When You Think About Something and Then You Want It

Sometimes my stomach and uterus like to gang up on my brain. The conversation usually goes something like the below.

Dramatization:

Brain: Ok, dinner is over, I’m out of calories for the day, I had a smaller dinner after a big and caloric lunch and I’m satisfied. Lalalalala, weight loss is easy, just need balance.  

Stomach: I’m doing okay.  

Brain: Lalalala, everything is awesome. 

Stomach: *off-key* Everything is cool when you’re part of a team! 

Brain: Oh yeah, Chinese food exists.

Stomach: I demand Chinese food! Bring me dumplings! 

Uterus: *Sobs Uncontrollably.* Yes! I need you to eat! What if we get pregnant, you need weight on you! 

Brain: Hey, Uterus, it’s been a few weeks since we’ve heard from you. Soooo, um, listen, Uterus, you’re okay. Did you get a new haircut? Nice suggestion, but I already have an extra forty pounds of fat on me, so we’re pretty much set in the evolution/starvation/apocalypse arena.  

Uterus: *Uses ovary to flip off brain* No, we need more! Chinese food is so delicious, it’s all that will make me happy. 

Stomach: Holy crap, literally all I want is Chinese food now. That is the only thing in the world that matters. Hey, Brain, it’s as easy as ordering it online. Order some. Chinese food is all that matters now. All we are is Chinese food.  

Brain: Whoa, okay, I really want Chinese food. Yes, Chinese food is all that matters.

And it’s hard to resist, whether it’s because it’s that time of the month, a really stressful day, or just one of those things. 

I must take full responsibility for my eating decisions, but sometimes, it’s just feels so much harder to make good ones. I’ve given into this, sometimes after a great calorie day where I said no to the donuts at work. I’ve never once been happy about my decision, mostly because I know so well that there’s room for pizzas and chocolate chip cookies in a healthy eating plan. Just not every day, and probably not the entire pizza.

So, what do you do? What do you do when all you want is a melty chocolate chip cookie, or a whole pizza, but you don’t have a thousand calories to spare that would still let you lose some weight that week? And you want to lose weight? When you feel so conflicted, even though you feel silly for feeling so conflicted?

The only thing that’s actually helped, at least for me, is to explicitly articulate exactly what I want and how much I want it. Admit it, out loud. “I really, really want some dumplings and moo shu chicken. I have the ordering tab open, and I really want it. I feel like I actually need it.”

This happened just a few days ago. John listened to me explain to him, for several minutes, just how much I wanted to order Chinese food. 

He then said, patiently but matter-of-factly, “Listen, if I thought that ordering the food would help you, I’d tell you to go for it. But I know it won’t make you happy. We’ve ordered this in before, and each time you’ve ended up eating much more than you wanted, and have been disappointed and regretted it.”

I knew he was right, but I still wanted it. But I waited a bit, and of course, that urge to eat faded, and then went away. And I was so glad I hadn’t indulged in a thousand or more calories of food I didn’t need.

I’m trying to remember the very point of the title of my blog - that when it comes to the delicious things I want to eat, it’s goodnight, not goodbye. Not having the Chinese food that night doesn’t mean I’ll never have it again, it just means that on that particular night, Chinese food wasn’t in the plan. If I really want to have some, I’ll work it into my day in a reasonable way. I can even plan around the really good deep-fried stuff.

This over-dramatization brought to you by Teenage Girl, Inc, and Reader’s Digest.

Have you had the overwhelming urge to eat something? 

What did you do about it?

Weekly Weigh In & Thoughts on Goal Weight Bodies

I’m getting a little better at being patient about getting to my goal weight. One things that helps is not overly focusing on it. Measuring, weighing, and tracking food, and exercising take up time and effort, but I can let them become a part of normal life, as routine as brushing my teeth. My day can be measured by the positive feedback I got at work as much as or more than the calorie deficit.

Still sticking to my food plan and tracking everything, even during the time out with friends. However, one frustrating part of this last week involved ice cream. Basically I learned that I’m still not ready to keep certain junk foods in the house. Last week, we bought some Edy’s slow churned after a really strenuous afternoon at the gym. I enjoyed some, netted about 1100 calories for the day, and all was well. But then later in the week, I found myself spooning some out without measuring, and ate it, not really caring that it would negate the day’s calorie deficit. 

Not such a horrible situation, obviously, but I realized after the fact that if the ice cream hadn’t been in the apartment, I wouldn’t have even been thinking about having it or cared when I didn’t. So at least for now, I’m not going to keep it in the apartment. There are four different ice cream or froyo places within half a mile of our apartment, thus plenty of options for when we want it.

This week’s weigh-in:

Measurements	6/8/2014	8/4/2014	8/12/2014
Weight	191.2	184	183
Pounds Fat	82.7	74.5	70.4
Pounds Muscle	67.3	68.2	66.4

I’m going to assume that the net pound loss is real, but the fat and muscle are likely flukes - I did not lose over four pounds of fat in one week, as awesome as that would be. According to my own tracking of daily calorie deficits, I “should” have lost ten pounds. The actual weight loss, according to the scale/chart, is a little over eight pounds and maybe nine or ten pounds of fat. That’s pretty close, which makes me think that my data might be accurate. I'll see how it does in the long term.

When I’m doing well with weight loss, I think about getting to goal - what I’ll look like, what I might wear, how I’ll feel, how I’ll keep it off. I remind myself that losing all the weight is not going to solve all my problems or magically make me happy always & forever, but on the outside I will probably look very different.

It occurred to me yesterday that nobody in the world, including myself, has ever seen what I’m genetically supposed to look like. The last time I was at a healthy age was when I was six. I’ve known a few people who have lost 50-100 pounds, and their transformations were astounding  - the extra weight that had always changed their faces and bodies was gone. This isn’t about a person being more or less attractive at different weights, but just how dramatic the changes can be.

I know what I do look like, of course, but my face is a little too round and that garbles my bone structure, and my body hints at but doesn’t actually exemplify my genes. Might I actually posses the great legs that run in my family? How deep are the dimples that I haven’t seen at all in over a year? A third thing to round it off?