8/24/2012: Day 23 of 30
Morning weight: 176.2
Today's calorie count: 1700 - Exceeded 1600 calories for two days in a row. I am not happy about that, but at the same time I have to own up to the fact that I emotionally ate last night. Not a lot...not like I would have three or four months ago, but I did emotionally eat. Hmmm...I feel a little bit better about it already, just remembering how much I ate the last time I let my emotions rule my eating compared to last night.
I just checked my old posts - keeping a blog is kind of handy! - and this is what I wrote on May 23, 2012, which is the last time I let my emotions override my discipline:
"5/23/12: Food and Wine Therapy; and I'm Counting Calories Again
As I've mentioned in a couple of my recent posts, I've been a little blue lately. Last weekend I started taking some proactive steps to make changes to what is causing my blues, but last night I treated the symptoms with food. It started at work with a few mini-Peppermint Patties from a co-worker's candy jar. I thought once I got home I'd be fine, but I wasn't. After eating a couple small handfuls of Jack's dark chocolate M&M's and the last five cookies (Pepperidge Farm Milanos) in the house, I opened the bottle of red wine that has been sitting in the wine rack for about a month. I told myself I wouldn't eat much dinner, but yeah, that didn't work out too well, either. I made chicken quesadillas, which aren't that bad as far as calories go since we use 60 calorie tortillas, with homemade guacamole. I was only going to eat half of one, and really, after half I was satisfied. But I finished the thing and had another glass of wine, to boot. The end result? I was full. And I gained weight this morning. And I've decided that I should stop being lazy about counting calories. I'm not sure if calorie counting would have stopped me last night or not, but it would have at least been one more speed bump in the road and I can use all the speed bumps I can get."
Last night was definitely better than May 23rd. At least I didn't start out with candy, switch to cookies, move to wine, and then overeat at dinner to the point of feeling too full. I think that the fact that I am counting calories and posting those calories every day did help. I was thinking about the fact that I would have to fully disclose every calorie as I was eating last night and there is no doubt that fact moderated my behaviour.
I had a very emotional day yesterday. I wish I could talk about it in detail, and soon I will be able to, but my emotions were set in motion (I never realized the symmetry of those two phrases "emotion" and "in motion" before, but it makes sense because my feelings are definitely "in motion" today!) by other people's life events and I am not privy to talk about them yet. It's hard, not being able to share this news just yet, but I respect their privacy and need to wait until they make their news public. So, not only am I emotional about the event, itself, but I can only discuss it with a very few people at this moment in time. Oh, I am pretty much just a mess of mood swings lately.
Late in the day yesterday I also found out, after a very long and trying conversation with Castle's CPA firm, that a project I am working on at work just got a whole lot harder than I thought it would be. Not impossible, still doable in the short period of time that I have to do it in, but disappointingly harder. I took the job at Castle knowing that they really needed help getting their books straight, and I also knew that my first project would be to get the compilation complete, but I did think I had the final "to-do" list for the compilation and yesterday afternoon I found out I didn't. In fact, I found out that there are some very significant entries that have never been made properly, like earnings from a pass-through entity that have not been booked and another pass-through entity that was formed and never recorded on the books at all. Ugha Muggha...OK...deep breath...I knew there would be surprises!
The long and the short of it is that by the time I got home from work I was emotionally and physically exhausted. And it was late. And I was hungry. Tired, hungry, emotionally wrought out, evening, Friday...that all adds up to my worst case scenario when it comes to food.
Jack and I had plans to go to dinner and the movies. The movie didn't start until 8:00, so it was still a little early to leave for dinner because we would have time to kill between dinner and the movie, but I knew I needed to eat dinner right away to avoid snacking before dinner and getting in even worse shape, emotionally. We decided to go to Sweet Tomatoes, mostly because nothing else sounded good. A salad seemed like a good way to get to chew a lot without consuming a lot of calories. At the same time I was somewhat nervous about the breads and muffins that are in too abundant supply at the hot food counter. I made a nice salad, heavy on the dark greens and colorful veggies and light on the dressing. I did not add any of the high calorie stuff like sesame seeds, raisins, or croutons. I picked up one of their small bran muffins (My Fitness Pal has them in their database at 130 calories) and a small chocolate muffin (180 calories). I cut off a very small chunk of the chocolate muffin and put the rest on Jack's plate and I ate the bran muffin. After finishing my salad and bran muffin, I was not quite satisfied, so I got myself about a 1/3 cup serving of nonfat frozen yogurt (110 calories) and, yes, I picked up another chocolate muffin. This time I ate the whole thing. Oh, and then that nice young man brought the freshly baked, still warm from the oven chocolate chip cookies around. I ate one of those. My Fitness Pal tells me that chocolate chip cookie had 75 calories in it. I think that's high. My chocolate chip cookies have 50 calories each in them and this cookie was smaller than mine, but I entered 75 calories into my diary, anyway. Trying to be honest here.
