For breakfast, I had a smoothie with protein powder, pineapple, kiwi, and spinach. The spinach was kind of horrible—I think I'd better not try it again. At mid-morning, I had four crackers and a bit of roasted soynut butter. For lunch, there were non-
fat refried black beans, brown rice, about a tablespoon of grated cheddar, salsa, some little bit of pineapple, a mini-muffin, a small coffee with about a teaspoon of sugar and a splash of milk, and a passion fruit chocopod (YUM—on looking at the nutritional information, I was very happy to see that my chocopod had only fifty
calories, which it was well worth in terms of making me feel normal and not deprived).
I had a thai peanut butter granola bar on the way home (high
fat, but it was the last of them, happily) and in the early evening, a 100-calorie mini-bag of popcorn with 30
calories worth of POM light tea.
Quite late, I had my supper, a little bit of chicken and spinach curry over some brown rice and quinoa, with a romaine salad with some light caesar dressing. I'm finishing up the night in good style with a plain baked banana and a cup of coffee (with
fat-free half-and-half and a bit of sugar).
It's been much easier today not to obsess over food—largely because I was out and about and had other things to think about, I suspect, rather than being home with this everlasting Dickens novel and nothing else at all. I didn't get to the elliptical machine, but I did walk to and from my car rather than taking the shuttle, which is about ten minutes each way and is something, at any rate. Scale said 287.4 today, which is a little disheartening, but I know that if I keep doing the right thing, it must and shall reflect that sooner or later. I just have to not lose heart.
Allyphoe, thanks so much for all your good advice. The reason I don't count
calories is that I'm a frequent and rather improvisational cook, so that I'd have to keep a graphing calculator in the kitchen to try and see what it all added up to!
You may be right that my guilt is mainly emotional. But when I try to think of what my childhood experience of
dieting was—well, one may well say that it was wretched. My stepmother was a very bad cook with a penchant for severe diets that involved a lot of plain brown rice and microwaved frozen vegetables and boneless skinless chicken breasts cooked in the microwave. And anything like chocolate or sugary or fatty at all was absolutely anathema during this hideous
diet. I used to sneak candy with my allowance, eat my friends' bagels at lunch, do anything to get something good to eat. So I have this feeling that if I'm eating a bit of chocolate at lunch and putting some sugar in my coffee, then I'm not "really"
dieting, even though I am reducing my caloric intake substantially.
I don't know what the solution to this is, or how I'll ever feel like I'm doing right if I'm not martyring myself with a few cold shrimp for lunch and one of those everlasting golden delicious apples that I can't even bear to look at—I'll eat a crisp pippin, a macintosh, a gala, a braeburn, but don't ever show me a golden delicious! I had to eat them every day.
No wonder
dieting freaks me out.
