I’ve said all along that my biggest problem with my diet was just paying attention to what I was eating and when. I’ve been so busy for so long. It wasn’t so much that I was eating more often as that I was eating less often, or at least less regularly. I was forgetting to eat meals. Then when I did realize I was hungry, I was too hungry. And the only real solution to too hungry and too busy is to sit down and eat too much ice cream instead of actually coming up with a meal.
The main thing dieting has accomplished then is to force me into continued planning of what I would eat and when. I’ve used the blog to make me remember I needed a plan, and that’s worked very well for me. I’m not losing weight very fast, which is quite frustrating considering how hard I’ve worked at it, but I am eating much healthier, and I have managed to maintain a greater degree of physical energy as opposed to what has become in recent years my normal state of low physical energy and excess mental energy. Now I’m sort of realigning so that I have a better balance between the two.
I still have to work very hard at simple mindfulness of what I’m eating, though. I didn’t blog about my diet for a few days, and I didn’t do so well for those days. I got distracted and forgot to eat.
I came in one afternoon realizing I’d forgotten to eat lunch. I drank a 160 calorie Atkin’s shake to take the edge off. The next day I couldn’t remember whether I’d ever gone back to fix something to eat for supper after that.
This kind of behavior isn’t helpful. Not only does it put me at greater risk of getting sick, it also fails as a weight loss strategy. I’ve done quite a lot of calorie counting in the past few weeks to make sure that I stay within a range that some random website prescribed for me as my optimal weight loss point. I’m still not taking the weight off very fast. I assume that means my resting metabolic rate is slower than anticipated. Not eating won’t help that at all. It will only exacerbate the issue.
So here I go again, resolving once again to do better.
It’s back to blogging about celery for me. Even if I don’t have much left to say about it, maybe it has something to say to me. Sometimes you can only find that out when you sit down to discover what words will come out of your fingertips if you let them.
My goodness. I think I just said I was putting myself on the Peter Elbow diet now. He’s very skinny, so maybe that will work.
And if you don’t know who Peter Elbow is, as you might not if you don’t teach English, don’t worry about it. He’s just a guy who writes about writing, and I’m just rattling on.
Today’s dinner: Peanut satay sauce on tofu noodles.
The satay sauce is delicious. The tofu noodles are high in protein and low in calories and taste nothing at all like noodles.
