Back again

Sorry about that little hiatus; Daughter started summer camp this week (so far, so good!), so it threw a little wrench into what had been gelling into a summer routine. It's good that she's going, since that way she isn't required to spend 24 hours out of the day in the company of a 3 year old and she's learning more about socializing outside the safety of our home, but we miss her around here when she's not here.

At any rate, I'm back and about ready to name my new goals. Based on what I learned during the week I was recording everything I ate, I plan to do two things: 1) try and substitute fruit during my late-afternoon cravings. I noticed that things start falling apart food-wise around the time that i start falling apart at the end of the day. It's the late-afternoon slog when I'm most likely to start going after junk food, and it's junk food that I have the hardest time turning away from when I've had enough.

I should say that I don't have anything against junk food, per se. My issues are more behavioral than nutritional: I go after ice cream, when, in fact, I find that it isn't something that I like very much or that gives me much satisfaction. I like a little sometimes after a meal - a scoop in a bowl kind of thing, not a sundae - but for the most part it's actually something I can take or leave. Potato chips, another weakness during my down times, are a different story; they're not kidding when they say that you can't eat just one. I certainly can't, and it's altogether too easy for me to be well on my way to finishing a large bag before I realize what I'm doing. In the case of potato chips, it's always best when I have a set portion (think pre-packaged serving bag) during a meal and avoid them at other times.

I figured that since I really need to up my consumption of fruit in a nutritional sense, and since it has not only fiber but also sugar, it might work as something of a pick-me-up come late afternoon. So, that's my first goal - eat fruit in the late afternoon, and generally try to get in 2 fruits a day.

2) I want to keep journaling my food intake for the time being. Not everyday, necessarily, but enough to get a random snapshot from time to time of how I'm eating. The process of recounting what I ate, as well as the conditions surrounding my eating, seemed to help me keep some attention on the activity of eating, so it seems like a way to go.

I could add more goals to the fire at this point, but since I find myself easily overwhelmed (=paralysis) lately, I think these are good to start.

For the record, I didn't have any fruit yesterday. Let's see how today goes.

July 2

Yep, I missed a couple of days. I think I can reconstruct yesterday, but June 30 is hereafter consigned to oblivion.

But, yesterday I ate:

Breakfast - two waffles w/ margarine and syrup. I was hungry, and there were no Cheerios left.

Lunch - Madras Lentils (!!) with one cut-up hotdog. It was goooood.

Snack - M&Ms again (we were at my parents' house, and they keep a stash. True to form, though, they were too sweet and I found myself drinking tea to kill the sweet taste again.

Late afternoon scrounging - finished a bag of potato chips. I was hungry-ish, but not starving; it was more a response to feeling dog-tired after swimming with the kids.

Dinner - *sigh* - Mickey D's. Chalk this up to sheer laziness. The food wasn't even that good (and the sad thing is it really can be. Try it in Japan - the fries, in particular, are delicious there, just because someone cares enough to change out the oil occasionally and not serve up fries that have been sitting there for a long time).

'Dessert' - I have these Italian ices that I love, and I had a strawberry-flavored one last night. They are not only tasty, but they're also good at cooling me down in our hot bedroom during the summer. :)

After almost a week of keeping an eating journal, I'm beginning to discern certain things - both good/less good.

Observations:

1. The late afternoon is a hard time for me. I'm not only peckish - which is fine - but I'm tired and starting to run out of energy with the kids.
2. I have a very, very hard time being around a container of something that's historically - if not actually - tempting without finishing it. Included here are things like potato chips, cake, and ice cream; things that I'm never particularly hungry for in of themselves, but which hold a kind of mythic allure in my mind. Fast food is a bit this way as well, although I've been slowly learning to taste it for what it is.
3. I just don't get hungry in the morning after breakfast. It's not a long stretch between breakfast (which I don't eat until at least 30 min. after I take one medication, which I usually take while I'm getting the kids' breakfast together) and lunch, and I find that I have plenty of energy to go on throughout the morning.
4. If I melt into the couch after dinner and I'm not watching anything in particular on TV, I have a tendency to get munchy, even though I might not be hungry.
5. It seems to be less emotion, per se, than energy that drives my non-hungry eating. When I'm worn out from doing kids all day, I tend to want to hide out from them and scarf food down. When I'm getting a 'break' from the family and house by going out for awhile, I tend to wind up at restaurants that I'm not very interested in, just because it feels like something I deserve on some level. I also eat - or, at least, feel the drive to eat - when I'm kind of procrastinating.

I think there are some things I can to to help mitigate these things:

1. Maybe make the late afternoon a time when I go out of my way to eat fruit. It has both fiber AND sugar, and might do the job in terms of giving me an energy lift.
2. I think the best thing I can do with my tempting foods issue is just employ some willpower. It comes into the house every so often, and I almost always find that giving in to the urge to finish off something is ultimately an unsatisfying experience. As I mentioned above, I've gotten to the point that I'm seeing fast food more and more in the light of this kind of unsatisfying thing, and I even usually think of sweet, creamy foods (ice cream, cake/frosting) in this way. And potato chips give me gas, so there's that. I think I just need to really work on eating them - or not - consciously.
3. It might be nice to stop and have a cup of tea (I'm a tea junkie) while the kids are having mid-morning snack.
4. I really need to walk away from the couch. If I'm tired, I need to go to sleep. If not, I need to either be watching something specific or doing something else.
5. I need to find other ways to take a break - deserved or otherwise - than eating. Reading, perhaps.
   

That's where things stand as of the almost-end of week one. Tomorrow (hopefully) I'll post about where I want to take Week Two.