Be your own best friend!

Last night, I binged.  My MFP friends were all so supportive!  It made me wonder why am so hard on myself, when I could be treating myself like I would treat others.  I was inspired to create this list.  Feel free to add to it in your comment.  :-)

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Things that I would say to my best friend if they told me that they had binged last night:

"It's okay!  It happens to the best of us."

"Don't get hung up on the binge!  Move on immediately."

"'Fat' isn't a feeling."

"What you eat doesn't make you 'good' or 'bad'".

"You tracked it!  YAY!!!  Think about all the times that you binged in the past and DIDN'T track.  You have come so far."

"It wasn't even that bad.  Remember all those times that you sat at home watching TV eating an entire (probably family-sized) bag of Ruffles with a whole jar of dip?  Plus some Little Debbies?  And that was just to tide you over until your Digiorno pizza was done cooking?  Oh yeah, and you hadn't exercised at all that day?  Think about how far you've come since THEN."

"One binge is NOT going to ruin your diet.  You will NOT gain a pound from an extra 1000 calories one day.  You're going to be just fine."

"Aren't you PMS-ing?  Give yourself a break.  It could have been much worse, and you know it."

"Drink some water.  Eat something nutritious when you feel hungry again.  Exercise a bit more tomorrow.  You'll be just fine."

"Go blog about it.  You will feel better."



Good news/Bad news and Intuitive Exercise

First of all, some good news and bad news.  Since I pride myself in my blogging honesty, particularly in all things food and exercise, I felt the need to share a couple of things with you. 

Good news:  I was down 1.2 at my Saturday WI!  This means that last week's .6 gain was really just normal maintenance stuff.  I am planning to stick in the Weight Watchers maintenance range because I like it: 142-146.  Having this range gives me  sense of peace about my weight, instead of being so focused on staying at 144.0 forever.  (Of course, since I'm working on finding my happy/healthy weight with IE, the number may eventually go above or below that number).

Bad news: I binged.  A real binge, not a cutesy mini-binge.  I ate an entire pizza and two bowls of cereal, all while not hungry at all.  And this, after all of my progress with IE, while KNOWING that I am always allowed to eat anything.  I know that it was an emotional binge (bored, lonely, helpless).  It was stupid.  I don't like calling myself stupid, but that is what my actions indicated on Saturday night: stupidity. 

However- I learned my lesson.  My stomach was KILLING me after this binge.  I decided right then and there that it was over.  That I was going to move on immediately with my IE journey, and not let one binge destroy my efforts.  I could have easily restricted my eating the next day to "make up" for the binge, but I didn't.  I got right back on track.

I haven't gotten to this part of the book yet, but I remember there being a part in it about how even naturally intuitive eaters will sometimes overeat for emotional reasons, and that the difference between an IE-er and a dieter is that the IE-er doesn't see it as a big deal, and after the overeating, they immediately go right back to naturally listening to their hunger signals.

So in that way, I guess I am still on the right track towards becoming an intuitive eater. 

Okay, now for the other reason of this post: Intuitive Exercise!

I realized that I almost never follow my workout plan.  I have decided to stop making them.  Instead, I will just work to get in some sort of workout every day, taking one or two days off a week if I need to.  Instead of writing the plan over there (I don't know if anyone noticed, but I've been writing my workout plan to the right for a while now), I will write what I did that day after I do it.  That way, there is an accurate tracking of my workouts every week.  No plan.  Just do what I feel like doing that day.

Okay, now that I got all of that off my chest, I want to close with a couple of great quotes that I picked up from one of my new favorite blogs, The Begin Within Blog:

Habit, if not resisted, soon becomes necessity. ~St. Augustine

Habits are at first cobwebs, then cables. ~Spanish Proverb

Bad habits are easier to abandon today than tomorrow. ~Yiddish Proverb

Coming up: Principle 3 of Intuitive Eating- Make Peace with Food; and Tasty Tuesday!

Tasty Tuesday!

Good evening, guys! Welcome to another edition of Tasty Tuesday. Today is an example of... imperfection. Which is cool, you need to not just see me on my "perfect" days. I'm PMSing bigtime, and you know what that means: SNACKS. Also: HUNGRY MONSTER!!!

This morning started off with 40 minutes of this:

With this:

Breakfast was a giant bowl of delicious oats! 1 cup of oatmeal (dry) is the perfect amount for me. It makes a large amount and keeps me full all morning. This bowl was made with almond milk and topped with sliced banana and some leftover canned fresh pineapple! So good.

Lunch started off great, but then turned into a PMS-crazy-MEGAMEAL!!! I started with leftovers: 1 cup brown rice, 1/2 cup black beans, some canned tomatoes and a teaspoon of olive oil. YUM.

