Saturday, September 14, 2013

The post about a "less than stellar" eating day and why "moderation" will never work for me

Rock'in the crutches on my way to work.
My new sweater from Value Village. Only $3.50!

Yesterday's food post, a day late.  Yesterday morning was an exciting one for me.  Hubby had some free time to drive me into the office so I could pick up the work I need to work from home.  It was good to just get out of the house and see some familiar faces.  It wasn't a long visit, we had to drive into Toronto, so no lollygagging around.  We had to be back to pick up Julien from school at 3pm.

I had a day of eating errors yesterday.  My first mistake was not eating breakfast.  I was unprepared.  I had no hard boiled eggs left, and forgot to boil some more the night before.  So I went without.  Weight loss 101. Always be prepared!  I didn't end up eating until after 1pm when I got back home.  I had a good enough lunch and dinner. I treated myself to a small glass of wine in the afternoon. That was supposed to be my only treat for probably the week.  It's the evening where I went off plan.  I had 10 nuts (my bastard husband has them in the house...no excuse for me though), I also had some watermelon (1 cup) and a couple of handfuls of popcorn.  Now all these things separately throughout the day would have been on plan with Phase 2 of Dr. Poon's Metabolic Diet.  But eating the nuts, watermelon and popcorn in the span of 1 hour made it a bit more like a binge in my mind. Not good!  And popcorn is NOT Paleo!  I also drank only half the water I usually do.  Not a great day overall.

Am I being a bit hard on myself?  You  betcha.  No one else is going to give me a hard time about this.  I'm attempting to lose weight, not maintain while being pretty much sedentary.  I made a commitment to lose weight over the next couple of months.  So I need to do my best to make that goal.  I'm not going to dwell on my choices last night.  I'm just moving on today.  Will this set me back? Likely not.  It's one day out of 14 between weigh-ins.  But if I do this once, it could become easier to do it again, then again.  Before you know it, all my days will be like this and I'll have wasted 2 months while literally sitting on my ass.  Not going to happen.

Although I had "movie night" with Julien, this is the real reason why my
post is a day late.

I recently came across a couple of blogs where people lost 100+ pounds only to regain all that weight plus more.  I know that feeling.  I've been there and done that.  The difference between then and now for me is that I realized that I had to cut certain foods out of my life for good in order to be successful this time around.  Moderation does not work for me, nor will it ever.  I'm a binge eater, telling me I can only have one cookie will not fly.  If I have one, I'll want two, then not want to stop till they're all gone.  My good friend Lynda over at Living the Life wrote an excellent blog post about this earlier in the week.  I agree 100% with what she had to say.  Go on over and take a look, she explains things so well.

My husband is just starting to understand what it means to be a binge eater.  He's never had that problem, so cheat days for him while doing Paleo, are not an issue.  He can go out for sushi, eat a bunch of rice and move on. He can also sneak bread here and there and it doesn't affect him the way it would affect me. Unless you've been morbidly obese and struggled with binge eating and processed carb and refined sugar addiction, you won't be able to understand what it's like.  It's not as easy as "just stop eating".  I hear that way too much from people who have never had a weight issue.  If it was that easy, obesity would be a non-issue instead of the the leading cause of death in North America (due to obesity related illnesses).

Those of us who are still on the yo-yo diet roller coaster, don't want to hear that we have to let go of food that we love.  It's such an emotional subject.  Especially if you're an addict.  I love food just as much as the next gal, but I don't love it more than my son or my health. One of the hardest things I ever did was give up processed carbs, refined sugar and dairy.  It was hard, but not as hard as weighing 300 pounds.  I went through withdrawal when I quit the carbs and sugar and felt like shit for a week.  It was hard to do two years ago, but it's much easier now.  Once you cut something out of your diet for a prolonged period of time, the cravings really do disappear.  I still eat very well.  I make dishes that have a lot of flavor and that I enjoy eating.  Do pasta, pizza, baked goods, cheese and ice cream still cross my mind?  You better believe it.  But they are becoming more and more of a distant memory.  A comforting memory.  Almost like an old lover that you really clicked with but couldn't commit to. We had a good time, but my priorities have changed and it's time to move onward and upward.

The red wine was at 4pm. The snacks all happened during the movie with
Julien. At least "Rise of the Guardians" was enjoyable.