It was a bit cool this morning, so I put on my new pair of size 12 pants and a new shirt and my goodwill find zip up fitness jacket. Nothing fancy, but he just looked at me and shook his head in a "wow... look at you!" So, I said, "What?" and he said, "you are looking thin." OK, I'm not thin, but this man never says anything he doesn't mean. He will never give a compliment unless he means it, so it meant a lot.
And... that came after a very difficult day of eating for me. it was the first time in 8 months that I had no feeling of control. I was tired, I was stressed, I was bored and my hormones were playing part of it too. I ate and ate yesterday. The good news is that I'm not feeling like that today, but too little sleep and lack of exercise and hormones are not a good mix - at all.
And because of the big food day the scale is up this morning, but I'm not going to stress about it as a. it's a temporary upswing on the scale due to lots of food and b. I've had too little sleep again and c. even if it were real pounds gained, it's temporary. This is life and in life there will be days I eat too much and then I'll just have to make up for it by eating a bit less at other times. I can't beat myself up about having one day of bad decisions when it comes to food.
I also now know that cake is a trigger food for me - especially unfrosted cake. I simply cannot have it in the house because I cannot resist it. That should be easy enough to avoid as I rarely have cake for the family. Of course, my son is wanting a cake for his birthday as soon as he gets better, but that will be a dark chocolate cake which is not a trigger for me as I can't eat large chunks/pieces of dark chocolate anything.
Today is the first day of school, so I walked my younger son to school. He was so excited, but nervous too with all the new teacher faces (he's a bit shy on top of his autism), but all in all I think it will be a good first day. Well... we'll see. He was up at 4:30 am this morning because they are working on a ramp to the highway about a mile away. The sound carries over the lake and woke us all up and the little guy wasn't able to go back to sleep.
My older son was up at 5 am with his fever going up to 103, so he's not in school today, obviously. I really did try to get a full night of sleep last night, but it didn't happen. I got to bed about 11:15 and was mostly awoke from 4 am onwards. Not what I wanted, but what can I do?
Tonight is bodypump - first time in 8 days for me to get to that class and I'm looking forward to it. Other than that, I'll have a couple miles of walking with walking my son to and from school this morning and after school. I really, really love that I can do that and even take several different routes to keep it interesting. I am so lucky to live in such a wonderful area after so many years living in very unfriendly walking areas. I'll never, ever take that for granted.
Ok, off to get some work done today! At least the little kid is out of my hair!
Stats for 8/30/11:
Beginning weight: 255.6 Now: 191.4
You can disarm that trigger (and any trigger) by eating it everyday for as long as it takes to stop it from being a draw. I'm not talking about scarfing down a whole cake, but rather setting aside 200 calories per day for a reasonable piece of cake. It's deprivation that sets of triggering. Once you have it, you want more and more because your brain is responding like a junkie that has been dried out for awhile and suddenly gets a fresh hit of cocaine. If you eat it everyday, that response will mellow out. It will contribute to mental discipline by reducing the positive response neurochemically.
ReplyDeleteSince you have family, you have people who can help you do this by portioning for you to stop you from bingeing on it. Your husband can keep it at work and only give you a portion a day, or you can freeze the slices and take out one per day and have him keep you accountable. I normally do not recommend that people involve others in their weight loss, but if you can't trust yourself or believe that you cannot, it may be beneficial to get some external assistance.
I think it's far better in the long run to disarm triggers than to merely decide you are forever enslaved to a certain food and cannot have it around. Doing the mental work to defuse such compulsions strengthens your ability to deal with all food with more equanimity as well as broadens your ability to be exposed to food without acting in a manner which you would prefer not to. I realize that I'm in a small minority on this, but the very existence of the jargon ("trigger foods") and the notion that they are inevitable for everyone is simply wrong. You do not need to carefully plot out your exposure. You need to learn to deal psychologically with that exposure such that it does not initiate undesirable behavior. This can be done, but you have to believe it is possible and expect to stumble and fall a few times during the process.