Food is part of our society. You can't escape it, unless like that Geico commercial you live under a rock.
Sometimes food gets the better of me and I just eat. Like last night. I'm not proud of myself and I should've just gone to bed, but instead I at an entire container of honey cinnamon almonds from Target. They had been in my cabinet for a week and I hadn't touched them. Unfortunately, they were good.
I'm Jewish, so food is part of life. We have special dinners on the holidays. In this case the Jewish ones-Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippor. Then we also have a special dinner on that other Jewish holiday-Thanksgiving. I know that is not a Jewish holiday, but it might as well be with the amount of food that comes out of it.
Almost every store you go in has food. Even Sports Authority has some things that are edible. There are, however, some things you can do to prevent wanting to buy everything you see. One thing you can do is to say to yourself, "I don't want to buy cupcakes that have red, green, orange and blue frosting. They are not worth the calories and they are weird-looking." Another thing you can do is eat before you go to the store. I know that this is not always possible, but it really helps the impulse buying followed by the impulse eating of all of said item like a pint of Ben and Jerry's Everything But The...Sometimes, not recently, I have been known to go to the store to buy said item. I can proudly say that I have not had ice cream since I started back on Weight Watcher's. I'll get back to me and my progress later. The last thing that I know of, besides having a friend hold you back from buying those technicolor cupcakes or white chocolate macadamia nut cookies, is to chew gum when you are in the store. I don't know why it works, but I was recently in CVS and it worked for me. I also had recently eaten dinner. So I was doing a double whammy on not buying the yummy candy that is strategically placed where you line up to check-out.
Another place there is food a lot is in the workplace. I'm a teacher, and for whatever reason if someone brings in food and puts it in the lounge, we will eat it. Whatever it is, it will be gone before the last lunch period. If it isn't gone, it's probably not good anyway.
Food is part of how we socialize. "Let's meet for coffee." "Let's get together and go out for dinner." We can't seem to meet with other people without food involved. I think that is part of the human condition. This why I hate thin people. I don't hate you if you're thin. I just hate the idea that a person can eat and not gain weight. It isn't fair. When I was a little girl, I could have the second helping of chicken and kugel at Shabbat dinner. I always said back then that if I ever had to go on a diet it would be very hard, because I love to eat.
My progress is still progressing, but not very quickly because of doing some back-sliding and eating an entire box of iced animal crackers. I also recently ate that entire container of honey cinnamon almonds. Both of which were really good. I will no longer buy iced animal crackers. Not sure about the almonds. After all, they're almonds and aren't almonds good for you?
Sometimes I get weird cravings. Not what you are thinking. It's a food thing not a pregnant thing. (It would be immaculate conception, so you be the judge.) I crave bread. When I eat bread, it usually has to have something on it. Luckily, I had margarine, but if you are like me I do not eat one piece of bread or even two. No, it can be much worse than that. I will say that it could be more than four pieces, but less than 10. I'm sure you get the idea. You know it is kind of like eating an entire Domino's medium BBQ chicken pizza.
I have lost .6 lbs so far. Ugh. That was discouraging, but I know that this is a battle. Within this battle there are many mini-battles like buying your son a Mickey D's milkshake and not buying one for yourself. I had a sip and it was good, but not as good as I thought it would be. That is one thing that I have noticed while trying to stay on this looooooooong road, when you are paying more attention to what you eat, you begin to actually taste your food. Some of it does not taste as good as I once thought.
Now a word on Weight Watchers. I love it. I think it is great. It gives me a direction. Lord knows I can not do this by myself. However, some days I wind up with points at the end of the day and I am not hungry anymore. Sure I could eat, but isn't that how I got to this point in my life in the first place?
Jennifer, this is your friend Adam from high school... it takes a lot of courage to open yourself up to people as you're doing with this blog. I can identify with much of what you're saying as I spent the first six months of this year shedding about 47 pounds. I used one of the packaged food diets to get much of it off but since I travel every now and then for work I needed to find ways to eat right as I was going through the process. Here are some things I did that helped:
ReplyDelete1) Drank lots of water throughout the day and kept a water bottle with me almost at all times. Often I would not get hungry during the day because I just couldn't bear the idea of putting anything else into my body which was so full of water
2) Keep healthy snacks around that I liked eating in readily available forms such as cucumber slices, tomatoes, green and red peppers already cut up, apples, grapes, and some other fruit I always have in the fridge handy
3) Exercise... boy was this a life change for me. I never stuck with any consistent exercise program and when I travel it was always convenient to find excuses not to do anything physical. Now I run at least 4 - 5 times per week and try to do some strength training 1 - 3 times per week and on Sunday mornings a friend and I go hiking/running on a 6 mile trail that has some significant elevation changes on it. I've made this part of my life and I feel guilty when I don't stick with my programs. But it took several months to get to that point where I now NEED to work out for my own peace of mind.
4) I spent a week or two searching for low calorie, low fat (or zero fat) salad dressings that I really like. It wasn't easy but you have some great stores up there that carry some nice ones. I found that I really enjoy Olde Cape Cod Fat Free Balsamic Vinaigrette. It has 25 calories per 2 tbsp and no fat. Some other great dressings are from Maple Grove Farms such as their Balsamic and they have a honey dijon and a wasabi dijon, all of which are fat free (I know that Safeway carries those brands, I don't know about Giant or others up there)
Regarding losing .6 lbs I wouldn't let that discourage you. I know that is far easier said than done, but let me put it into other terms. When you're struggling with weight GAIN, any time you can keep stable or even lose a little, no matter how little it is, you've made a change and you should acknowledge to yourself that you accomplished something positive.
Good luck and I'll keep following your journey!
Adam,first of all I can't imagine you being heavy, but we all change don't we.
ReplyDeleteI opened myself up, because I have been down this road several times and have lost weight some of the times. I knew that I had to make this time different. I know that writing about stuff is helpful and I like to write, so I merged those two things together. This way I figured I would be helping myself by "keeping it real" and I may help other people as well.
I have some health problems that could get better when I lose the weight.
As far as the .6 lbs. I know exactly why that happened. I am doing a much better job this week, plus I am tracking activity points with weight watchers.
Thanks for commenting!