I have had a mad craving for black licorice the last few weeks. Not any black licorice. Red Vines brand black licorice. I do not like Twizzlers. They are like a shellacked chewable licorice flavored wax.
I stopped at the store on the way home from work on Friday and found exactly what I was looking for. I bought the pound bag (not because I intended to binge, but because they didn't have the small box I was looking for). I got in the car and immediately opened the bag. Yes, I wanted it bad enough to open it in the car. I was thinking to myself. Man, this can't be good that I'm not even waiting to get home to eat this. I had to open it now (instant gratification). Then, I happened to glance over at the car next to me. Some guy had a slice of apple pie on a plate and was eating it in the car with a real fork. I know we are all in a hurry and all, but this guy had the actual pie he cut the slice off of on the dash. My thoughts immediately went to thinking that of all dicey situations you can get yourself into, travelling with a pie and the utensils to cut said pie whilst travelling down a road. I tell this to a few friends. One of them said he was probably trying to eliminate baking time and just put one of those frozen pies on the dash, cooked it during the day and was enjoying the fruits of his labor on the way home. Now, that is one multitasking dude!
I know I've mentioned in the past about giving into cravings. Some people have had some questions on this concept, because there is a fine line between 3 Oreos and 3 boxes of Oreos. There are some people that have a hard time distinguishing this line. My favorite analogy is: like the difference between a rubber chicken and rubbing a chicken. VERY FINE LINE.
When I first started losing weight, I prohibited myself from anything remotely bad for me. Then, I realized life was too short. You can have your cake and eat it too. The key word to all of this is moderation. When I first started watching my caloric intake, I kept a little notebook that I wrote everything I ate into. Its a great idea to start. It really helps you get a handle on what you are eating every day and not just the handle of the fork.
Moderation: the quality of being moderate; restraint; avoidance of extremes or excesses; temperance.
(ps- the avoidance of extremes including not eating the whole box of Oreos, yo!)
I'll explain it easy enough. I like a lot of different things that are not good for you. For instance, large quantities of chocolate. Beer, most specifically, beer that has no calorie content published anywhere. French fries. Chicken wings. Cake. Cookies. . . I could go on. If I stopped myself from eating all these things and drinking what I want, I would be an eternally unhappy person. This, would make my man very unhappy because he would have to listen to me pine over french fries. And, I can be a pretty effective whiner when I put my heart into it.
I eat all those things. Every one of them. But, I don't do it all the time. I know better. For the greater part of the week (5 or 6 days) I eat healthy all day. I'll give you an example of my menu during the week:
Coffee when I wake up. (5am)
For breakfast once I get to work: Chobani Greek Yogurt (7:30am)
About an hour later: a piece of fruit- today it was a plum
About an hour later: a Nature Valley Honey and Oats granola bar
For lunch: A eating right miso noodle soup cup (only at Safeway or through Amazon). I don't use the whole packet of seasoning( to watch the sodium), but add a bunch of crushed red pepper to it to spice it up. I'll have a handful of the Red Hot Blues baked tortilla chips, then for dessert I'll have a 90 calorie Fiber one brownie.
For a snack: I have a Fiber One Oats and Chocolate bar and a small can (100 cal) of 100% pineapple juice.
For dinner each night: Varies. Tonight will be a BLT salad. I have bacon, avocado, butter lettuce, red onion, hard boiled eggs, feta, tomatoes and other mish mash I can put on there.
For dessert: I bought some low cal vanilla bean ice cream. I have fresh raspberries that I used last night and tonight, I intend on using peaches.
Now, if you look above, where have I denied myself? I haven't. You'll also notice I'm picking the Fiber One brand. I had coupons, but also because fiber fills you up. I can have a Fiber One granola bar for 140 calories and between that and the pineapple juice it helps stave off hunger until I get home. If I want something else (my man loves popcorn and sometimes I'll have a small bowl) I don't tell myself no all the time. We also currently have peanut M&M's in the house. My favorite. They've been there a week and the bag is only about half gone. Why? Because when I want them, I'll only eat 8-10 of them, suck on them til the chocolate melts and then eat the peanut. Its a process that I do so I deter myself from hoovering the bag.
You can continue to enjoy the things you like, but in moderation. If you look and find you are eating your comfort food or go to on a frequent basis, you may want to re-evaluate your position. Eating ONE cheat meal a week is ok. Eating through a cheat DAY is not.
The big thing is for you to feel comfortable with what you are eating. If you feel guilty afterwards, you might want to start limiting your intake of it. If you don't feel like you can appropriately limit your portions of your snack, I know they are more expensive, but buy the 100 calorie packs. Until you are familiar with portion sizes or what portion control is, you may need to do that to establish a baseline. Instead of an expanded waistline.
I have faith all of you can do whatever you put your mind to. I know I've gone on and on about how I've gained weight after my illness earlier this year. I'm finally getting back down to where I want to be. I am hard on myself in a lot of ways because I don't want to end up where I was before. I've travelled up and back down that road and I'm content with not going up there again. Like, if I were to ever climb Mount Everest, I think I'd be good doing it once. But in all of my evil that I put on myself, I really am not as bad as I thought. I went shopping yesterday to try to find pants that fit better. You know what? They're one size bigger than where I was. One. Thats it. So all this whining and worrying was about crap. The more stress you generate on yourself to do better, be better and lose more weight ultimately isnt helping you at all. I stopped stressing and I dropped 5 lbs.
So cut it out!
By the way, I do have some followers that are specifically reading only the blog posts. I don't want to tell you that you're being cheated or anything, but I post A LOT of recipe ideas and articles directly to the facebook page. Its a little more time consuming to come in here and post, but the good news is that if you have twitter or facebook, you can follow me and my posts from facebook feed directly to twitter. What a deal! The facebook page link and the twitter page link should be on your sidebar.
If you don't see them, you can follow me on facebook- the page is Thinfully Inspired. On twitter, the handle is thinfullyinsprd.
I have another post coming Friday or so this week.... just separated it out into two so its not so long!
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