Day 6 - the downfall of my food pyramid

Yesterday started off great.

I went grocery shopping, wrote my blog, made a plan, and was eating healthy. I had several small meals throughout the day, and was tracking everything.

And I was starving.

I think I must have an abnormally hearty appetite, because Tyler ate pretty much exactly what I did, and every time I asked him if he was hungry (which was about every 5 minutes), he said he was fine.

I, on the other hand, was ravenous. My stomach was talking up a storm, and it was not saying nice things.

I kept trying to eat healthy snacks, like low fat string cheese and low fat chicken soup. I had an apple with some light-caramel dip. I had half a banana. I was still hungry.

I drowned my pain with drinking many glasses of water, put some frozen chicken breasts and salsa in the slow-cooker for dinner, and went for a walk with Tyler on the beach (my 'workout').

One the way home, I started to crash. I convinced Tyler to stop at the store for some peanut butter cups to satisfy my Halloween cravings, and immediately ate one.

I instantly felt better. Ah, sweet relief. Literally.

Then we (read 'I') came up with the bright idea to forgo the chicken salsa that had been simmering for dinner and get subway sandwiches instead to eat while passing out candy to trick-or-treaters at Tyler's house. 'Subway's healthy', I thought... and it was! I said 'no' to the cheese (but 'yes' to the bacon, oops) and chose a whole grain bread as the base of my sandwich.

We arrived at Tyler's house to find a little driveway party going on with some friends that were also planning to pass out candy to costume-wearing kids. They were enjoying some divine looking cheese pizza with thick, delicious crust, and seemed saddened at our subway bags, as they had generously planned for us and bought extra pizza so that we, too, could delight in the cheesy goodness. I started to feel guilty and tempted. The pizza was calling me. It smelled so good, and everyone looked so happy eating it. 'Maybe just one...', I thought....

So I indulged and had a small piece. And half my sub. And then another small piece of pizza. It was so good. So, so, so very yummy. I also had another peanut butter cup. 'Enough', I finally thought. 'That's it'. I knew that the moment I arrived home, I would enter everything I had eaten into my calorie-tracker.

And this, and only this, is what helped prevent me from continuing to stuff my face.

I finally made my way to my apartment after several hours of rewarding costumed-kids with candy (the ones without costumes got candy, too, but it was the candy no one else wanted like 'Hot Tamales', which I like but everyone else thought was lame-o), emptied my now-overcooked salsa chicken and rice into several containers for lunch this week, and proceeded to enter in everything I had eaten into 'big brother'.

I grimaced and avoided looking at the final calorie total. Curiosity finally won out and I nervously opened one eye to see what the damage was.

Actually, it wasn't all that bad - about 1800 calories were consumed throughout the day, with my original goal being about 1250. If you take into account an hour of walking on the beach, that's not too shabby. So the downfall of my food pyramid wasn't all that dramatic, after all.

And today is a new day, people. I have a rough sketch of what I'm going to be eating this week, and I've scheduled in my workouts with reminders.

I'm going to do it.

I have to - there's only 49 days to go!

Day 5 - Food fight

This morning I went grocery shopping for the next week at my neighborhood supermarket.

(Technically, there are 4 grocery stores within spitting distance of each other in my neighborhood, but we'll just forget that fact for the moment.)

Let me tell you, grocery shopping on Halloween is a challenge. Everywhere I look, there are bags of heavily discounted candy intended for little-kid-mouths (but that could easily end up in mine!), not to mention all kinds of seasonal treats such as candied apples, caramel dip (in the produce section!), and fruity fall pies. I think I did well, though - I arrived armed with a list and was prepared to stick with it. 'Let's get in and get out, team', I said to myself (I'm the 'team').

I stuck to the perimeter of the store and stocked up on fresh veggies for salads, frozen chicken breasts, low-fat cheese, egg white-in-a-carton (kinda weird!), and non-fat greek yogurt (yum!).
I also took advantage of the 'Thanksgiving is coming' sales and stocked up on canned pumpkin. I started using canned pure pumpkin about a year ago after buying a cookbook and subscribing to e-mails that have an abundance of very low fat/low cal recipes using pumpkin instead of fat. I really like her stuff, so I'll be happy to share her website with you.

