Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Confession.

My "What I Ate" food logs haven't been completely accurate the past couple of days.

On both nights, I had an overwhelming urge to eat again at about 11:30 or midnight, after I'd already tallied up all of my food for the day. On Monday night, I was cleaning and felt a little woozy or something, and I really wanted an apple or raisins or some other fruit. I don't usually keep fruit at the house, so I ate some deli slices and Mt. Olive Splenda-sweetened gherkins and a little mustard instead.

I had the same thing happen last night, except I kept it to just the deli slices and pickles. I don't know exactly how many calories I consumed, but I'm sure it was less than 100 on both nights. I was still firmly under 1000 calories for my daily totals, and yesterday I was probably still under 900. The sweet pickles have practically 0 calories (the jar says a serving of 1 pickle has 0 calories, but 1 carb - so in real life that probably means each pickle has 4 calories.) The Hormel Natural deli slices I used are low-calorie and practically all protein.

I'm not sure how to categorize this behavior. On one hand, I ate food that I hadn't planned on, and that's a habit that could theoretically lead to more transgressions down the road. I have to be vigilant about letting bad eating behaviors slip back into my routine.

On the other hand, I think my body needed that food. I didn't have that crazed feeling that usually accompanies compulsive eating. I bet my blood sugar was low, especially on Monday night, considering that I felt better shortly after eating. I don't feel like beating myself up over something like this.

So I'm not going to. I'm going to be honest about having eaten off-plan for the sake of posterity, but I'm not going to feel guilty about it. In fact, because I think this was a result of not fueling my body properly, I've decided to build in an additional solid meal of deli slices and string cheese for the next few days. This way, I'm eating the same protein-rich foods from my "binges," but they are measured, accounted for, and incorporated earlier in the day. Also, this gives me less leeway to eat little snacks like pecans and extra pudding mix in my Fage yogurt.

3 comments:

  1. Do you plan your day's food in advance at the start of the day, then? Do you have a calorie target you aim for, or a calorie target plus other elements (like a certain number of protein drinks or something like that)?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I generally plan the day's food in advance. I plan the first 3-4 meals the night before because I pack my food and supplements for work. I don't always plan dinner in advance, but I know I'm going to cook something WLS-friendly. I want Greek yogurt for my final meal most of the time, but I don't plan exactly which protein I'm going to mix with it.

    I usually aim for about 800 calories. I've been told that a good target for someone at my stage is 800-1000. I aim for 80+ grams of protein a day (it's usually well over 100 though) and try to make sure at least 50% of my daily calories are from protein. I also aim to keep my net carbs as low as possible, but definitely fewer than 60.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dang, that's a lot to keep track of! Interesting. I hadn't thought until your discussion in this post about what your daily planning and calculations would look like.

    ReplyDelete