I stopped eating after that. I did not drink any alcohol last night. If I had not made a commitment not to drink I may have suggested going somewhere for dinner where I could have had a glass of wine, but that didn't happen, so that's good. I did not eat to the point that I felt full. I just wasn't hungry anymore. I didn't get a big bowl of frozen yogurt or eat brownies until I didn't want anymore. I ate a little bit of yogurt and one small brownie.
This morning I regret letting my emotions control my food choices last night. On the other hand, when I think back to May 23rd, and read that post, I realize how much more in control I was last night than I was last time my emotions bested my self-discipline. It's progress. I can't beat myself up too much. But still, food doesn't make anything better. It's silly to allow my emotions to dictate something as important as what type and what quantity of calories I consume. I know better. I will do better.
I just checked my old posts - keeping a blog is kind of handy! - and this is what I wrote on May 23, 2012, which is the last time I let my emotions override my discipline:
"5/23/12: Food and Wine Therapy; and I'm Counting Calories Again
As I've mentioned in a couple of my recent posts, I've been a little blue lately. Last weekend I started taking some proactive steps to make changes to what is causing my blues, but last night I treated the symptoms with food. It started at work with a few mini-Peppermint Patties from a co-worker's candy jar. I thought once I got home I'd be fine, but I wasn't. After eating a couple small handfuls of Jack's dark chocolate M&M's and the last five cookies (Pepperidge Farm Milanos) in the house, I opened the bottle of red wine that has been sitting in the wine rack for about a month. I told myself I wouldn't eat much dinner, but yeah, that didn't work out too well, either. I made chicken quesadillas, which aren't that bad as far as calories go since we use 60 calorie tortillas, with homemade guacamole. I was only going to eat half of one, and really, after half I was satisfied. But I finished the thing and had another glass of wine, to boot. The end result? I was full. And I gained weight this morning. And I've decided that I should stop being lazy about counting calories. I'm not sure if calorie counting would have stopped me last night or not, but it would have at least been one more speed bump in the road and I can use all the speed bumps I can get."
Last night was definitely better than May 23rd. At least I didn't start out with candy, switch to cookies, move to wine, and then overeat at dinner to the point of feeling too full. I think that the fact that I am counting calories and posting those calories every day did help. I was thinking about the fact that I would have to fully disclose every calorie as I was eating last night and there is no doubt that fact moderated my behaviour.
I had a very emotional day yesterday. I wish I could talk about it in detail, and soon I will be able to, but my emotions were set in motion (I never realized the symmetry of those two phrases "emotion" and "in motion" before, but it makes sense because my feelings are definitely "in motion" today!) by other people's life events and I am not privy to talk about them yet. It's hard, not being able to share this news just yet, but I respect their privacy and need to wait until they make their news public. So, not only am I emotional about the event, itself, but I can only discuss it with a very few people at this moment in time. Oh, I am pretty much just a mess of mood swings lately.
Late in the day yesterday I also found out, after a very long and trying conversation with Castle's CPA firm, that a project I am working on at work just got a whole lot harder than I thought it would be. Not impossible, still doable in the short period of time that I have to do it in, but disappointingly harder. I took the job at Castle knowing that they really needed help getting their books straight, and I also knew that my first project would be to get the compilation complete, but I did think I had the final "to-do" list for the compilation and yesterday afternoon I found out I didn't. In fact, I found out that there are some very significant entries that have never been made properly, like earnings from a pass-through entity that have not been booked and another pass-through entity that was formed and never recorded on the books at all. Ugha Muggha...OK...deep breath...I knew there would be surprises!
The long and the short of it is that by the time I got home from work I was emotionally and physically exhausted. And it was late. And I was hungry. Tired, hungry, emotionally wrought out, evening, Friday...that all adds up to my worst case scenario when it comes to food.