I'm planning to take the advice that I've been given on this blog and start to be more proactive this week about eating 5 or 6 small meals throughout the day to keep my energy and metabolism up. One of my biggest problems is that I eat so quickly. One of my work friends says that I'm the president of the 'fast eaters' club. She isn't exagerating. I tend to wait WAY too long to eat - I'm starving by the time I realize it and then I just start shoveling food in without noticing what it even is, or how much, that I'm eating. At work, I also often face the challenge of having my food stuck in a room that is frequently used at non-opportune times (such as 11am-1pm) for 'closed' meetings.

So my challenge this week is to do the following regarding food:

-Plan ahead for meals.

-Pre-prep for said planned meals. It's nice to plan to eat a big salad 4 out of 5 workdays, but do I feel like rinsing and chopping lettuce and cucumber at 5:45am? We all know the answer to that one. So I'll prep all the veggies that I need for the next few days today and store them in a big container that I can easily grab from while I'm stumbling around the kitchen half awake in the morning.

-Pack my lunch, or at least part of it, in a mini cooler bag so if I get 'locked out' of the sacred food storage room, I won't be tempted to sneak over to my co-workers desk and snag candy to appease my roaring stomach.

-Record everything I eat, all week long. Now this is a big challenge for me. I've used a variety of those free calorie counting websites and applications before, and they're oh-so-helpful. The issue is actually using them consistently. So let's try it for a week, starting today, and see how it goes.

And of course I plan to continue my little workout streak I've started. I walked around the lake yesterday with Tyler, and it was a lovely opportunity to get some natural Vitamin D and catch up on life. I think a key to continuing workouts is to schedule them into my calendar and stick to it! Let's embrace the irritating OCD planner in me and use it for good!

And by the way, I weighed myself today, and it appears that I am one pound lighter! Hooray! Now let's avoid the pitfalls of shoving Halloween candy into my mouth tonight and keep it in the little hands of sweet trick-or-treaters.

...well, maybe just one peanut butter cup....

Day 4 - The sweetest thing

It's the weekend! The time for relaxing, winding down, doing chores, lazily sleeping in is finally here!

Have you ever noticed that you work all week long looking forward to sleeping in on Saturday morning, which finally comes around, only to have your eyes pop open at 6:30am?

A mere hour later than you (or I at least) usually wake up?

That happens to me just about every week. I typically fight it and try to go back to sleep without success. This morning, though, I didn't fight it, and have a cup of deliciously smooth coffee next to me while I draft my telling of the failures and successes of yesterday to share with you.

Last night, after I finished a fairly decent workout at the gym, Tyler and I went to dinner to celebrate his birthday and our one year anniversary, despite him not feeling all that well after a much-too-long-week at work.

We didn't just 'go to dinner' - we patronized Chef Mavro, a rather lavish fine dining establishment, due to my having a gift certificate that I bought for half price on one of those internet deal sites. We don't usually go places that nice, and neither of us really knew what to expect.

We drove up, and there was a guy with a 2 liter bottle of soda and a laptop sitting under a little tent. Tyler and I didn't understand this, as it was self park. We thought that perhaps he ensures that only restaurant patrons park in the lot - but as we were walking towards the restaurant, he disappeared magically, like a leprechaun. I was commenting on this when we realized that he had gotten up to hold the restaurant door open for us. I think it was at that point that we realized my gift certificate was, err, not quite going to be enough for dinner.

Regardless, we carried on.

We walked in, and the restaurant had the air of wealth to it. There was not just one host, but two (which is unheard of at a small restaurant, at least any restaurant that I've ever worked at) available to walk us to our intimate table by the window. We were not given menus, which made me feel slightly nervous. 'They can tell we don't belong here', I thought...

Finally we were given menus, which were laid out rather uniquely - you had an option of a 3 course meal, a 4 course meal, a 6 course meal, or to try ALL the dishes the chef makes, in tasting portions. I laughed remembering a great movie I once saw where the main character went to the restaurant of her dreams and ordered ALL the menu items. I considered doing this until I saw the price of that option. Yikes. Is there gold in the dishes or something?

