skiur said:
It's been about a week since I've made a concious effort to re-evaluate my woe.
These are the steps I've take so far:
1) Journal foods with portion size and calories when available. This has already helped me put the
brakes to some habits that I picked up when I wasn't paying attention. I redirected the need to
be perfect with the woe to journaling and it's helped a lot. I don't feel as guilty as I have
in the past.
2) Repeating to myself that a certain food is allowed, I'm not being bad, and I can have it. This
one is going to take a while. I have this conversation with myself when I portion out things
like salad dressing.
3) Eating smaller portions and stop when I'm not hungry any more-this works better some days more
than others.
4) Making substitutions for foods. I really like potato chips so I switched to WOW chips (no fat,
70 calories per serving). I really like chips and I don't feel like it's a diet when I can have
them. It'll keep me from going AWOL and I need to ease myself off the chips every time I have a
sandwich for lunch.
My weight keeps fluctuating and I'm trying to figure out where my starting weight is although I do
have a pretty good idea. I stopped taking ephedra free Xenadrine which plays a part in weight
normalization.
The most important thing is that I feel better for starting this journey.
Julie
I've also worked out a few things to keep me on track:
If I can pig out on saussages and chips (fries) here once a week, I stay sane, so I have two thick
low fat saussages for 1.5 points each, and low fat oven chips. I fill the plate with low to no point
vegetables and salad. I've never been a big fan of things like crisps (USA chips) or other potato
snacks, so not having them isn't a problem for me.
I ration chocolate: this is easy for me after the gall bladder experience (last June I ended up in
hospital with accute coliocystitus, and such a severe infection and inflamation that they would not
operate for fear of peritonitus! After that, avoiding trigger foods was a doddle!). DH brought home
some really good nugat this week, but it was all in Cadbury's Milk Tray sized bits, and I rationed
myself to one bit per day, for a point a piece.
If I go over my points for a day by one or two, I DO NOT beat myself up over it: I live on carrot
and corriander soup the following day! I ditched guilt about food when I started this downward
journey: I thought there was no point in feeling guilty about eating things I liked, I just tried to
ration the treats and cook food I really like but is healthier than some more traditional recipes
for the same things. Most of the time this works fine. We had guests for dinner today, so I did a
really good WW chicken and mushroom Stroganoff with rice (3 points for the Stroganoff, 3 for the
rice), and followed it with an adaptation of creme brulee for 3 points (made in ramekins, so NO
seconds!), and I used some saved points for a pre-prandial glass of mead and two glasses of white
wine. Altogether, dinner was 15 points, so I've has 23.5 points today rather than 22, and used up
1.5 of my two saved points. Worth every bite and slurp, and no guilt at all!
The ONLY things I don't point and account for are any drinks and nibbles I have at the WW meeting.
There are always low point drinks and WW cakes available, and I may consume 3 points worth, but so
what! That's my indulgence for the week!
I learned to recognise my danger points in the day: 4 pm and about midnight! 4 pm is after school,
and after a long hard teaching day (I usually got to school between 7:30 and 8 am, lessons started
at 9 and went on until 3:45, and while I did have a break mid morning, 15 minuts is just about time
to nip to the loo and swallow half a cup of tea! A lunch break of 50 minutes is OK unless you are on
duty and have kids to see, at which point it gets cut to another 15 minutes...), this was the first
time i had to do more than have a fly cuppa and a quick sandwich on the run, and I really needed the
energy of sweet stuff to carry me through post teaching day activities (staff meetings, detentions,
marking and prep for the following day) to supper time at about 8 pm when I got home. Midnight was
usually after finishing the evening's marking at home, when I realized that I was hungry again! For
me it's been as much a matter of re-training my hunger points as anything else! Now that I work at
home most of the time, I can dictate when I eat, rather than eating to the schedule dictated by
dealing with 400+ other people every day. I do have a snack at about 4, as this is whan I get in
from my 2 mile walk to collect my son from school, and it's time to relax over a cup of tea before
getting back to the sewing machine or making dinner for him before he goes out to Cubs or Judo.
It is baby steps: one little thing at a time. If you try to do too much at once, you get
overwhelmed. The Midnight Munchies are the most difficult to eliminate: I suffer from insomnia, so
am frequently up far later than is sensible, and that hollow feeling round about midnight, when it's
at least 5 hours since I last ate, is quite a big hurdle! I try to keep a supply of zero point
carrots in the fridge for this time. Apples are also good: only half a point each, but they take a
while to chew up, so are satisfying on several levels.
I have substetuted carrots, apples and other fruit and veg for piles of cookies and chocolate, and
i'm working on upping my water consumption. Lots of folk find that when they start drinking enough,
hunger pangs are less. I think the signals get confused, and we feel hunger rather than thirst,
which is the real problem!
--
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