1. I eat. A lot. I enjoy a large volume of food and this helps to keep me from binging. My secret? My plate is piled high with non-starchy vegetables, and I have gi-normous salads often. To season my veggies I sprinkle on various seasonings, but most often I just use salt, pepper, and lemon pepper (the secret here- no butter or oil!).
2. I eat out often. I have to. Right now I am raising my daughter alone, plus I have an adult handicapped son that she and I frequently spend time with (my husband lives and works far away). As the sole driver for her many activities I just don't have time to do as much cooking as I would like. Plus, I really enjoy letting someone else do the dishes. I always look for places that have healthy options at a great value.
3. I rarely share my meals. I'll let you have a taste, and I might taste yours, but it's my food, and I'm hungry! If it's a day where I need to be careful I'll order a grilled chicken salad and have them hold the cheese and crunchy things (Dressing is always on the side and I fork-dip), or get the baked chicken with broccoli and baked potato (toppings again, always on the side and I use sparingly). If I feel like splurging I work it into my daily macronutrients, but I'll be eating the whole danged thing, thank you very much!
4. Likewise, I don't need a to-go box. On the rare occasion that I don't eat everything on my plate (including the parsley!), I'm not taking it with me. It may look like a waste, but I don't consider it a value to have tempting stuff sitting in my fridge.
5. I have an intense sweet tooth. A couple of times a week I'll have a few cookies or a small ice-cream cone or some other yummy thing. I've found that as I've gotten leaner I can afford to do this less and less, but the fact is that I have a sweet tooth and to deny it entirely is unreasonable, if not impossible.
6. I usually take weekends completely off from exercise. I do long and hard workout sessions most weekdays, but I don't want to have to worry about going to the gym on the weekends- they're for me and my kids.
7. I binge. This is a hard one to admit, but it does happen sometimes. Thankfully, not as often as it used to, but occasionally I do go nutz with the eating. This is a psychological (and sometimes hormonal) issue, and I'm working on it. But it still happens from time to time. (It usually starts with peanut butter.) The difference from now compared to when I was heavy is that I no longer view it as utter failure and allow it to send me into a downhill spiral of continuing to eat like crap for days on end. I start fresh the next day and really clean up my diet to help off-set the damage by reducing carbs, being careful about sodium, and making sure to get plenty of lean proteins, non-starchy veggies, and water to help the garbage I ate move out of my system. I also try to get in a little extra cardio the next few days to help burn the stored glycogen from the binge out of my system before too much of it can get converted to fat.
8. I take at least a week off of exercise every 10 weeks or so. This varies according to A.) How intensely I have been working out and 2.) What is going on in my life. When I am hitting the gym super-hard, the break will come closer to the 8-week mark. When my intensity level is lower, I'll take a break every 12. These breaks are important to both my fitness and mental well-being, and I look forward to them.
9. I usually go for the full-fat/higher calorie version. Fat free sour cream? Way to ruin a perfectly good taco! Light mayo? Nasty! Deserts made with Splenda for sugar and apple sauce in place of the oil? Forget it! I'd rather have a little of the "real" stuff than a bunch of bad-tasting and unsatisfying low-cal stuff. And don't lecture me about how much worse this stuff is for my body. I know, and I'm eatin' it anyway.
10. I eat a great, big breakfast. I mean, huge. It's calorie dense and yummy, although usually very healthy. A typical breakfast for me is 1/2 C of dry oatmeal with a chopped up apple cooked in it and about a teaspoon of Smart Balance Margarine and cinnamon mixed in (this makes a pretty big bowl of oatmeal, BTW). I'll eat along side this a whole egg scrambled with 1/2 to 3/4 C of liquid egg substitute or egg whites. I like to start my day with a full belly.
Being fit is work, but I am far from perfect and there are some things I just won't compromise on. Maybe some of these things will change as I progress (#7 would be a great one to lose!). But if none of them do I'm not kicking myself.
No comments:
Post a Comment