I apologize to everyone who got 3,065 posts from me today. I don’t know what’s up with my site and Google Reader. Please let me know if it happens again 🙁
Today I felt guilty about eating cereal (x2)…
and a waffle. Until I decided to call it “early carb-loading”. Okay, “very early carb-loading“. But that made me feel like it was okay.It doesn’t mean it was actually okay, but it felt like it…
In reality it is better to up your carb intake a day or two (not a week, Monica!) ahead of time. You don’t want to completely stuff yourself the night before. That might mean bad news the morning of the race.
I also “early carb-loaded” with a potato biscuit with cheese and TJ’s Soy Nuggets. I was making the bread for Ben, but realized that I was going to eat some too (like I always do). I often “heavy-handedly taste” Ben’s food and don’t realize all the extra calories I’m getting. Tonight I just decided to eat what I wanted, put it on a plate and enjoy it.
Eating salads out of hummus containers is the new eating oatmeal out of PB containers…
Fill ‘er up!
Dessert because I can’t resist the Siren Song of Dark Chocolate in my freezer. But I am sticking to my New Year’s Resolution of No eating after dinner – I ate this at the table then, flossed my teeth. Done.
Intuitive Eating & the Perfect Day?
I was thinking about how I would eat if I already was a true Intuitive Eater. I tried to imagine what I would eat if calories didn’t matter. A day of eating my favorite foods would look something like this:
Breakfast: Protien pancakes or Bagel
Lunch: Big Whole Foods salad/hot bar salad
Snack: Trail Mix or PB&J
Dinner: Salmon, brussel sprouts and baked sweet potato
Dessert: Yogurtland!!!
This made me realize:
- My favorite foods are somewhat high in cals, but not “bad” in moderation at all.
- I have naturally pretty healthy tastebuds.
- I would get sick of eating these things everyday and would definitely mix it up! I even thought I wouldn’t want to have frozen yogurt everyday!
I think I need to relax and trust that my body can guide me a bit more, but also realize that I have a sweet tooth and it will take over if I throw my blood sugar “off” with too many carbs and not enough veggies and fats.The reality is I eat the same amount of calories as I would if they didn’t matter (like the menu above), but I end up sneaking/snacking them when I don’t just feed my cravings.
Sorry if this bores you, I just thought it was interesting that my “ideal eats” are so carb heavy, but relatively healthy.
Question: What would you eat if calories didn’t matter? Do you already eat like that?
Breathe – Despite the cold weather I am trying very very hard to stay positive. This week’s Breathe post lists the positive things about the cold 🙂
I meant to post this yesterday but forgot… I just wanted to tell you that I think you are too hard on yourself! You dedicate yourself to running/exercise almost everyday it seems.. and you eat mainly healthy stuff… me on the other hand.. I put my exercise on complete hiatus from Dec. 21 up until Jan. 4 when i started up again.. ohhh and ate tons of crap, binge style.. and gained roughly 9 lbs in that period of time (TRUE STORY.. ). The main reason for my comment tho, was to tell you that you do not look fat (nor are you fat!)… and you look especially slim and fit in the picture of you with the blue shorts and white tee. You look great and your intense exercise is your free pass to eat some “junk” each day. I find that you are one of the very few blogs I read that ever admits they have a hard time keeping their hands out of the cookie jar and then feels guilty about it. I can’t help but feel slightly irked when everything else I read is about how healthy everyone ate ALL day long and how wonderful their exercise was.. blah blah… seems kinda fake at times. Atleast you are real! Okay this is getting long now.. ta ta for now.. enjoy Florida!!
I now allow my body to guide me through what I eat and don’t eat. But of course, it’s the mind that makes the decision if I should go ahead with it or not. Even though I have a sweet tooth, I have somehow curbed the cravings by eating more fruits.
Easy question to answer for me. Breakfast. then breakfast for lunch followed by breakfast for dinner. Eggs. Pancakes. French Toast. Waffles. Omelets. Sausages. Bacon. Damn. Now I’m hungry!
I’m a savory craving person, so I would eat more cheese, bread, and salty things like chips and crackers. Also beer and alcohol, which I restrict more than I used to.
I do consume everything in moderation, but it would be in my best interest to get rid of cheese, since I’m lactose intolerant. 🙁 Why does it have to be so tasty?
it’s never too early to carbo-load 🙂 and i would eat ice cream by the gallons if it were calorie free. i do already eat it every day but i would be eating so much more!
I think I have a taste for healthy foods, but if I could eat whatever I wanted there would be a box of cereal a day. Maybe not the best for intuitive eating 😉
This is all good stuff. I have been trying to get away from the counting calories mentality, and just focus on eating clean, healthy food and limiting what I call splurges (basically anything junky.) I still splurge, but only once a week or so, and I make sure to get in lots of fruits and veggies. some of the things I eat on a daily basis, some people might consider a splurge (like my homemade chocolate almond butter), but I know it is healthy in more ways than one for me.
If calories didn’t matter, I would eat ice cream, cookies, and baked goods…for a while. But then I would crave the other healthy things that I also love, and it would all balance out.
I like your no eating after dinner resolution. I need to work my way up to this because if I am going to overeat, that’s when it happens. After all, if I am fueling myself sufficiently all day, then I shouldn’t need anything after dinner in the physical sense. I’m going to work on this one….maybe choose one after dinner treat and then close the kitchen.
