New Routes

When Adam and I were commuting from Erie to Baltimore every other weekend, the drive began to get a tad predictable. More than once we found ourselves veering into the other lane or pulling off for scary naps in parking lots in which any random passerby could break the window and commit all sorts of unthinkable crimes (I think I have thought of most of them thanks to my affinity for murder shows and Stephen King novels). I usually opted for pounding caffeine pills so it would be mid week before I could ever sleep again.

The point is, the six hour drive became Boring with a capital B. So we began experimenting with alternate routes. Although some routes took as much as 45 minutes longer, the break in the routine was enough to keep us from (almost literally) dying of boredom.

With this philosophy in mind, I have created a new spreadsheet. This one focuses on servings rather than meals, and will hopefully be more accurate. It does basically the same thing and is just a different means to achieve a smaller rear end. I thought of going cold turkey and scrapping the dang dorky spreadsheet, but I don't think I can handle it. It is simply too easy to lie to myself when it is not spelled out right in front of me. It is not as though I try to forget the brownie I ate on my way to the printer, but I do - or at least I forget to factor in the calories.

I also went back to my old strategy of the mini-goal. This week's goal is to adopt a trick I read in "The Dorm Room Diet": drink a glass of water before every meal. I know I don't drink enough water - unless the kind mixed with malt and hops counts**. As a result, I often feel achy, crampy, and just plain icky. I have also read that many hunger pangs are actually triggered by thirst. Most of us are apparently just ignoring or misinterpreting the thirst, which I have never understood. Why can we not accurately listen to our own brains??

** It doesn't.

On Time

Another surprising mini-goal has been to get to work on time. "How are these things related?", you ask? Well, I found that packing my lunch, my breakfast, my snack, and my gym clothes was causing me to need a lot more rounding in my schedule. Like, the time reads 8:02, that's close enough to 8 in horseshoes and hand grenades, right? Well...then it started reading 8:06, and sometimes 8:12. It is not as though I have a boss who is breathing down my neck about it (heck, I do just as much rounding when leaving work or going to lunch). But, being late does cause added stress, and makes me forget to tend to my other important morning duties like feeding the cat or putting on nice earrings. (Do not worry - my cat could stand to lose a little belly fat herself, and when human #1 leaves without feeding her, she proceeds to bug human #2.) I found I was often leaving things behind in my rush to get my behind out the door, like the gym bag I had just packed, or the breakfast I had just made.
I try to allow for flexibility, but one reason this diet works for me is because I plan ahead, when I am thinking with my brain and not my tummy. When I forget a meal, I am forced to be hungry. And when I am hungry, the candy dish is enticing, the snack machine calls my name, and I am a sucker for the burrito place across the street. Likewise, when I forget a gym bag, I am not likely to make it to the gym. Go home first? And then leave? This plan of attack is effective only in theory, and has never been successful in lab trials, let alone real life.
So, every Sunday I make a list based on my spreadsheet which includes all my meals for the week. The list is on the fridge so I know what to pack each day. I also pack my gym bag for the next time as soon as I get back from the gym. I have a friend who packs her bag for the whole week, but alas, my gym bag (a free give away from an Orioles game) is not large enough to accommodate this.
This goal was a difficult one for me to meet. I have this weird "lateness" gene, inherited from my parents who made me wait for rides for hours at a time as a child. Even when it looks as though I will be on time, I find something to distract me enough so that I will not be on time. It is a gift. I did find that having a little foresight helped a great deal with my ability to remember my gym bag and my lunch...and most days, my brain.