This is when things went downhill... I opened up some Almond Dream "bites" which are seriously the most amazing ice cream treat that I've eaten since going vegan. DELICIOUS!!! There were 7 left, about half a serving, and I ate them all...

Long story short: I ate the rest of the flatbread (5 servings!) and the rest of the hummus (4 tablespoons!) Luckily, this GIANT, PMS-inducede mega-meal kept my tummy full for several hours. I wasn't even kind of hungry until 10 pm. That's insane! Also ate (not pictured): Coconut Cream Pie Lara Bar. Yep: mega meal! Note: I didn't consider these Flatbreads to be a trigger food. Now I'm reevaluating...

For dinner, I had a green monster! In this GM: 2.5 cups spinach (steamed in the microwave first), 1 cup almond milk, 1/2 large frozen banana, 1/2 tablespoon flaxseed, 2 ice cubes

Cheers!

NTF Challenge!!!

Tomorrow I'm starting a new challenge for myself (and for anyone else who wants to join!!!).

I'm calling it the "No Trigger Food" Challenge! I did something simular a few months ago with chips. Basically, I will be challenging myself to go 21 full days without any trigger foods.

What are trigger foods? Trigger foods are any foods that once I start eating them, I cannot stop. Sometimes, eating trigger foods turns into a full-out binge. I've pretty much put binge-eating behind me, but sometimes I still find myself wanting to overeat just for the sake of overeating.

I remember that when I did my "no chips challenge", it really helped me to stop craving chips so often. This time around, I'm adding all trigger foods to the challenge.

My Trigger Foods:

• chips (potato, corn, pita, etc.)
• unhealthy crackers that masquerade as healthy crackers (triscuits, wheat thins, whole grain saltines, etc.)
• oreos (any and all types)
• light wheat bread (seriously, this stuff is like crack to me.)

I think that these are it, but if I think of any others to add to this list, I will update it! So, tomorrow is the first day of the first "No Trigger Foods Challenge" (NTFC). 21 days without any trigger foods. Can I do it? Yes I can!!!
Why am I doing this? This week, I found myself eating more of these trigger foods than usual, and feeling a bit out of control with my eating. I'm scared that it's the beginning of a pattern, especially since I'm not PMSing. This is my way of taking control before I gain any weight with these trigger foods!
Yes, I do realize that this is very anti-Intutive Eating, but I'm still in the beginning phases of weaning myself off of WW/getting back to IE. :-)
I'm going to add a cute new ticker to the top of this blog showing how many days are left of the NTFC. (Yes, I'm obsessed with tickers!!!)

My First SFT Weigh-In Results are in...

...down .6!!!

To me, this is an amazing victory, because I did a couple of "bad" things this week:

1) I emotionally ate. I ate 2/3 a pack of double stuff oreos on Wednesday... But this was also a victory, because I DID STOP eating eventually, and it wasn't after they were all gone! Amazing. I stopped after about 50 PointsPlus, and could have gone to 75. Victory. But still bad, especially on the Simply Filling Technique, especially after I had already eaten all 49 weeklies!!!

2) Wait. I guess there was just one. I have beaten myself up over ONE mistake?! I need to re-read over my "Tips For Weight Watchers", especially the section about not beating yourself up. Time to take my own advice!

Anyway, I ended the week with 5 PointsPlus in the hole. Which means that I earned quite a few Activity Points this week, mostly because I enjoy the exercise, but partly to make up for the oreos. I hope that's a healthy attitude, and not disordered thinking! Help me out readers, do you ever exercise to try and make up for overeating??

Anyway, this week I'm going to plan things out a bit (a LOT) better than last week. I've already pre-tracked all of my non-Power foods in my tracker. If I stick to this, I will eat all 49 WPA plus 7 out of 34 earned AP. That gives me 27 AP left for wiggle room, in case I just HAVE to eat some triscuits and hummus, or a peanut butter bagel. :-)

I am thinking that this is the last week that I will be in the 150's!!! Well, maybe next week will be the last week, who knows?! I have learned that this is NOT A RACE. Weight loss takes time, and with that time comes great knowledge. I am so looking forward to learning how to maintain my weight loss, but right now, I will just enjoy the ride.

All in all, I am LOVING THE SIMPLY FILLING TECHNIQUE. Outside the oreos debacle, I have never eaten healthier than I'm eating right now! Seriously, the Power Foods are all healthy and whole, and I'm feeling healthier because of this.
***Edited to add: Fatsecret.com just informed me that if I continue to lose at this rate (.6 a week), I will be at my goal weight of 135 in 6 months. That would be AMAZING. :-)