The Day the Carbs died…

Day one was successful. Not pretty successful, but 100%, whole heartedly successful. Which isn’t surprising at all. The first week, in fact, is usually pretty easy.  I’m motivated, I’m on board, I’m following the letter of the law – well sorta – and by that I mean I didn’t give up the sugar and cream in my coffee. And I won’t. So stop asking me to.

Ahem.

Two things happened yesterday:

1.       I had an epiphory (if you watch the Office you know that Michael Scott calls epiphanies epiphories)

2.       I laughed my ass off, which burns calories, doing Zumba for the first time in my living room.

First the Zumba.  I thought myself a relatively coordinated person when it comes to dance. I can pick up the beat and go with it.  I have moves.  Apparently my “moves” are slow and decrypted and the “moves” in Zumba need to be quick and fast. I was about three steps behind the entire time.  My brain would tell my left foot/leg to move and my right foot would move instead.  It was pretty comical to say the least.  The DVD set I bought came with an instructional series in which they go through all the dance steps and break them down.  I did that section first and felt pretty confident I’d be okay.  I would be wrong.

OMG…I zigged when I should have zagged. I was sucking in air like a crazy person. I was sweating like a mad man and that was only after about 15 minutes.  I had to slow myself down a bit because I discovered, well 1) I couldn’t breathe but more importantly some of the moves make my knees hurt.  The name of the move escapes me, but it was something “funk”. Essentially you twist your knee in towards the other knee while doing something with your arms (which I couldn’t tell you what that something was because what my arms were doing at the time wasn’t, I’m sure, what they should have been doing. Turns out they have a mind of their own too.  Right, so knees hurt, hips hurt, arms hurt, feet hurt…all in all…I think it was a pretty good work out.

Now to the epiphory.

My ENTIRE life I’ve been told two things:

1. Eat everything on your plate
2. Only eat when you’re hungry.

Both, wrong.

I’m sure the “eat everything on your plate” is an ideal that came about in the 50’s after the depression. Don’t waste anything is basically what that’s saying. And to some extent I get it.  Unfortunately, it taught me to “eat everything on my plate” even when my stomach was yelling STOP!  Thus I over eat. 

Now that’s not the only reason I over eat, that’s one of many.  Last night as I was trying to finish the 2 cups of vegetables I had to have for the day. I was full.  But dammit, the plan says to eat 2 cups, I’m eating 2 cups.  And then it hit me. Why? If you’re full, you’re full. Stop eating.  Leave the vegetables until maybe later if you’re still hungry you can finish them.  

So I left the vegetables. And never went back to them.

I’ve been told my entire life to help you stop eating so much to only eat when you’re hungry.   Turns out that’s way off.  

Yesterday I found myself eating the entire day.  Almost every hour I had something to eat.  Breakfast included a JC meal, a fruit, milk, and cottage cheese (blech). I avoided the cottage cheese like the plague, and added another cheese instead (those mini babybel white cheddar snacks are awesome).  I’m pretty sure that swapping cottage cheese (I think it’s considered a dairy) with a cheese cheese (which is actually considered a protein) may be wrong, but the calories were the same-ish so I went with it.   

I started eating breakfast at 8am.  

I finished breakfast at 10 am.  

First, I’m not a breakfast person at all. So eating something at 8am is hard for me, and it turns out it helped get me through the day. I don't want to make this blog a "what I ate all day" blog, but I think it's important to show you...since I'm trying to make a point - that I'll eventually get to.

8am – JC cereal
9am – fruit
10am – cheese
Water Water Water
11am is lunch time for me, but I wasn’t quite hungry yet so I waited.  I had a bug bash at noon in which pizza was going to be present, so I figured I’d eat my lunch during the bug bash to avoid me wanting the pizza.
11:30 – fruit
12:00 – lunch
12:30 – salad from lunch
Water Water Water – I float
1:00 nothing
2:00 – yogurt
2:30 – fruit
3:00 – the witching hour for me. I usually get hungry at/around 3pm and snack unnecessarily.  The hunger at 3 is usually because I didn’t have breakfast, so starved myself until lunch.  Over ate at lunch time. Hit the wall at 3pm.  Yesterday I was a bit hungry so I drank a big glass of water quickly. 
4:00 Zumba hilarity
Water Water Water – I float some more

5:00 dinner – Mesquite chicken, broccoli, baby red potatoes (like 1/4c of them) and 2 cups other vegetable.

Interesting side note - I wasn’t as hungry AFTER exercising as I expected myself to be.  So I ate, and as I stated above, did not finish the vegetables.

7:00 – evening snack – JC White Cheddar popcorn (way more interesting than vegetables)

Just look at that schedule. It’s eating all day long.  And what I discovered yesterday, which many of you already know I’m sure, is that it’s not about eating when you’re hungry. By then it’s too late. Instead its about slowly feeding yourself all day. Grazing.  Little, very small, snacks/meals help get you through. Your body never feels hungry.

I think somewhere in the depths of my brain I knew this. I’m sure some dietician along the way probably told me. Weight Watchers probably told me. Jenny Craig probably told me. All the other diets I’ve tried probably told me. It took yesterday, charting out every morsel for me to go, “AHAH!” Suffice it to say it got very bright here in Redmond.

There’s another trick I’ve discovered that I’ll chat about in another blog…if I remember.  In the meantime, I’ll just say that technology is a great thing. Charting and tracking your food online and on your iphone is awesome. Thanks Patron Saint for directing me to MyFitnessPal.com.