The Battle of the Peanuts

I did battle with a bowl of peanuts tonight...and won. They were sitting there, looking oh-so-innocent, but they didn't fool me. I knew they were intent on tempting me into going off my fast.

My winning strategy was simply this: I thought, "I've had peanuts before. I know exactly what they taste like. I will have them again sometime in the future. I don't have to have them right now."

And so I didn't.

Trying to Eat Less

I tried to be good today. I really did.

For breakfast, I ate 70 calories of low-fat Activa yogurt. For lunch, I had a 240 calorie pasta-and-veggies Lean Cuisine-type meal. Doing great, huh? But then a coworker bought take out food to share, and I...well, I succumbed.

I did limit my portions, though. At least that's something.

I justified the extra lunch food in my mind by thinking that the yogurt and frozen food were really so low-cal that they could be considered one meal. (An extended breakfast? An interrupted brunch with a gap of a few hours in between the first and second courses? Whatever.) So the extra food was just my second meal and it wasn't too much for being a meal when considered on it's own. Right? Right.

Still, I decided to skip dinner. Just a glass of Merlot and a 100ish calorie hunk of cheese for a snack/dessert would be enough, I decided. But I was weak. There was leftover brown rice in the frig and I love rice. So I ended up also eating a big bowl of brown rice with soy sauce. And an apple. Not a horrible day maybe, but pretty bad for someone who was trying to make this one of my "good" low calorie diet days. Sigh.

Planning Ahead

Yesterday, I could have gone out to lunch with a coworker. I would have spent money I didn't need to spend and eaten a lot more than I needed to eat. Instead, because I had my lunch (and my lunch hour which included 20 minutes of fast walking)well planned, I was able to resist.

I am trying to have an eating plan everyday. Some days that plan will include going out to eat, but not on such a regular basis that it breaks my diet or my bank account.

On an idea day, here's what my goal menu looks like:

Breakfast: boiled egg with V8 juice or low-cal yogurt with almonds
Lunch: soup or diet frozen dinner
Dinner: Veggies and brown rice
Snack/dessert: square or two of dark chocolate, almonds

Right now, that menu is an ideal that I do not reach on more days than I do, unfortunately, but I figure that even accomplishing it on some days is better than on none. I am trying and I am getting better at it, and planning is the key for me.

Itty-Bitty Valentine Victory

Thank goodness the Valentine's candy is all gone!

You can't always control what food you are given, but you can (usually, hopefully) control what you eat. Yesterday, I exerted my control by throwing away the remainder of the gift box of assorted chocolates.

Before you start thinking that this was a truly amazing sacrifice on my part, I have to confess that I had already eaten all of the really, really good kinds. Still, in the past, I have been known to keep the marginally good and even the downright icky candies around, until, in a moment of weakness or maybe a fit of hunger, I would eat them anyway.

So even though I still ate too much Valentine's Day candy, at least I ate only the candies that I truly wanted. Throwing out the candy that I didn't really want, but might have eaten anyway if it was lying around, is a step forward, a small victory on the road to thinness.

Comfort Me With Apples

The Bible says "comfort me with apples" in the Song Of Solomon. So why do my comfort foods always involve cheese?!

Or chocolate? Or carbs with fat, like grits with butter, or mashed potatoes with cream, or rice with cheese melted on top?

There are people who can't eat when they are upset. I am NOT one of those people. (I’ve tried to be, believe me.) In fact, I tend to want to eat more when I am upset. Just recognizing that tendency has helped me combat it, but I still need to learn to be comforted by something other than food. Or at least by a smaller amount of food. Or maybe I need comfort foods that are less caloric.

Maybe I should try apples, like the Bible says. According to realage.com , eating a fruit that is high in fiber and water before (or instead of) eating something else is a proven weight-loss helper. The fiber and water are filling and satisfying in the belly and the chewy crunchiness is satisfying to the mouth.

The same source also recommends eating eggs instead of some similar-caloried breakfast or snack food because something about them fills you up better. A study showed that people who eat an egg at breakfast actually eat less at lunch than if they had eaten something else.

So maybe my new comfort foods are going to be eggs and apples. The dangerous temptation for me in that, is that they both go way too well with cheese!

Great link for We Calorie Counters

Calorielab.com is a really useful resource, especially for finding out how many calories are in your favorite restaurant foods.

Warning: they may not be your favorite restaurant foods after you find out!

It is mind-boggling to see just how fattening some innocent looking morsels are. (Goodbye, Sonic onion rings, 'twas nice to know ye.)

Storing Up Fat for the Winter?

Yesterday, driving to work in the bright sunshine at 9:30 AM, it was 15 degrees F. Brr.

