My Struggles with Food

I consider myself to be pretty damn good at dieting. When I trying - when I really try - I am extremely successful.  But I still struggle like crazy.  I know that this is a common problem, so I thought that I'd share my struggles and also my daily plan, in case it helps even just one person develop a similar plan that works for them.

Here's my dieting plan on a normal day - consume approximately 1500 calories over the course of three moderate meals (usually around 400 calories each) and two small snacks that are about 150 calories each.  This is ONLY if I plan on doing at least 45 minutes of jogging/walking/biking that will allow me to burn at least 300 calories from exercise.  Each day my goal is to net 1200 calories after exercise. 

On most days I plan out all of my food in the morning, and pack it up.  I measure everything and put it into ziploc baggies. 

On an average work day my meals usually look something like this:

Breakfast (btwn 9 a.m. and 10 a.m.) - Frosted mini-wheats (180 calories), coffee with way too much creamer (100 calories)
Lunch (noon)- 7 slices of oven roasted turkey breast (110 calories) with a whole wheat pita (100 calories), 3 tablespoons of light mayo (110 calories), and pickles (0-5 calories), and then a 70 calories snack to round it out (usually either Fat Free Pringles or 2 rice cakes)
Afternoon snack (3:30)- either more mini-wheats or a 100 calorie popcorn bag
Dinner (6:15)- Varies widely by day, but this is usually my biggest meal, consisting of usually around 500 calories.  I almost always have a spinach salad with 30 calories worth of spray dressing to start.  Meals include: 2 whole wheat tacos with 95% lean ground beef and guacamole, corn meal chicken with broccoli, 3 ounces of pasta with a slice of homemade garlic bread, etc. 
Evening snack (9 p.m. ONLY if I worked out) - sometimes 2-3 rice cakes (105 calories) or 1 ounce of cashews (160 calories)

When you really think about it, what I've listed above is really more than enough food for me each day.  And even at the end of most days, I totally feel satisfied by just eating the things above.

But mentally, I'm not quite strong enough to convince myself of that on a regular basis.  When I am being "good" at my diet, it is one of the mentally exhausting things that I've ever done.  I constantly have battles with myself in my brain when I see things that I want.  There are some definite weaknesses, things that I almost never can say "no" too.  Examples - Snyder's of Berlin cheese puffs (they're soft instead of crunchy-mmmmm), guacamole, buffalo chicken, seasoned french fries, a cold draft beer.  The list could go on and on.... I know by now that I shouldn't deny myself things that I crave because it just leads to gluttonous overeating, but the second problem is that even when I allow myself those things, it still leads to gluttonous overeating.  It's a lose-lose.

And the lists of cons just goes on and on.   Dieting definitely brings out my obsessive compulsive tendencies (which are really always simmering just under the surface anyway).  I am obsessive about weighing each and everything that I put in my mouth.  I have a $100 food scale that measure grams, kilograms, ounces and pounds, so I can almost always calculate the exact calorie content of everything I eat based on it's weight and nutrition information.  I even separate my breakfast mini-wheats from my afternoon mini-wheats so that I'm not tempted to eat them all breakfast, and on most days, it works really well.   But it really takes away from my spontaneity, and/or my ability to go along with any spontaneity whatsoever.  "Hey, let's go to Mad Mex tonight to celebrate!"  "NO! We can't go there! I'LL GO OVER MY CALORIES!!!!"  I'm crazy.

No fun.

Dieting also means no alcohol, which was one of the hardest things in the world for me early on. It's getting better, and easier, but I just love a good beer or mixed drink with my dinner at night, probably (definitely) a bad habit. 

So, I just need to keep persevering.  I need to keep telling myself over and over that I'm doing a good job, and I need to make sure that the reasonable side of my brain always beats out the impulsive side when I'm considering giving myself "a treat."  There are a million other ways to treat myself that don't involve food, but I always forget that.  Today I was down to 153.0.  That 1.4 pounds in just 6 days - hard, solid evidence that when I try, I AM successful. 

And when I'm feeling weak, I just need to remember myself when I looked like this.

 

137 pounds, and I felt AMAZING.   I'm only a few months away from feeling like that again.