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.