I didn't have a good morning. We made apple cinnamon pancakes for breakfast with fresh apples shredded inside. That's ok, I use pancake mix that doesn't have sugar and we don't put on butter/syrup but instead a bit of cream cheese. Oh, and an orange too.
However... lunch, uhoh! We had to run to Target and it's pretty far from home so DD and I ended up grabbing Pizza Hut (the only little food stop inside) . We split a personal pan pepperoni pizza and breadsticks. Ugh! After I bought I really sat there and thought why did I do this? But I knew that we had to eat something before we left because it'd be a long trip back and DD would've freaked out without eating. Yep, I definitely didn't plan ahead.
In the afternoon I had a sweet potato bar (no sugar, with oatmeal and walnuts in it) and... a bagel with cream cheese. That last one was another bad choice but again, it was an instance of running errands without planning ahead (you'd think I'd learn?).
Well, after getting back home this afternoon I DD's Jullian Mitchell's Last Chance workout and then some extra stretching afterwards. However, I still have dinner to eat.
I was thinking of some leftover chicken breast with peas and fresh salsa. Maybe with a smidgen of of melted cheese on top. With that be so awful? I definitely don't want to see the scale tomorrow morning!!!
And... ironically, before me working on my diet and exercise this day wouldn't have even upset me!
But it seems as if you've learned a valuable lesson - plan, plan and than plan some more. Healthy eating won't happen on it's own. You can't wing it. It must be planned for, prepared for and followed through. Like anything that's important and matters, some pre thought and effort will have to go into it.
I don't leave my home without packing lots of food, the longer I plan to be out, the more I pack - yogurt, apples, baby carrots, bag of raw string beans, popcorn and some extras. I NEVER want to be caught out longer than I thought and have to resort to eating *whatever*. If I'm going to eat off plan, it's going to be on MY terms. When it's been accounted for and therefore I can enjoy it.
As for dinner. How about that chicken breast with salsa (skip the cheese, no?) and maybe a salad. A nice cup of hot tea for later on.
So today will be history in a few more hours; time to move on - So, what's your recovery plan for tomorrow? How are you going about bouncing back? Have you got your day mapped out????
Last edited by rockinrobin; 10-03-2010 at 12:05 AM.
When your DD was a baby, how often did you run errands without a diaper bag? I bet you never, ever forgot because it was a priority. Food planning has to be like that. Never leave the house without knowing exactly what you are going to eat the rest of the day--which often means packing a lunch when you are running errands all day or whatever.
I don't have children (yet), but for me the lightbulb moment was when I remembered that when I smoked, I never ran out of cigarettes. I was totally addicted, and what that meant was that where ever I was going I knew where my cigarettes were coming from. It mattered to me, so I planned ahead and made it happen. Food just had to be the same for me.
Now whenever my schedule is different than the routine, my first thought is "what am I doing about food?" This doesn't consume my life because answering that question usually only takes a few minutes ("I'll take an orange and baked chicken on whole wheat sandwich" or "I'll stop at the McDs on State and Elm and order a plain chicken sandwich" or whatever), but you have to take that few minutes every single day.
Don't beat yourself up about what is done. Learn from this and move on. Ensure you always have healthy food choices close at hand cause you may not know where you will be in a few hours, but you DO know that you will have to eat in a few hours.
Congratulations on your loss so far!
RockinRobin-I hope I'm not hijacking this thread by asking this question. Forgive me everyone if I have. I see that you have been maintaining for a long time. Yippee and congratulations.
What I really would like to know is concerning your actual weightloss. I see that you are at quite a bit lower weight than what your goal was, right? Did you have to really work to get to that lower weight or did it just come off with eating right and exercising?
Thanks!
What's done is done... get back on the wagon and continue from here. It's not falling off the wagon that get's us... it's not getting back on!
I've learned a couple things on this journey -
PLAN. I always have a baggie of on plan snacks in my purse.
Delaying a meal a bit won't kill me. Sometimes when we're out and I haven't planned well and my kids have to eat.... I get them something to eat and sit with a bottle of water and read. I'm not going to die if I have to wait a couple hours to find something on plan.
