telophase | (no subject)

Day something-or-other of my attempts to re-establish the eating and exercise habits that led me to lose 50 pounds, a chunk of which I have unfortunately gained back.* As I'm planning on going to see Wolverine at the Studio Movie Grill tomorrow (Wednesday) night with

myrialux and several of our friends, where fried foods smothered in cheese tend to be the specialty of the day, I have already packed a remarkably vegetarian lunch for tomorrow. Leftover mushroom ragout, a pickle, a hard-boiled egg, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, carrots, and grapes**. If I manage to come home and immediately hop on the bike, that means I can basically eat just about anything I want and chase it down with a Coke without an iota of guilt.***

Now watch me get there, peruse the menu, and decide that all I really want is a small salad and ice tea. I've been known to do things like that.

--
* The eat-all-you-want-and-don't-exercise diet does wonders for that. More to the point, it was making it a habit that worked for the weight loss, and when I unintentionally broke the habit, it was hard to come back. Intentionally breaking it didn't make it hard to come back - if I decided to focus my energy on, say, getting ready for a convention instead of watching my diet and exercise for a few weeks, I could get right back into the habit with little problem. It was things like getting sick or going on vacation or just not deciding to not do it that caused the problem. NOTE TO SELF: REMEMBER THIS POINT.

** Basically every small thing in the fridge that I could stuff in a bento box.

*** Well, removing guilt from eating was also one of the linchpins of the previous weight loss, so I'm mostly speaking metaphorically here. FOOD IS NOT A MORAL ISSUE. FOOD IS YUMMY.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

FOOD IS NOT A MORAL ISSUE. FOOD IS YUMMY.

Yes. That.

Whatever choices I make about food, I get to enjoy it when I eat it. And if I'm hungry, I get to eat something--always. That's non-negotiable.

Yup. I need to get back in the habit of expensive chocolate. XD It was amazing how much less of it I ate when the guideline was that I could eat all I wanted of it ... provided it was the Scharffen Berger semi-sweet that cost $10 for 9 oz. (Or was it $9 for 10 oz.?)

That linchpin of yours is something I'm finally working out for myself; I make homemade granola bars for breakfast and eat when I'm hungry-- and only when I'm hungry. The whole 'scheduled meals' business just didn't do it for me, I guess.

:/ Of course, this is college. It's going to suck when I go home.

Yeah, one of my derailing problems was that

myrialux moved into town, so we go out to eat more often. XD I will have to change one of my rules up a bit, which was that I could eat anything I wanted when out with friends, because it was made when I didn't go out that often. Now that's changed, so I'll have to rethink it. XD (Maybe I can eat anything I want when out in a group of several friends, instead of just a couple. That might work.)

I know someone who's doing the cute little bentos. D: I am amazingly jealous, and have resolved that this is what I want to do once I have a professional job. They're just so damn cute and fun and that's kind of what I feel like food should be.

My old idea of a diet was no bread, no sugar, vegetables and lean meats only with minimal rice and no pasta. :/

I used to think that, too. Moving to the "everything in moderation" model is so much better. I don't feel deprived the way I did when faced with a plate of lean chicken breast and steamed vegetables. I like FLAVOR!

I'm interested in this idea of making an active decision to go off the diet is helpful, but neglecting to be on the diet derails it.

Yup. I'm not sure how it works for me, but it seems to. I've even sat here for a few minutes trying to work out any sort of logic as to how it works, but can't really come up with any other than "an active decision means I'm really still on the diet". I know that one of the decisions I made was that any day I had a migraine, I was able to eat anything and everything, because getting food into me was more important than watching that food, as my pain tends to be somewhat controlled by blood sugar. Which means that I've had the weird experience of occasionally thinking, "I can't wait for this migraine to be over so I can go back to the diet!" That might be the same sort of mechanism working.

So a kind of mindful eating in which one pays attention to what one eats, even if it isn't necessarily the best thing to eat from the diet's standpoint.

That may be the case. And encompassing the couple of days before and the couple of days ahead in the mindfulness - while I didn't bother to make up the overage the next day if I overate one day, because normal eating means that occasionally you eat more than usual, I'd tend to keep an eye on it and if I overate one day, I wouldn't overeat the next day and the next, but just go back to the diet baseline, so the occasional overindulgence remained occasional and not routine.

(And also that baseline is not too low: 1200 calories a day, which is often recommended for women? WAY too low for me. I'm about 1750 net right now, which means about 1900-1950 if I exercise on the bike.)

Funny, because I don't think I have enough guilt about the bad foods I eat, lol.

:) Feeling guilty about my food choices wasn't actually stopping me from eating them. All it was doing was making me feel bad about what I was eating while I was eating it, which meant my enjoyment was diminished. Ironically, making sure I enjoyed what I ate made me feel less inclined to indulge in those foods. :D