Sunday 8 April 2012

Winner is you!

Haha!

Am sticking to my plan of watching what I eat fairly well.  Some slips ups obviously, what with it being Easter this weekend.  I'm not a chocolate fan, but I am a food fan.  So, some seafood salad, and potato salad and bread rolls and salmon on toast and smoked herring and oh-so-many foods.  But, I ate a little bit and I stopped when I was full.  Normally I keep eating and eating and eating til I'm in pain from so much food.  But I felt I did really well yesterday for lunch and stopped.  I even managed to ignore my mother when she tried to force more food onto my plate - win!

I've also exercised twice since my previous post.  Win again!
This I do have to credit my mother for: we went to a pilates class at the community centre.  One with mat work and resistance bands.  Never done anything like it before.  Must admit, I did enjoy it!  I wish that I weren't just on holidays and visiting for the week.  I would love to undertake exercise classes like this, but where I live, we have slim pickings when it comes to fitness activities.  Boo.  I also went for a 6 km walk along the beach front this afternoon too.

Third news of Win!
I had the massive-ist craving for chips -> corn chips/potato chips the other evening.  I was full, had eaten more than enough food, and then out of nowhere, the desire for chips came upon me.  Of course, it was 10 o'clock in the evening.  I wanted them so bad!  I even started going through my mind, bargaining out "well, I have time tomorrow, I can duck out to the shops and they should be open and I can buy a packet then."  Problem was, then I started to think further and even tried convincing myself that maybe I should buy two packets, in different flavours, in case I get the craving again. 
       Now, I don't know about you, but I know what happens next.  I buy the two packets, open one and eat "just a handful", "saving the rest for later", right?  That's how it goes doesn't it?  It certainly is the intention.  However, reality means that what occurs is that I eat "just a handful", then, just a handful more, and more.  I eat until the taste becomes so salty/strong that I finally ween my self away from gorging on the entire bag.  To see that I have eaten approx 4/5 of the bag.
      So not only do I feel sick from too much salt, and additives and flavourings, I also feel sick from guilt, that I allowed myself to eat *so* much of the chips, when I was only supposed to have "a handful".  If this is like you, I can offer some suggestions that have been given to me, or that I've read.  I try and use them both.
  • Pour a small serving into a dish and put the bag away and just eat the amount in your dish.  Why this works? You portion control the amount you are eating; physiologically, you've satisfied your craving (sweet tooth, or savoury crunch); and psychologically you feel satisfied that you've eaten everything in front of you.  I've also found that if you're a couch potato and in the middle of a good movie, you don't want to get up and get more - lazy bonus! :)
  • Use your non-dominant hand.  Why this works? Because you are doing a natural action, with an unnatural hand, it makes you more mindful of what you are doing.  You actually end up having to concentrate on what your hand is doing and it helps you realise what you are doing. It's in part connected to the concept of the left brain-right brain training.  
The craving got so intense that it got to the point where I thought I was going to scream for not having the chips.  And yet... somewhere in the depths of my memory came a tidbit of information that I read on another weightloss blog.  I wish I could remember which one.  It may even have been a post from 'Promises Promises Webcomic - a humourous look and fitness and weight loss by Jules Faulkner.  Link here! --> Promises Comic. This information was the "scientifically proven fact" that cravings only last for 15 minutes. 15 minutes?! But I was dying over here....!
        So I dstracted myself, mainly by going onto Google to see if I could find anything else that mentioned how long cravings lasted for.  And I read some interested information about how eating other food, no matter how healthy, may not be the best strategy when you have a craving, because it doesn't quite satisfy the same way. Then you overeat calorie-wise, meaning you've gone over your energy input anyway!  So you may as well have had some of the food in the first place!  But then as mentioned above, I have trouble stopping when that crave is over.  Weight loss and healthy choices are a battle, but a battle worth winning!
       However, essentially google, and other people's weight loss blogs agreed with this idea that food cravings do only last a few minutes.  And I won!  That craving did not beat me! :)  I felt so good at the end of the evening, realising that I had a craving and this is the first time that I have not succumbed to it at all.  Normally if I don't have the food I'm craving, I eat something else in the hope that works.   And as a result, overeat badly.  This time round, I just staved it off - hurruh!!  Very pleased. 

Cartoon for the efforts!

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