by Nancy » June 13th, 2006, 8:16 am
Zinkette ~
Woo Hoo for you – you drank a swimming poolful of water! Yeah!
Nights were and are troublesome for me, too. When we are at work, we are busy, no time to think about food plus there are the 'watchers' - people that would see us eating. The sun goes down, the hungries come out.
I made a note of the times my hunger seemed to increase and it was always in the evening. I realized that I had to make some changes to my habits so that I would not be plagued with the hungries for the rest of my life.
Some things that helped me then and now:
I made a rule to never eat while watching TV, that way; the TV would not be associated with grub. In the beginning stages of my weight loss phase, I purposely limited TV viewing and I refused to watch commercials. I don’t watch them now and I don’t watch much TV.
I spent a lot of time in the closets and drawers. I cleaned them out, arranged my clothes in size order so I would have sets of clothes to look forward to wearing. I went to Barnes & Noble and looked at the magazines to see what people were wearing these days – I was used to wearing big shirts and pull-on pants, granny shoes and grannypanties…I was giving up my whole way of life for a new life and I wanted to live it up and live it cool!
I read many books focused on healthful eating and positive thinking. I changed my thinking about myself, I changed my thinking about food. I love Ruth Fishel's book, Change Almost Anything in 21 Days.
I journaled.
I avoided the kitchen after supper except to make my final shake for the evening. I did not open kitchen cupboards. I kept/keep my Medifast in the breadbox on the counter. It has several days' worth of Medigrub but only one bar...the other bars are kept in the pantry in the mudroom. I cannot trust myself with bars…
We have no junk food in our home. None. Junk makes me feel like junk and look like junk. I worked too hard to lose weight. It took days to lose one pound, it takes minutes to gain a pound. Junk benefits no one but the manufacturing companies.
No chips, no cookies, no bread, no crackers, no PB, no mayo...the veggie drawer in the refer has lots of green garden fresh veggies, the refer door has several jars of garlic kosher dills, homemade garlic hot pepper dills & Splenda sweetened Bread and Butter pickles, a variety of stuffed green olives, a variety of mustards, low fat/low cal dressings and marinades.
We have a few cans of diet pop, a Britta pitcher of water for making shakes and tons of bottles of water.
There’s a tub of Fat Free Cool Whip, sugar-free Jello cuplets (I sometimes make bowls of sugar free Jell-O but the serving size is too nebulous for my husband and he’ll eat the entire bowlful so I buy the individual ½ cup servings. Yes, they cost more but it is not a good idea for Terry to get into the habit of eating a huge amount. Yes, it is sugar-free but the idea here is to keep our portions smaller, to not permit our subconscious to think it can go hog-wild with serving sizes gain. That got us into waistline trouble before and we’re not going there again…) and we have a package of pork chops for tonight's supper.
The freezer has jumbo prawns, skinless boneless chicken, halibut steaks, sugar-free popsicles, and a quart of marionberries. There's nothing damaging in the refer or the cupboards.
I ate only by the clock, not by what my stomach told me - it lied to me for years, I could not trust it. I still eat by the clock.
Change your evening schedule. Go for a walk, get out of the house. If you have kids, ask them to be the guard and to not permit you to enter the kitchen alone. If you must keep junk food or things that taunt you like the jar of PB, have your husband put Peter Pan in the garage somewhere or the basement. Engage the help of your family – this can be “Project Mom’s Health.”
This is so much more than losing a few pounds, People. We are not on a diet. This is People Improvement Project here – we are improving our health, we are preventing heart disease, stroke, diabetes, etc. Visit a hospital…see where we are headed if we do not make major changes in our eating and living styles…this is serious business.
Zinkette, we live near a hospital and the ambulances come roaring off the highway heading for the emergency entrance a dozen times a day. I see families assisting loved ones in and out of vans with wheelchairs, crutches, etc. Some of them have difficulty helping because the person is so heavy. I pictured myself as being one of them and the burden it would place on my husband or my daughter. It made the cookies I wanted so badly seem not so needful.
There is a diabetic supply store near where we have coffee. We see the people going in and out with packages of special diabetic socks, diabetic shoes, and other foot care products – some people have scooters because walking is difficult. That scares me – it could happen to me if I didn’t make permanent changes in my eating habits. The docs and nurses come into Starbuck’s on their break and I hear them talking about patients. Gulp! It could be me they describe. Once I realized how important it is to eat healthy foods, in healthy portions, it made it a lot easier to choose to do the right things for myself.
I still want cookies, ice cream, pop corn, pizza but just because I want something doesn’t mean I gotta have it!
“I don’t gotta even if I wanna”
You are stronger than the PB – Peter Pan does not have control over you because you are in charge of your health.
You are making good choices.
With every shake you make, you are getting closer to your optimal weight. You are eating healthy foods and feeling great!
Nothing tastes as good as thin feels...
The Formerly FLABulous and Now very Fabulous
Nancy Pettit
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