Once again, it’s lunchtime and I finished eating about 1/2 hour ago. So why am I still hungry?
I have a pseudo-belief that my body wants to hang onto every ounce it’s got. And so, whenever it gets the chance it settles on a plateau and hangs on for all it’s worth. And it’s frustrating, discouraging, to hit one. It just doesn’t seem fair to put so much effort into watching what I eat and get (what seems like) nothing in return.
So, I was thinking about my diet plateau this morning — but in a good way for once. It occurred to me that this 3 week plateau isn’t such a bad thing to experience: Now I have a pretty good idea how much I have to eat to maintain my weight. That there isn’t room for deep fried treats like apple fritters (650 calories!) But there is room for the odd slice of bread with dinner.
And I was thinking about those numbers I wrote about yesterday. And that if I want to listen to what they’re trying to tell me, I’ll get a pretty good idea of what I need to do to jump-start my weight loss again.
Because it just wouldn’t be that hard to make significant changes:
- Walk 1 extra mile (for almost 100 calories)
- Don’t eat that piece of bread with dinner
- No more graham crackers
pseudo-belief
That’s it. If I just do that everyday, I’ll start to lose weight. Except that my body REALLY doesn’t want to give up a single ounce.
What is your lunch time fake-out?
Battle Update:
My underwear has been on backwards for the whole day and I didn’t notice until 8 PM. I had five hours of sleep last night. I was late to catch my train and skipped my morning Starbucks. I worked in my office (a place I rarely inhabit as it is relatively unprofitable) doing administrative paperwork for eleven hours. I probably smell and have BO. I ate a chicken sandwich the size of Mount Rushmore, a nasty latte of unknown calorie content, a plethora of raisins, and skimmed off my husband’s macaroni and cheese. My goal was to go running and then shower, but I’m not. I’m just going to go to sleep.
I’m in a state of fat, nasty, general disarray.
But so what? I am trying REALLY hard to forgive myself. This is part of the process.
Well, seems like you have the energy now, at least. It’s Friday evening and I’m tired. Not from work, rather from lack of consistently good quality sleep.
By I digress. My lunchtime fake lately has been eating the entire portion set before me at my favorite Thai restaurant. It includes raw vegetables, so it’s not a disaster, but if I ate half of it, like I was doing, it would be a lot better.
And then there’s sharing a slice of apple pie a la mode with a friend at another restaurant where I was really good about not eating more than half the pastrami sandwich (best in the world !), but fell off the wagon by eating french fries (they have great fries there, too) before the friend ordered the pie. Ah well.
Analyzing my situation, I see that eating lunch at restaurants is a frequent problem. There is a simple solution, of course, but that would be a social disaster. My most frequent lunch companion has no excess weight problem, quite the contrary, and lives alone, so it’s really up to me to discipline myself. And, for most of the past year, I’ve been pretty good about it.
Now, a year into the Big Project, and nearly 60 pounds down, my resolve is not always as firm as it should be.
So, I guess the answer is being firm about this restaurant business. If I’m going to be served a portion that’s too big, I’ll just have to ask that half of it go into a box before it gets to the table. And count out an acceptable number of fries rather than “sharing” an order so freely.
And maybe, except for really special times, just saying “no” to the pie and ice cream !
.underwear on backwards. (can I giggle or would that be mean?) I’m not even going to ask. . .
Battle, I think you probably smell great — How could a Bombshell stink? It just couldn’t be. And I love the idea of you skimming your husbands macaroni and cheese. If macaroni & cheese is really comfort food (and it is) I think a husband’s macaroni and cheese must be REALLY comforting. I’m not kidding. After last night — I think eating his food sounds much better.
But maybe not as comforting as a full night’s sleep. Which is what I hope you’re doing right now.
I know, we’re supposed to have better control. But won’t we always have bad days and good days and better days? I think that’s why Weight Watchers came up with the idea of special points that go by the week. So that you have points you can use for these sorts of days.
{{bombshell}} Get some sleep!
catdog, I feel like have to go through your comment point by point. But it all boils down to one thing, I can’t be trusted in restaurants.