Jack and I had plans to go to dinner and the movies. The movie didn't start until 8:00, so it was still a little early to leave for dinner because we would have time to kill between dinner and the movie, but I knew I needed to eat dinner right away to avoid snacking before dinner and getting in even worse shape, emotionally. We decided to go to Sweet Tomatoes, mostly because nothing else sounded good. A salad seemed like a good way to get to chew a lot without consuming a lot of calories. At the same time I was somewhat nervous about the breads and muffins that are in too abundant supply at the hot food counter. I made a nice salad, heavy on the dark greens and colorful veggies and light on the dressing. I did not add any of the high calorie stuff like sesame seeds, raisins, or croutons. I picked up one of their small bran muffins (My Fitness Pal has them in their database at 130 calories) and a small chocolate muffin (180 calories). I cut off a very small chunk of the chocolate muffin and put the rest on Jack's plate and I ate the bran muffin. After finishing my salad and bran muffin, I was not quite satisfied, so I got myself about a 1/3 cup serving of nonfat frozen yogurt (110 calories) and, yes, I picked up another chocolate muffin. This time I ate the whole thing. Oh, and then that nice young man brought the freshly baked, still warm from the oven chocolate chip cookies around. I ate one of those. My Fitness Pal tells me that chocolate chip cookie had 75 calories in it. I think that's high. My chocolate chip cookies have 50 calories each in them and this cookie was smaller than mine, but I entered 75 calories into my diary, anyway. Trying to be honest here.
I stopped eating after that. I did not drink any alcohol last night. If I had not made a commitment not to drink I may have suggested going somewhere for dinner where I could have had a glass of wine, but that didn't happen, so that's good. I did not eat to the point that I felt full. I just wasn't hungry anymore. I didn't get a big bowl of frozen yogurt or eat brownies until I didn't want anymore. I ate a little bit of yogurt and one small brownie.
This morning I regret letting my emotions control my food choices last night. On the other hand, when I think back to May 23rd, and read that post, I realize how much more in control I was last night than I was last time my emotions bested my self-discipline. It's progress. I can't beat myself up too much. But still, food doesn't make anything better. It's silly to allow my emotions to dictate something as important as what type and what quantity of calories I consume. I know better. I will do better.
Morning exercise: Strength Training as follows:
Do the following set 4 times:
---12 Leg presses: 110 pounds
---12 split squats, each leg: Stand on one leg with the other leg bent and resting on a stool behind you. Do a squat on one leg. Hey, this is hard!!! Uses the stabilizer muscles in the foot and ankle, as well as the quads in the leg doing the squat.
Do the following set 4 times:
---16 cable pull downs: 50 pounds. This exercise is done with a machine. Facing away from the machine, get on your knees. Grab the handles that are above your head and pull down so that your arms form a W. This works the back muscles.
---20 push up rows: 15 pounds in each hand. Get in a push up position, on your toes with feet spread a about shoulder width apart. Hands are grabbing 15 pound dumbbells rather than resting on the floor. Alternate rows with each arm, pulling each dumbbell up off the floor.
Do the following set 4 times:
---20 leg lifts
---30 second side planks, each side
---16 toe touches (what I would call old fashioned sit ups, with legs straight rather than bent)
Do the following set 3 times:
---12 walking lunge/side arm raises with 5 lb dumbbells in each hand.
Evening exercise: none - day off
Alcohol consumption: None
Emotions, emotions, emotions!!! Mood swings, aren't they great? Sometimes it's hell being a woman!!
Again, I am grateful for my plan, grateful for the people in my life that support me, and grateful for the opportunities that I have. I'll make it through this in one piece and stay on track. It just won't be easy.
Don't beat yourself up. Emotional eating that results in 1700 calories is not even close to a bad thing. You have to live with your plan for your whole life, and one day here or there really doesn't matter.
ReplyDeleteThat said, it is good that you did not drink. That would have added calories plus the salty food you would have wanted with the booze.
Call me next time if you want to, even if it is late.
Love,
Ruth
Thanks Ruth, and thanks for calling. And for anyone else that reads this post...all is well. The emotional news was good emotional news, not bad emotional news. And for the record, as far as I know, none of my kids are pregnant. I've had a couple people mention to me that that is what they thought must be going on. I'm happy and well, Jack is happy and well, and all of our kids are happy and well...no worries!!
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