Break the Fast

Mini-goal number 2: Eat breakfast. Go figure: Snap, Crackle, and Pop were right. I was not in the habit of eating breakfast consistently when I began my program. I ate some days, and I just didn't have time on other days. Not eating this morning meal caused me to indulge more often in my addicting mochas, and to think about nothing but LUNCH for approximately 2 hours before LUNCH. Waking up earlier is not an option. I enjoy sleep, and I refuse to give any of it up. Instead, I began packing breakfast in addition to lunch and snack.
I actually took this one step farther, and began eating the whole day. On my spreadsheet, I call my meals "breakfast", "lunch", and "snack", but I normally eat half my "breakfast" first thing in the morning, and have the second half about two hours later...whenever I am hungry. About 2 hours after that, yay! It's lunchtime! I take my walk and try to delay lunch until 1pm. This helps fend off "the five o clock feeding frenzy" a little bit, and also allows me to peruse possible leftovers from vendor meetings. (If you work in a place that does not have vendors, I pity thee. These are people that give you a free meal, usually including a cookie, and all you have to do is listen to a presentation about their product. Even better are the occasions when you do not have to attend the presentation, but you get to enjoy the cookies and sandwiches left over after the meeting.)
Vendor meetings are extremely dangerous to a dieter. Even though you may have just eaten a perfectly fine meal, a confrontation with a chicken salad wrap and a chocolate chip cookie, free for the taking, will always end in disaster. I find that I cannot win this fight, so at least I wait until the meeting is over before eating my lunch.
My lunches all include a piece of fruit, which I eat around 2pm. Then I have my last meal, a snack, at 4pm. They say eating breakfast helps get the metabolism moving, and I hope that eating every two hours for the whole day achieves the same effect, though I think it is fairly obvious that I am not a dietitian or a doctor and pretty much feel that insides are inside for a reason - they are icky. I do know that this system works for me because I get hungry, and I eat. Not a lot, just enough to allow my thoughts to focus on something other than dieting. In the end, my overall calorie intake is smaller because denying the urge to eat only makes me want to eat more, and I give in to myself eventually. My belly can be very persistent.

Cravin' the Coolatas

This mini-goal is perhaps not the best one for me to divulge first, because I have not been terribly successful at taming this Baer. Every day at work, I make a "poor man's mocha" which consists of our free (but awful) office coffee mixed with one creamer and a packet of Swiss Miss. In the past, I was drinking as many as three of these in an average day. I have switched to the "No Sugar Added" version of Swiss Miss, which brings the number of calories per cup to about 75, but these are completely empty calories which offer no satisfaction. Hence, I continue to crave more. You'd think caffeine was addicting, or something.
Anyway, the reason I have struggled with limiting and/or eliminating these empty calories, has been that I have no idea why I drink them.
Some possible reasons:
1) I am always freezing in the office, to the point where I literally wrap my hands around the warm cup as if it were a roaring fire (note - I would not recommend doing this with an actual roaring fire).
2) I am actually hungry. I often crave this concoction in the morning, and pour myself one before eating breakfast.
3) Hmm...I have no idea. Many times, I get up and pour this drink for no particular reason. Maybe I was on to something with that addiction idea - I wonder if the surgeon general knows about this.
I made a few rules, like no coffee before breakfast, and no coffee after noon. I promptly broke most of them. So, one week (week #4) I made it a goal to drink no coffee. It worked for a while. But last week, I was up to two cups a day on some days. And I don't remember being that cold. So this week (week #15) I have made it my mini-goal to have zero cups. While I am generally against self denial, it was just getting out of control.
Monday was challenging, to say the least. I would suddenly find myself in front of the Swiss Miss cabinet, coffee cup in hand, reaching for that inviting sugar packet, and it was like waking up from sleep walking. I had no idea how I had gotten there. It is so tempting to think how just one cup couldn't hurt in the long run, and how this was a stupid goal. Somehow, I managed to maintain self control, and headed back to my cubical with my empty cup. That night, I got home, ate dinner, and promptly fell asleep watching "Antiques Roadshow" which comes on at 8:00pm.
Tuesday was marginally better. I craved my fix in the morning, but the feeling was less intense. I still wonder how I managed to stick to the rules, considering I was the one who made the rules in the first place. But I consider it a matter of principle. Once the rules have been made, I shouldn't break them. So I found myself cursing "the man", in this case me, for not making the goal to have only 3 cups this week or something. Why did I decide to go cold turkey? Again, I managed to muster some will power, but I have no idea how.
Today, I don't think I had a single episode. I don't remember thinking about coffee once. I think I have this goal tackled. For now. Next week, I will probably allow myself a cup or 2, and so the cycle continues. But, as I said, I am not a proponent of self denial. At least I know that I have the ability to control this addiction, and I can enjoy a moderate amount if I try. I am almost guaranteed to meet my calorie goal too - I managed to cut 375 calories from my week.
My reward - a shopping trip with my sister on Sunday. Yay!