All day I have been wanting to overeat. I controlled myself at breakfast and lunch, even at my snack when I first got home. I caught myself thinking of voluminous dinner options at several times during the day, and I finally gave in — with broccoli and cabbage, and also some Special K cereal. It’s still overeating, but it’s a better choice to overeat 2/3 a head of broccoli and 2 mugs of cereal than to eat piles of pasta or pie…

I don’t know how long I’ll keep noting this on my blog, probably about a week. I am a BIG BELIEVER in the food diary, I have kept one off and on for years and years, and was keeping one (on paper) for the past several weeks, but stopped about 2 weeks ago for no good reason & it’s always downhill from there…

For Wednesday 6th February

Breakfast (8:15am) :

  • Ate : Muesli, coffee with milk
  • Hunger : high
  • Environment : home, relaxed
  • Appreciation : fair. The coffee was good today, however the strawberries in the muesli were looking pretty sad (bought on Sunday). I tossed out the remaining & will make a new batch tonight.
  • Leave something leftover : nope.

Lunch (1:30pm):

  • Ate : small steak w pepper sauce, salad w dressing, 1/2 roll, french fries
  • Hunger : very high
  • Environment : restaurant with colleague & client. No choice on the meal except how the meat was cooked… luckily I like steak, and this way I could eat french fries without guilt, since I hadn’t chosen them, right?
  • Appreciation : very good for standard bistro fare in Parisian suburbs.
  • Leave something leftover : Yes, I left 2 bites of meat and about 1/4 of the french fries. I ate all the salad ;-)

Snack (6:15pm)

  • Ate : 3 clementines and then some yogurt
  • Hunger : high
  • Environment : in front of the computer checking email for work. I was thinking about all kinds of things to eat for dinner, focusing on volume and creamy or crunchy at each idea. Should I make rice pudding? Pasta? Polenta? Popcorn w real butter? I just ate the clementines and yogurt and decided to choose dinner later…
  • Appreciation : high for the clementines, high for the yogurt (one of my fave brands)
  • Leave something leftover : no

Dinner (8:30pm)

  • Ate : big bowl of broccoli with some parmesean sprinkled on top. 1/2 cup homemade applesauce. 2 mugs of Special K with milk (why in a mug? I was too lazy to find a bowl…)
  • Hunger : good question. Was it hunger or desire to eat? All I know is from breakfast on I kept thinking of how I’d really like to eat a LOT of food. I didn’t for breakfast, lunch I couldn’t, held myself back at snack, and when at dinnertime it was still the main thing I was looking for, I was pleased to find the broccoli & cabbage in the fridge. Because I can pack away some pretty good quantities of broccoli and it won’t kill my weight loss efforts. I know it’s not eating “mindfully” and it’s still overeating, but what are you supposed to do when your body keeps calling out for VOLUME? I figured it beat the alternative. I made the broccoli and ate half of it while the cabbage cooked. I didn’t eat the cabbage. I ate my nice small serving of applesauce. I still wanted to eat, and I wanted crunchy and creamy. I gave in to the cereal, which I probably should have STARTED with, since it was on my mind since breakfast… But live and learn, right?
  • Environment : dining room, alone
  • Appreciation : moderate. The broccoli was good and I don’t make it enough - I should buy it more often because I really do like it. Applesauce not so much, probably because it wasn’t what I was hungry for. Cereal was very high in pleasure for me… I spent a lot of my single girl years eating cereal for dinner. Maybe that was part of it tonight? It’s my last of 4 nights alone before my DH comes home tomorrow…
  • Leave something leftover : I didn’t eat the cabbage after I cooked it, does that count?

Overall, I’m hoping I won’t have this urge to overeat very often. Since I’m just getting back into the food journal, I’m going to mainly stick to that for the coming days, but I suspect I need to work on asking myself what I’m really hungry for and what will Satisfy me. I’d have saved myself a lot of hassle if I’d just eaten the cereal for dinner first thing…