Round

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…

I saw Dr Hope again yesterday. We re-hashed a lot of the past few weeks. She believes the UTI etc are my body reacting to stress. I talked a lot about the job opportunity and it’s true it has been bothering me more than I wanted to admit. My first real clue came when I mentioned it a few days back in a blog post here… I was pretty surprised to have so much pour out of me so fast.

In any event, the Dr Hope advice is to find time to take care of myself - a few minutes of stretching or yoga or meditation or breathing. Ideally a few times a day, but we’ll start with once.

We also talked a lot about the past week or so - my eating has been getting worse and worse - although nothing terrible, certainly not the “eat with intention to lose weight” approach, and the scale must be creeping upwards again, my pants are tighter. So I’m to keep a proper food diary, and bring it to her at my next appointment. Yeah, accountability!

I’ve actually decided to share my food diary here on my blog for the next few days - comments welcome!

For Tuesday 5th February

Breakfast (7:45am) :

• Ate : Muesli, coffee with milk
• Hunger : high
• Environment : home, relaxed
• Appreciation : muesli was good after a week of other stuff. It’s better when I make it with rice milk, however… Coffee I drank too fast as I was running late.
• Leave something leftover : nope.

Lunch (2pm):

• Ate : Spaghetti bolognese
• Hunger : very high
• Environment : restaurant with colleague, pressed for time
• Appreciation : sauce was very good, noodles were greasy and a bit dried out. I ate too fast, and menu choices were limited to a few things they could do fast.
• Leave something leftover : I left a few bites of my spaghetti and I didn’t touch the bread.

Snack (6pm)

• Ate : 3 clementines and then a small “faiselle” (sort of like yogurt)
• Hunger : medium
• Environment : in front of the computer checking email for work. As I left my co-worker she had just bought a chocolate bar thinking she’d share half with me… I don’t think I was hungry before she offered me that.
• Appreciation : high for the clementines, lower for the faiselle - I don’t regularly buy this and probably won’t again… yogurt is bettter
• Leave something leftover : no

Dinner (10:30pm)

• Ate : small bowl of Grape Nuts with milk (the end of my box from the American imports store…)
• Hunger : low but present (and I didn’t want to try to sleep hungry)
• Environment : web surfing to see about the elections after working all evening
• Appreciation : pretty high. I love the texture and plain-ness of Grape Nuts
• Leave something leftover : a spoonful left just because I decided I would blog about this and thought I better have something decent to say…

I saw this ad a while back in an art magazine and ripped it out. I came across it today while cleaning some papers…

This is an ad from a campaign by the German Olympic Committee, and I had a hard time finding the image I wanted so there might be a problem with the copyright… So for the record, I think the campaign is fabulous and I’m not trying to steal anyone’s thunder, just get it out to more people…

Pretty striking, isn’t it?

Soon I think I’ll be moving forward, but apparently not yet.  I guess it’s pretty good for me to be kind of stuck here right now, because it’s clear to me I don’t want to stay at this weight.  I’ve lost enough to be fitting into the fat clothes, but I feel yucky and want to get back to feeling good.

I’m not in a bad space right now - I got in a good long walk yesterday and probably will again today.  Half the time I’m eating well, the other half… well, let’s say there is clearly room for improvement.

I think this week will be a good clean slate.  My DH is gone for the first half of the week (and this time he really left), I’m feeling better after my antibiotics, and I got through a major meeting for my work last Friday.

The only real residual stress I’m facing is the possible job change one - and honestly I feel that it’s out of my hands.  I’ve only briefly touched on this topic, but it’s a big one for me.  Apparently the company is still trying to make up their mind, and they’re going to re-contact me for another set of interviews.  I suspect some of my malaise last week was anxiousness to have closure on this topic, but it looks like that will elude me again.  I’m now expecting a long timeline, my guess is I don’t have a clear answer until the end of the month.  What I am clear of is that they have doubts, so I’m mentally prepared for a No.   Since the job would be such a huge lifestyle change it’s not a No that is crushing - I have plenty of my own doubts, and in many ways it would be easier for them to tell me No than for me to have to accept the job, knowing that it will spark so much change in my life.  (But it’s truly my dream job, with a very good company and a real challenge and interesting position.  If offered it, I know I’ll accept.)