM: apple, salad of romaine lettuce, 2 tomatoes, cucumber, red onion, yellow pepper, olive oil and white wine vinegar. Skim French quark with 70g total blueberries and raspberries, 10g almonds and 15g hemp seeds, double Tall Soy latte, Tall mint tea
3 bottles of water (1.5litres) over the course of the day

So I could cut out the soy lattes. I had approx. 1 TBSP olive oil in my chicken and 1 TBSP in my salad. I’m not a huge fan of cutting out fats, rather I believe that we need fat to keep our bodies running smoothly (am I wrong??). I could cut out the unox sauce, and replace just with mustard. But the rest? Tell me, tell me what you would do differently, how can I achieve eating well and not feeling hungry and still have some calories over for dinner?

Part of the random eating as well is due to hunger. I just give in at some point. I have long days and need to not feel like I’m going to pass out at any second. I know there is nothing wrong with being a little bit hungry, that I won’t die, in fact I probably won’t even pass out, I may just get a headache, right? The thing is, and I really don’t know why (I’ve thought about it and analysed it and still can’t figure it out), I just really can’t stand being hungry. I’m not talking peckish, I mean that emptiness in your stomach and the low blood sugar feeling. I know that part of what I need to do to fix the problem is just eat what I have (in other words, the veggies that I tend to carry around for days) instead of buying something because it’s better (or rather tastier).

So, while I’ve gone over today (because as of writing this I still haven’t had dinner, I’m still on my way home from work), I am at least turning the car around to get back on the right road. Hope I don’t run out of gas or get a flat tire on my way back.

How do you stay within your food limits daily? Do you think that my complaining about eating cookies in unwarranted? That a cookie a day keeps the doctor away?