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.