Wednesday, October 3, 2012

2 of 21

Completed my food log Tuesday.  Dinner was with a friend at Panera's, and I knew what I was having thanks to their excellent nutrition calculator.  I'm 2 days into my 21 day challenge. 

As always happens when I am being careful and conscious of what I eat (and aware of calorie totals throughout the day), I'm looking for ways to shave calories.  This can be a good thing, of course, but I feel my disordered eating/thinking stirring.  I am writing it here to be honest and stay accountable.  I'm aware of trying to leave myself a whole bunch of calories going into dinner so I have "enough" to allow after dinner intake given that is my hardest time of day.  Hard to admit that, and as I write this I realize I'm enabling myself and the bad habit of evening snacking.  I don't want to do that, but I also know I can't change everything at once.  At least if I stay at or under my daily calorie allotment (thanks to this all-important tracking), I'm doing better than when I'm just eating with reckless abandon.

I'd like to say that I'm going to stop eating after 7 p.m.  That's my intention.  But it's not part of my 21 day challenge right now.  I will stay accountable with this issue as well, and hopefully will find more success gradually with the 7 p.m. cut off.

So many more wacko food thoughts I could discuss, but I will save them for another post.  One craziness at a time.  And I'm feeling guardedly optimistic for today.

5 comments:

  1. Did it ever occur to you that the wanting to eat late in the evening is not just simply disordered thinking about food?

    Especially if you are 'saving' calories it most definitely could be brought on because you are having swings in your blood sugar. Not so much that you'd notice but your body is saying that you left it too hungry all day and now it wants satisfaction.

    I've actually been trying to eat heartier meals and do away with snacking all together unless it's a simple apple. It's been an interesting experiment.

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    1. Thanks Helen - good food for thought, and given my Type 2 status, likely. One thing I will say is that my eating at night rarely is due to true hunger, but I probably have a screwed up insulin reaction from all the years of this. I really appreciate your feedback.

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  2. My son, who travels a lot for work, eats at Panera quite a bit because he can figure out the calories for his meals. Great choice.

    I think knowing your weaknesses (like evening snacking) is good; I used to allow myself apples in the evening if I was still hungry. Sometimes I ate two - but even that was such a better option than my previous choices that I didn't beat myself up over it. Now I almost never feel the need to eat after dinner but I don't remember when that changed.

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  3. Helen has a good point. Just keep taking it one day at a time.

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  4. Hi there..long time no blog exchange. I just read back to your long post . My husband recently asked me the same question about how my blogging was going..and it wasn't. I posted about it. Not blogging the real story because it was kinda zinging all over the place and I couldn't figure it out.

    I'm an after dinner snacker too-we are confusing dessert with snack (I think). I know the advice to "drink a nice comforting cup of herbal tea" and that doesn't make it happen.

    I'm confused myself about the 12 step approach to dieting versus mindful eating and beyond that to bingeing. In between is where I am eating from extreme to extreme. I am going to see an old Ed experienced RD that could usually get me back on track and give me a reality check.

    Be Kind to yourself (I say to myelf too)

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