I hate the cold, and not least because it makes me want to overeat. Not only does it make me want to overeat, but it makes me want to overeat the wrong foods. Believe me, when it is 15 outside, I am not craving apples. I am craving fattening, cheesy, heavy stuff. (Actually, I take back the line about not craving apples: what I should have said is that I don't crave crunchy, fresh, plain apples. I do crave them if they are baked into a state of mushiness and smothered in butter and sugar. Ha.)

So what do I do? Move to a warmer climate? Maybe all those skinny actresses in Southern California have it easier there because it never gets all that cold!!!!!

Actually, I think I've hit on the right answer. I do need to move. But not as in 'move to a new part of the globe.' Move, as in 'exercise.'

Last week I started using the treadmill at the gym. I had not been able to do that for a while due to high blood pressure (190 over 120+ at its worst), but now that's sort of under control due me finally giving in and taking meds, I can do more moving. And I promise to actually make myself do it and not wait until 'the spirit moves me,' as my Grandma used to say.

We'll see. And hopefully, if I do enough moving on a regular enough basis I'll see some results. It should warm me up, at least!

Skinny Goodness

If food is good -- really, really, REALLY good -- I can be happy eating less of it. I know that sounds bass-ackwards, but I find it to be true. "Gourmet" fare is just more satisfying.

I am dangerously likely to binge on average, everyday cheese and chocolate, for example, but savoring a high-end, intensely flavorful artisanal cheese or a piece of rich, dark imported chocolate satisfies my taste buds so completely that I don't need nearly as much to feel sated.

And, hey, since eating less of the good stuff is the only way that I can actually afford it, that's probably a good thing for my bank account as well as my belly. :-)

Frozen veggies are my friends

125 calories. That's how many there are in a 16 oz bag of frozen mixed vegetables. Not 125 calories per serving, mind you, that's 125 for the whole dang bag.

When I'm hungry, I can go to the freezer and grab a bag of veggies (intended for stir fry or soup and available in the freezer section of your happy neighborhood grocery), microwave them, add soy sauce and seasonings, and I have a ton (well, OK a pound) of yummy, nutritious, filling food for only 125 freaking calories. That is a lot of food for very few calories.

If I want to go wild and add a little spaghetti sauce or even a half can of mushroom soup to flavor it up, I can because I've saved calories to spare. Sometimes I eat them as a meal that way and sometimes as a side dish. Either way it gives me a lot of satisfaction with next-to-no fattening power. I think I'll go eat some friends right now.

Life is just a bowl of cherries

...and two hotdogs and some vegetables. That's what I had to eat yesterday. (I also drank last night while out with friends, but that's another post....)

The thing that I am overly, inordinately, excessively, ridiculously proud of is that I turned down the buns or bread with my hotdogs. Instead, I put them on a plate with mustard and a little ketchup and ate them with a fork. They were yummy that way.

The reason that this makes me so freaking happy is because there was a time when I would have eaten those hotdogs on buns or bread totally without thinking. I don't even LIKE buns or bread. I don't even WANT it. But in the past, I would have eaten it because...well, just because. I guess just because it is what you are "supposed" to eat with hotdogs. Never mind whether you want it or not! You are being a weirdo if you eat a hotdog with out a bun!

Now, I don't think like that anymore.

This goes along with what I said in a previous blog entry about being mindful about what I eat: From now on, I am going to eat ONLY the parts of the dish that I truly want, no matter how weird that may seem. The rest is just useless calories and I'd rather save my calories for something I really want...like more cherries.

Avoiding the toast

The other day, I was with some friends at Waffle House. It's possibly not the greatest restaurant for healthy eating, but hey, if you live in the South, sometimes you're gonna find yourself at Waffle House. What can I say?

I wanted one egg scrambled with cheese, and some grits, no toast. Sounds simple right? There was a breakfast plate with the egg and grits but it came with toast and bacon and cost more than I wanted to pay. (Yes, I'm occasionally even too cheap for Waffle House. I admit it.)

You could also get the grits as a side item and buy the egg with cheese separately, except that it also came with toast if you ordered it that way. There seemed to be no way to avoid the dang toast.

After talking about my non-desire for toast (which you wouldn't think would be THAT strange a request) with the waitress a couple of times, I thought we had figured out how I could just get both the egg and the grits as side items with nothing else. Ah, problem solved. Or not.

When my plate arrived, there in the middle, smack dab between the egg and the grits, were two pieces of White Bread Toast.

I just shook my head in resignation and said to the waitress, "There's just no escaping the toast, is there?"

Without a word, she swooped in, scooped up the toast in her hand, and in one swift motion, threw it directly into the trashcan.

Problem solved. No toast for me. LOL