I know you think it would be a social disaster to stop doing it. And since I don’t know how often you’re doing it. But if I eat out more than once a month, I gain weight. I CANNOT do it once a week. I can’t go out for lunch OR dinner that often.
Like I said in that earlier post. Something switches off in my brain when II’m in a restaurant & I think I can eat anything I want. It’s totally stupid.
So why am I meeting my best friend for breakfast in the morning? Because we haven’t seen each other for two months & it fits our boring but busy schedules.
I would have done exactly what you did at the restaurant (except that I might have nibbled my way through the whole sandwich too.) So I think you did pretty well.
Would any of your friends be interested in window shopping or walking through a park instead of eating?
I don’t know how many people are similarly situated, but there are no places to windowshop, and the park next door is not the sort you walk through. It’s for playing soccer, or basketball, or, if you’re a small child, playing on the rainbow slides and climbing equipment.
What we do is go to lunch, it’s the culture of the place, and if you exclude yourself it’s not a good thing.
So, it’s self-discipline. Something I suspect a lot of us have to exercise at least as much as we walk or run or lift weights.
I guess I’m just not that outgoing. Besides not trusting myself in restarants (or wanting to spend so much money) I sort of need my lunch time as an alone period.
I’m lucky to work in Libraries where most of the other people are the same way.
Hey all!
Sounds like Bombshell has, shall we say, acquired an alternate state of mind. The kind of state I aspire to by drinking more rum than is really healthy for me.
I’ve found that afternoon craving to be something that can be bought off easily by giving it some token snack — one small piece of fruit, or even a carrot, is enough to shut it up. Or, at least quiet it down enough to ignore until supper.
In my case, it doesn’t help that I often eat supper after 7 p.m. I work at home on Thursdays, and Mrs. Fetched asked me what time I wanted to eat. “6:30 would be good,” I said. “That’s too late.” And I said, “Well, why don’t you tell me when I want to eat, then?” And we wound up not eating until 8:00 for some reason!
And that’s probably why I get the munchies in the mid-afternoon. My bod knows by now what time it’s going to get more fuel, so it starts pinging me for “a small smackerel” to keep going until that late supper. But like I said, a token snack is all that’s really needed, just something that says I care.
I was just thinking about having a little toot! If this conversation gets anymore interesting, and farFlung, I will too (I don’t think we’ve had so much excitement around here since Ductape left, have we?)
We have a routine, I call home to tell mister on my way. And he’s got dinner ready by the time I get home. If he didn’t, I’d probably go berserk. ‘Cause I REALLY haven’t been eating between meals.
You’re lucky you can control the amount of your snacks. I’m either ON or OFF. Eating or not eating.
Pingback: Eat4Today » A place to discuss food and eating and the state of the world » Blog Archive » My Body is a Rubber Bag, part II
KB, feel free to laugh at my expense. The sad fact of the matter is that when I got dressed in the morning I was so spaced out that I put my underwear on backwards. The tag was facing my stomach. For some reason my butt felt odd (due to the leg holes being at the wrong angle) but I didn’t realize what was wrong. I had this nagging sensation all day that something was wrong but couldn’t figure out what it was.
: )
I wasn’t laughing at you, honest. It’s my greatest fear that I’ll go to work with mismatched shoes and your underwear story just plugged into that fear.
Oh GAWD, it’s contagious ! I got home last night and discovered I’d had my BRA on inside out all day– and DIDN’T even notice !
I’m at work, but I just HAD to pull my blouse out and take a quick peak. But I’m more likely to wear mismatched shoes or something.
You weren’t wearing it backwards, were you? I did that once in the 9th grade.
LOL ! No, I would have noticed that !
But I did discover that I have a pair of mismatched shoes– one black, one navy. I threw out the mates thinking they were a pair and couldn’t be repaired. Yep, one left, one right !
Awk. That would make me feel crazy. Like I should scrounge through the dump looking for the other shoes.
Or were both tossed-out shoes too worn out to repair? (I think it’s nap time)
Left shoe, blue, good and right shoe, black, good, kept. The bad ones for each foot and each color, gone, months ago, apparently, when I was cleaning out the closet last time.