Musings about Meals

This is my youngest grandson, J, finishing off his first birthday Cookie Monster birthday cupcake.  I secretly think of him as the "Eyelash King."  He's a good little eater, but he never cracked a smile while he was eating this.  I think he was bothered by the blue icing on his hand.  I took a cue from him and decided to forego trying one of the cupcakes.   I did pretty well with the rest of the meal--grilled chicken tenders, corn on the cob, green salad, and chips and guacamole.  I had some of everything, but limited myself to 13 (unbroken!) tortilla chips, which I seem to recall is about 2 or 3 WW points.  Everything else fit in my CORE plan.

I've been thinking recently about my progress this summer.  I am losing well, exercising a lot, eating well and feeling great.   I think one thing that has been working for me is the idea of having just one major meal a day.  This is one of the 12  suggestions "tough rules"  in Barbara Berkeley's Refuse to Regain.  I don't follow every rule, but most of them make a lot of sense to me.   This summer, for the first time, I've drifted into having one major meal a day.   I started doing it by chance, but recognized it as a successful diet strategy when I saw it explained in her book.

I believe that eating a healthy breakfast is important, but I was never a big breakfast eater.  You know the drill, in my foolish fat days, I'd skip breakfast to "save calories" for later splurges.  No breakfast calories = two trips to the vending machine calories when I got hungry a couple hours after lunch.   This type of thinking obviously didn't work for me.  This last time I joined WW, I decided to eat breakfast.  I'm not usually hungry then, but I got in the habit of eating breakfast--cereal (shredded wheat in the summer, sw or oatmeal in the winter), fruit, and ff milk.   Early this summer, right about when I started this blog, I decided to change my habit of eating dinner leftovers for lunch (good, WW  CORE plan food, but almost always including pasta/corn/ or brown rice and the main dish and side vegetables).  Because I'm often busy with my grand babies at lunch time, I fell into the habit of eating ff (that's fat free, not full fat!) cottage cheese and mandarin oranges every day.  Filling, easy, easy to keep on hand.

Berkeley's theory of the major meal, encourages you to eat one full, healthy meal per day [it doesn't matter which meal you choose; I chose dinner because I need to feed my two fellas, but if I lived by myself, I'd probably have chosen lunch].  The other meals should be small--just two or three ingredients, and boring--not so exciting that you're tempted to overeat at that meal.  This really works for me.  I'm satisfied with my breakfast and lunch, but if I'm tempted, I just remind myself that I'm fixing an awesome  pasta salad (or stir fry, or chicken picatta, lamb chop dinner, or WW lasagna, or, well, you get the picture) for dinner.  And, if I'm tempted into overeating a bit a special dinners (like last night's tortilla chips) I know I'll be right back on the straight and narrow at my very next meal.  It's easier to resist the "I've blown it with the tortilla chips, so I might as well fix chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast" mentality.

My morning visits to my scale are making me smile.  My weight loss goal in the Summer Diet Buddies (see red logo in right column) is 12 pounds in 8 weeks.  I think I may do it!

What works for you?  Do you have a major meal each day?

Funk Recovery

Yesterday I had a funky day, diet wise.  It was Thursday, and one of the days I watch my grand babies.  It was also a record-breaking hot, muggy day.  The babies arrive early and are here for 10+ hours.  I love 'em to pieces and we have fun together, but, somehow, yesterday I was feeling frustrated.  J still takes short-ish morning and afternoon naps, E takes a long afternoon nap.  The awful weather outside, the fact that the double stroller ended up at their house this week,  and their scheduled naps and bottles, made me decide not to try any outings yesterday.  My scheduled exercise on Thursdays is a gym date with DH, after supper.  But I was feeling antsy and cooped up in the house.  I think the kids felt it too, because mild-tempered J used his brand new teeth to bite E's little leg when she wouldn't let him touch one of her toys.

The cooped up feeling led to my old enemy Mr. Munch making his presence known.  I ate my good breakfast and my good lunch, but was sorely tempted by the kids' pretzel sticks and E's peanut m&ms (a potty training reward).  Fortunately my pantry is swept pretty clean of some of the big players in the bad snack department, but I remembered that there is a stash of York peppermint patties (reader beware, don't fall for the Costco size box, like I did).  I started remembering how much I enjoy popcorn, too.   By the end of the afternoon, the score was Mr. Munch -1,  Me- 0.   DH got home, I fixed our nice OP dinner and we went to the gym.

I felt disheartened by my succumbing to emotional eating, but was able to climb back onto the high road and it's yesterday's news, not today's.   I totaled up the points of all my  munching and was somewhat consoled to find that I ate only about 7 points worth.  Not everything I ate was a bad food (popcorn's okay, and the piece of whole wheat toast  is okay, too), but I want to be more in control of what I'm eating.  I get to choose and plan, not Mr. Munch.   Do you hear me, MM??  Hit the road.

My weight this morning had a little blip up, but I'm sure it will go back down.   I did a 3 mile run first thing and DH and I plan a long bike ride after dinner tonight.  I drew strength from reading your blogs (thank you, thank you) and I did a little reading in Refuse to Regain while I was getting my hair colored.  I didn't enjoy the off-plan eating yesterday, but I am feeling good about turning from that behavior and reclaiming my life.  I'm off to visit my Dad in the nursing home.

What do you do to recover from off-plan eating?