Long story short, we both ordered the 4 course menu and it was delicious. I had this whipped brie cheese on a small pat of sweetbread with figs and wine reduction sauce and just YUM! They served opakapaka with some lightly foamed sauce over a large homemade crouton with tempura asparagus, and pork medallions wrapped in oyster wraps with paper-thin sliced veggies and quite possible the most amazing au jus sauce I've ever had.

And dessert.

Are you ready for this?

Well, let's back up a bit and have me say that I LOVE dessert.

When I was a little girl, and my mom can attest to this, I used to eat dessert first ALL the time when we would go to restaurants.

'Why wait until you're full', I would think to myself in a shrill 6 year old voice. I think I was afraid I wouldn't have room for it and wanted to be sure that I was able to enjoy my favorite part of the meal. (I guess the concept of self control wasn't really familiar to me.)

So I pretty much live for dessert. But, I won't eat it unless it's really, really good. I once heard someone say that when you eat something that's unhealthy, ask yourself, 'Is this as good as I thought it would be?' If the answer is 'no', then stop eating it right then. If it's 'yes', then continue on. And if it's 'better than I thought it would be', then savor it and remember!

Last night's dessert was a rendition of s'mores. As a former girl scout, s'mores carries quite a bit of nostalgia for me. It reminds me of camping, cabins, scary story telling with flashlights, slumber parties, lakes, cold weather, and warm fires. I recall many nights of girl scout camping and always looking forward to the end of the campfire where we would look for sticks to mush our marshmallows on, and then roast them over the fire. I was always that girl that would take extra care roasting it - never setting it on fire, and patiently waiting until the entire exterior was golden brown with the inside an ooey, gooey melty mess. Sometimes I'd throw a piece of the chocolate bar into the marshmallow to ensure that it would melt right along with the marshmallow, then sandwich it immediately between two honey graham crackers and take a giant bite. Mmmmmm. Memories.

So I was very excited about this dessert. And when they brought it out, my eyes bugged out like a cartoon. It was like Pavlov's conditioning experiment - I instantly started salivating. That's because it looked like this:

The lovely server started to describe my dessert, as they had done with each dish. On the upper left is a rosemary toasted marshmallow resting on top of a rich dark chocolate mousse, married with a gingerbread sauce. On the bottom right is a 'graham' cracker (but very thin and not at all graham like) sandwiched with homemade mint ice cream and dark chocolate sauce.

Wow.

And it was much, much better than I thought it would be. So I ate the entire thing (Tyler got a bite, too), even though it was likely an entire day's worth of calories.

Guess I'll be eating all veggies today to make up for it!

But that's ok. I had planned for this, and I've been eating really well (besides the cookies on the first day). Yesterday at work there was an abundance of cookies and candy and all kinds of delicious looking treats that various co-workers had brought in for Halloween. I was able to resist them because I knew I had something else to look forward to.

And I think that's key. It's important for me to eat well 90% of the time, and to plan in 'treats' - not necessarily food - but something. Several years ago I was on a major exercise kick at the start of a new year. I had a goal of running a marathon (I didn't. I discovered I hate running. Though I did stick to my workouts!), and I knew that I would need some sort of reward system in order to maintain my heavy workout schedule.

I needed new exercise clothes anyway (as I had none), so I went to a discount store, bought about 8 new things, and wrapped each one individually in tissue paper.

Each week, as I completed my goals for exercising, I would get one of them as a 'present'. Yes, that's right - sort of like you would do with a child that you were potty training. I do realize how ridiculous that sounds.

But, hey, it worked! And I didn't run the marathon, but I did run (half, the other half I walked) another 8 mile run. And that was quite an accomplishment. Unfortunately, I don't have the funding available or the need of clothing to justify implementing another reward system like that - but I think getting married in 51 days is reward enough.

I'll talk tomorrow about my eating plan for the next week. If you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them! Thank you for all of the comments and encouragement, it really helps!

Enjoy your Saturday, and eat something delicious!