There are good choices everywhere! In your case I would have run back into Target and grabbed myself some nuts or a cucumber (yeah I like to eat them as is) anything but Pizza Hut to tide me over until I got home. There are ways to make it work even when it seems like there aren't any good options.
You can do this!!! I'd load up on protein and veg. for dinner and start fresh tomorrow! Good luck .
RockinRobin-I hope I'm not hijacking this thread by asking this question. Forgive me everyone if I have. I see that you have been maintaining for a long time. Yippee and congratulations.
What I really would like to know is concerning your actual weightloss. I see that you are at quite a bit lower weight than what your goal was, right? Did you have to really work to get to that lower weight or did it just come off with eating right and exercising?
Thanks!
My goal weight was not in the healthy range. Which I had never been at, even as a teenager and young adult. As I got closer to goal, I pretty much thought that I would take it down lower and after staying in the 130's for a couple of months, I decided to indeed take it down to a healthy BMI.
It came off with eating right and exercising, and zero splurges, (does that constitute hard work?) which is exactly the same way that I took off all of the weight. It's how I now keep it off too- with the exception of an occasional splurge. Nothing changes in maintenance - just those every now and than splurges.
Shmead, I love your post. The diaper bag analogy - spot on. I was never a cigarette smoker - but I got that as well.
[QUOTE=Shmead;3505774]When your DD was a baby, how often did you run errands without a diaper bag? I bet you never, ever forgot because it was a priority. Food planning has to be like that. QUOTE]
This is a wonderful analogy about the importance of having what you need when you might need it. Thanks.
Oh, I like Shmead's analogy too. I hadn't realized it, but I plan in that way too. Whenever I go to my mom's an hour away, I always, always take a yogurt and a piece of fruit. I pack to go to work. And just this weekend my family went camping and I was afraid of breakfast so I took hard boiled eggs and yogurt in a small cooler for all of us.
I don't tend to back big for emergency situations, just the necessities. My packing almost always includes protein and fruit.
I don't tend to back big for emergency situations, just the necessities. My packing almost always includes protein and fruit.
I find that with good planning, emergencies don't often happen. One important thing is to be honest with ourselves. I really believe women are raised to believe that hunger is unfeminine. It seems like people often go out of their way to explain "I'm not hungry on 900 calories a day, I just over eat out of emotion". I don't think they are lying, but I think they've learned to deny their hunger even to themselves and come up with another reason for why they ate. A real lady "eats like a bird" and doesn't seem to want more. I suspect this is tied into the idea that a real lady doesn't have strong physical for any sort of sensation--being hungry is like being horny. Both have to be explained away as being emotional in nature.
The upshot of this is that women find it hard to plan for hunger, much like they find it hard to carry a condom in their purse "just in case". Either is admitting that you will be hungry, that you have biology that makes demands on you. So when a person is running errands and will be out from 11-4, say, it can be hard to admit to themselves that they will need something to eat in that time. They just think 'Oh, I won't be hungry, I'll eat when I get home", but of course they ARE hungry, and so they impulsively stop and get something--but that's ok, because it's impulsive.
The worst thing about this cycle is that you are positively reinforcing it when you eat the fastfood--the result of not planning is getting to eat something yummy! And even though you may feel guilty about it even as you do it, the conditioning effect of the food still works on you, reinforcing that behavior.
Thanks everybody for the input! I ended up having the chicken on a bed of baby spinach with lots of salsa and peas with just a very small of cheese on top. It was good!
This morning I'm trying to be better. I'm someone who needs a good breakfast to start my day of right and then go to smaller meals as the day progresses. So I ate eggs and toast (on my homemade bread ). I had some sweet potato for a mid-morning snack. We're going to be out today during lunch so I made plans with a friend at a place where I know I can get a good salad (and where DD will actually eat the food). Then I'll try and do an exercise DVD or two this afternoon and I just have to figure out a good dinner.
I'm also trying to drink more tea today when I start craving something bad. About the only good thing from yesterday is that I fell really full today so I'm having pretty much no cravings!!