Oh, and not that I didn’t already write enough…but it’s interesting to mention that after I stocked my house with a ton of “forbidden” foods, I only ate them for about a week. After that, they sat in the cabinets/fridge/freezer untouched. I finally ended up throwing a ton of food away, and then rather than being guilty about eating “bad” food, I was guilty about wasting all of that money! Now I only keep on hand the things that I know I’ll want to eat…Nutella, chocolate chips,…and that’s about it. My love for cereal has almost completely diminished. I could literally eat an entire box in one day, but now I’m lucky if I **want** a bowl per week. Strange.
You know my deal. I learned through IE to stop giving a damn about calories. I eat what I want, and usually eat it when I want it.
While in treatment, I learned many thing about my history of stuffing and grazing…
1) When I stuffed, I was normally anxious. Eating to soothe my anxiety about something.
2) When I grazed, I usually hadn’t honored my hunger at some other point during the day/week. As I mentioned in Jen’s comments a couple weeks ago, my hunger is always on a continuum. If I don’t honor my hunger today, it might not affect me until 4 days from now…but it will affect me at some point.
3) I worried about calories because I didn’t trust that I could “control” my eating. I believed that if something ‘forbidden’ was in my house, I would eat all of it and not stop until it was gone. This was partially true, but it was true because I was working on a feast or famine mentality. I never allowed myself forbidden foods…so when I was exposed to them, I went ape sh!t crazy with them. A huge process for me was just buying these things and keeping them in my house. My homework was to enjoy a serving of these foods when I **wanted** them, but if I did happen to overeat them, I did so without guilt and kept it movin.
For me, it really wa all about changing my frame of mind, shifting focus, and separating any feelings of guilt from eating and food.
And today…Monica gets my long-winded comment. lol.
I would go to town on pizza and french fries if calories and healthiness didn’t matter 🙂
I just thought, your body knows what you need, and your cravings are probably carb heavy cos you NEED them for the marathon! So if I were you, I wouldn’t worry about it atm, I think you should definetly trust yourself more 🙂
That’s a great list of foods you’d eat if you could eat what you want, all so healthy! It just shows you’re doing way better than you thought 🙂
Mine would be smoked salmon and kaboca squash and sweet potato, and lots of cereal and porridge!! The ultimate foods :p (and Ben and Jerrys. Many, many tubs of Ben and Jerrys. It’s an addiction!)
Have a good day 🙂
Hey! I live in MD too! What race are you training for? Yummm – I am totally going to start eating out of my hummus container too!
That’s a hard question because initially I would say I would eat endless peanut butter, CUPCAKES, cookies, pizza etc, but those things don’t make me feel as good as a salad or yogurt do so I think I’d tire of them quickly.
I know that the moment I tell myself I can’t have something or deprive myself that is all I want. I think it’s human nature. I think it’s good you ate what you wanted for dinner instead of just eyeing Ben’s food. I do that alot with my boyfriend’s foods, but sometimes I’ll have what he has with no regrets. Other times I will just have tastes of his.
Glad you’re enjoying my positive comments, they’re true & I know you will do great on your marathon! I’m doing well & am doing a half marathon in less than 3 weeks and am pretty excited/nervous!
If calories truly didn’t matter and I ate whatever, I would definitely eat big huge burritos everytime I go out. And lots more desserts – cookies, pastries, etc . I see people eat 4-5 cookies at a time, and I would feel out of control with that. Grr. I would also get milkshakes. Oh dear.
But that flavor hummus looks fantastic! Never seen it before.
LOVE Sabra hummus!? Did you get that from Costco? That’s where I find that flavor.
P.S. I am giving away a BUILT Neoprene Lunch Tote on my blog: http://lovinlosing.com/2010/01/05/giveaway-announcement/
I would not worry about portion control. I measure out everything I eat now and it would be fantastic to just have a giant bowl of cereal. I wanted to say that I am so glad you posted your previous entries about marathon training. I did my 18miler Sunday and I can’t seem to get full. I want to eat everything in sight. I wasn’t hungry Sunday, but yesterday and today I can’t get enough. It is nice to see that I am not alone in this. Just not sure whether I should eat more or not.
Truthfully, if calories didn’t matter, I would assume fat/carb/protein would matter. I’d eat an awful lot of pizza, cheeseburgers, french fries, and ice cream.
Unfortch, we don’t live in a world where that is an option, so I just take those things in moderation and try to make sure I balance out the bad with good.
That sounds like IE to me 🙂
P.S. Is that captain crunch in your bowl?
PB Puffins
If if didn’t matter I would eat brownies, cookies, cinnamon rolls, cake, you get the idea. The sad part is that this is how I eat now—in binge form. I too would LOVE to follow intuitive eating but 13 years of bingeing makes it sooo hard to achieve the goal. I start diets every other day and they typically don’t make it 24 hours. Bad bad yo-yo dieting and disordered eating on this end.
From my experience, you eat less and the perfect amount when you eat what you crave. If you deprive yourself at all, the things you want end up working their way into your plate anyway, so you might as well have them. I’m also a big advocate on going big on one thing. You might think that having 3 scoops of ice cream is alot, so you take only one. But then it’s easy to graze the rest of the night and eat way more than the 3 scoops, and still not be as inwardly satisfied.
Totally agree about the ice cream. I do that exact thing when I don’t let myself have a cookie, but keep breaking off pieces until there are 5 gone!
Hi!!
I love your blog! I just did my first food post the other day and it was on Intuitive eating (that’s my style, calories don’t matter to me… you should check out my post!)… I know a guy who is a health counselor trained to guide intuitive eating. He’s also a fantastic running coach (he just coached a guy who is in the Clydesdale category to run 3:07 in the marathon!) His health counseling website is here: http://www.matthewgermain.com and has contact info.
Listen to your body (running and not running) your body knows best.