Monday, July 19, 2010

Summarising last week's insight

When it comes to food intake, I need to think a bit more about what I do. It is most often the 'mindless' eating and drinking that causes me problems.

I need a mental checklist along the lines of:
Why am I looking in the fridge/pantry?
I am actually hungry?
If I am, is this the right thing to eat?
If I'm not, why do I feel like eating?

But I also need to do a bit of retrospective thinking. This works something like - if my poor choices are always made around 5pm, why? Is it because I don't eat enough lunch? Or do I need a more substantial afternoon snack? Or is it boredom/frustration/loneliness/habit? And so on to cover other problem areas (like weekends).

I need to be particularly mindful of this as my life is about to change so much. I have two weeks left at work; I don't want to wake up a month later and realise I've put on five kilos.

But I don't want to have to be completely rigid about eating. I want to enjoy food and the circumstances that surround it - the planning, the shopping, the preparing, the eating. It is a social activity and I won't let it be turned into some kind of purgatory.

Thought. Balance. Living.

6 comments:

Chris H said...

I feel the same.
Hope you work out your 5pm reason, mine is around 4pm.

Anne said...

The mindless eating and drinking is my downfall as well.

I know I was "over the top" when I first started losing weight, then now am a bit too much the other way for my liking i.e. totally relaxed about it all. Some old habits don't die though and I'm sure we've both learnt a lot about how our minds work, why we are eating etc - now to just get the right balance!

Lee-Anne said...

I've been trying to get that right balance for the past seven years. Sometimes I do succeed - thats why I yo-yo.

My problem is I let myself be swayed. I let Mr T dish me up a bigger portion, I'll have another glass of wine. The thing is his metabolism works a damn sight better than mine. He never stops moving. Me, I sit on my butt for 8 hours a day. Not going to burn off a helluva lot of anything.

Another thing Sue is that we don't watch much tv. When we get home from work I sort out dinner, put on the washing etc and then we sit down and talk. We have a breakfast room - no tv and no radio/stereo - and we sit down together and talk - about everything. The kids, the business, our day, fishing, holidays, dreams - everything. Mr T has his bourbon and I have a savvy. And we talk. It's the most relaxing part of the day and I love it and I don't want to change that.

Lee-Anne said...

PS: we do have 2 - 3 alcohol free nights a week.

Mary said...

I was thinking about this last week in respect to my brekky. I definitely don't have enough for breakfast and it can lead to rash decisions for lunch because I end up feeling starved. A bad habit but slowly correcting. I did wake up several months later having put on 6kgs.

gingersnapper said...

Balance, arrrgggh.