FWIW, I'm actually very forgetful and when DD was little I was constantly forgetting stuff that I needed in the diaper bag!!! Now she's potty trained so it's much easier. The biggest problem is finding food that she'll eat. At home she eats VERY healthy but she likes hot meals. She'll eat stuff on the go but we haven't found good cold meals to go that she'll eat. But I think I really need to do what one of the moms on here said and just not eat even if she's eating. I know it's silly but that never occurred to me!
I don't mean to snide or snarky, so I apologize in advance if I come off that way - but just I am just really, really curious, so I've got to ask...
If one doesn't plan, if they don't know what they're having, if you just wing it and go by the seat of your pants (which is my take on it of course), how do you go out about losing weight?
You've lost a whopping 28 lbs!!! How did that happen? If you don't take foods with you while out doing errands and always have to resort to *fast food*, and if you're out all day and don't know what's for dinner and then it comes supper time and you have to do *something quick* how, do you manage to lose weight? How do you eat healthy?
I mean for me, it's something that just doesn't happen - I have to plan for it. I have to set out to make sure that it gets done. If I left it up in the air, I'd resort to making poor choices, I'm certain of it.
I'm such a planner, that I even have a plan for when I can't plan. It has been such a vital component to my weight loss and now maintenance. I can't imagine how you lost all that weight without it. What am I missing here?
Like I said I am curious, but mostly I do wonder, what would ever happen if for some reason I couldn't plan ahead - than what? I would be doomed to failure, I've no doubt. But not you - you've gotten 28 lbs off!!! How?
Robin, I'm somewhere between the two of you. I'm not an ultimate planner, but I do fall back on old standbys. Pressed for dinner and have no plan? It's a night for a rotisserie chicken from the grocery with two sides of veggies. We always have frozen veggies on hand. Forgot to plan lunch? That's a call for a grilled chicken sandwich from McDonald's, no mayo, cut the bottom bun in half and use the two halves instead of the top. (Cutting the bread in half, basically)
So while I'm really bad about planning every detail of my day, I have pre-planned standbys for those times I'm in trouble. I always have frozen chicken and frozen veggies on hand and a cabinet full of spices, so I'm generally good.
Robin, I'm somewhere between the two of you. I'm not an ultimate planner, but I do fall back on old standbys. Pressed for dinner and have no plan? It's a night for a rotisserie chicken from the grocery with two sides of veggies. We always have frozen veggies on hand. Forgot to plan lunch? That's a call for a grilled chicken sandwich from McDonald's, no mayo, cut the bottom bun in half and use the two halves instead of the top. (Cutting the bread in half, basically)
So while I'm really bad about planning every detail of my day, I have pre-planned standbys for those times I'm in trouble. I always have frozen chicken and frozen veggies on hand and a cabinet full of spices, so I'm generally good.
See this is what I mean when I say have a plan for when I don't have a plan. I've got some back ups to got to.
Saving a bad day
. We split a personal pan pepperoni pizza and breadsticks. Ugh! After I bought I really sat there and thought why did I do this? But I knew that we had to eat something before we left because it'd be a long trip back and DD would've freaked out without eating. Yep, I definitely didn't plan ahead. 
). I had some sweet potato for a mid-morning snack. We're going to be out today during lunch so I made plans with a friend at a place where I know I can get a good salad (and where DD will actually eat the food). Then I'll try and do an exercise DVD or two this afternoon and I just have to figure out a good dinner. 
Now she's potty trained so it's much easier. 
The biggest problem is finding food that she'll eat. At home she eats VERY healthy but she likes hot meals. She'll eat stuff on the go but we haven't found good cold meals to go that she'll eat. But I think I really need to do what one of the moms on here said and just not eat even if she's eating. I know it's silly but that never occurred to me! 
I'm not an ultimate planner, but I do fall back on old standbys. Pressed for dinner and have no plan? It's a night for a rotisserie chicken from the grocery with two sides of veggies. We always have frozen veggies on hand. Forgot to plan lunch? That's a call for a grilled chicken sandwich from McDonald's, no mayo, cut the bottom bun in half and use the two halves instead of the top. (Cutting the bread in half, basically)
