[kaplods]

I just woke up, and am still wiped, so I'm going to take it pretty easy tonight. I do regret the cake a little bit, because concentrated sugar (white sugar, brown sugar, corn syrup, maple syrup, honey...) makes me feel like crap (if not an actual flare, I feel sluggish and dopey, not to mention hungry for more of the vile crap).

It really was only a few mouthfuls, but it was a few mouthfuls too many, especially since it wasn't even good cake. The cake was dry and the icing was greasy.

I'm not beating myself up for it, because I didn't do any major backsliding. My choices were good, but I'm thinking why on earth did I eat the extra three bites of cake, when the first one was so mediocre. I mean it wasn't the worst wedding cake I've ever eaten (which is another sad story), but it's the first wedding cake I've had on my new way of eating. The way of eating, where I don't continue eating a food, unless I've consciously decided that it's "worth" eating. Especially on off-plan food, no eating auto-pilot.

I think because I'd planned ahead of time that I'd have a small piece of cake, I was prepared enough to plan ahead, but I wasn't prepared for the cake being "just ok." And I'd planned on eating it, so I ate it, even though it wasn't all that great.

Such a small piece of virtually icing free wedding cake isn't going to derail my food plan, but it was a lesson in mindful eating. Mindful eating doesn't always work for me, in terms of portion control, but it does pretty well in keeping me from eating food I'm not even very fond of just because it's there.

I think the "tradition" of eating wedding cake overrode my good judgement. No one would have noticed or cared if I hadn't eaten the wedding cake, but I'd eaten a very light breakfast, so I was very hungry (the worst time for me to put sugar in my stomach, it tends to make me nauseous), and I've never been to a wedding that I didn't have a whole piece of cake. I just didn't think to not eat it, once I got it. I'd planned on scraping off most of the surface icing, and I was successful at that, but I didn't think to not eat it if it wasn't awesome. And this cake wasn't awful, but it definitely wasn't awesome.

I had a few more carb exchanges than I'd anticipated, but even so, I am well within my calorie limit and the boundaries of my exchange system guidelines for myself (except that I "spent" exchanges on things I normally wouldn't).

So I don't feel like I "blew it," by any stretch of the imagination. but I do consider it a bit of a bonehead move on my part (er, I mean learning opportunity).

I realized for example at dinner, that I've never taken home an entire entree before, though there have been times when I wasn't very hungry when the entree came, and I certainly could have. I just never had considered it before. I might have taken 80% of the entree home, but I always ate at least a couple bites. It reminded me that "never did before," isn't reason enough.

I didn't think of it with the cake (but definitely will, at future weddings), but I did think of it at the restaurant. Although even in the restaurant, I did think "wow, I've never thought of doing this before, I don't know why not."

And I sometimes wonder how many of my eating habits, are just that, habits. Things I do because I never thought of doing otherwise. So much of my success this time, as opposed to all the countless other times, is learning to think outside the box, to make new eating routines, even though some are so "odd" they draw comments from even strangers (the waitress asking me if I didn't like my dinner because I hadn't eaten any of it).