As for me, I am LAZY today and loving it. I did a quick 20 minute work out yesterday which I enjoyed a lot, and today it is just a lazy rainy day that I am letting be as it is. Getting dressed and meeting my bf in town to say hi before I work.
Today we finally got our sink working so we can wash dishes! Yay! Today some hamburgers for dinner.
It's been beautiful outside (50-65 degrees and sunny!), which means I've been getting back into running, which is WONDERFUL, and also makes me sore. But in a good way. Here's hoping it stays this warm for the foreseeable future.
We're SOOO close to being there.. I cannot wait.
Giving up desserts for Lent has reminded me that I'm always more inclined to eat badly when I feel like I'm depriving myself. It's also reminding me that my biggest calorie-consumption problems occur after dinner. I would institute a no-snacking-after-dinner policy, but I'm concerned that that would make me feel even more deprived. So, what to do? I've noticed that I crave food less when I exercise more -- maybe that will help? As well as drinking more water
That IS a predicament.. I'm just going to throw some ideas out there..
If you're cooking healthy dinners, why not make two plates? Like a small snack plate version of what you just ate for when you're feeling hungry soon after dinner.
I know this sounds pretty stereotypical, but.. I've been working on eating slower. And it is HARD to do. But eating slower has also made me feel more satisfied when I am done eating. I have some pretty awful habits from the military, but eating quickly is one that is pretty firmly rooted in me right now.
If it's a calorie-vs-quantity in the tummy game, I think bulking up your dinners to be bigger in general with vegetables is the way to go. If you're cooking stir-fry for example, shred up an entire head of cauliflower to add to that rice. Create a bigger spaghetti plate with spaghetti squash or zoodles or something.
I read some literature about how walking after eating is suppose to help in general.
... Uh. And of course have some guilt-free snacks hanging out is probably the easiest thing to do.
But really, it sounds like you need something distracting to do. Like, after dinner there's nothing much to do and so you notice you are depriving yourself. Also, you may actually be depriving yourself if you feel like you are. If you're noticing that you have a craving for a food, find a way to work with that craving vs trying to avoid it. If it's a matter of "man, that cookie I just ate is awesome.. ALL THE COOKIES" then, yeah, it might sound like you just need a thrilling hobby after eating. If you're like "Man, I super want a cookie but damn I've eaten a lot already.." there are all kinds of options for fulfilling that cookie-want without tripping yourself out over it. (I used to make a pretty baller cookie-breakfast-shake out of chocolate wafer cookies or cookie crisp cereal, milk, yogurt, carnation instant breakfast, chocolate chips, 2 dates, and vanilla paste all the time. None of those besides the dates are particularly heavy in calorie intake, especially for a personal serving. I think they turned out to be around 250 calories.)
One of my Habitica resolutions has been to go to bed earlier, so that I'll be able to wake up earlier, and have a more relaxed morning routine/actually get to work on time. This has only kind of worked. I'm still not a morning person. I still tend to sleep through my alarms for 30+ minutes before I actually get up. Getting 2 more hours of sleep a night only leads, in practice, to getting up half an hour earlier than I was before.
Maybe one day my body will truly appreciate the sleep it gets, but it seems to hate whatever I do. 7 hours is a sweet spot for me--enough to be rested and function, but not feeling like I lazed around all day/night. I can really function on 4 hours of sleep, just not preferred.. 8, 9, 10, 11 hours.. they all feel the same as 7 hours. So, my habitica thing is just to say "7 hours of sleep. Did it? yup." When I sleep more than that it gives me no really great feelings. I wake up just as sleepy, will myself out of bed, etc.
I usually wake myself up by having a youtube video ready for me to watch.. and I laze in bed, and watch a video I really wanted to watch last night. Then by then I can will myself into my bed stretches for 5 minutes, and by the time I am done with that I generally feel accomplished enough to get up and do things.
Been lazy. Been carbin' it up. I think in part because most of my food for this week is food that I either flat-out didn't like, or am not enthusiastic about. Lunches for the week = curried carrot soup with too much curry powder. Breakfasts, before I threw them in the trash, were quinoa bowls with walnuts and chai spiced almond milk -- would have been great if the quinoa hadn't turned out bitter as fuck. Insanely bitter. (Must be the new brand. Better wash it from now on.) Anyway, I definitely "treated myself" to eating out a few times because I either 1) felt deprived of the gratification of good food, or 2) wanted to avoid eating mediocre food.
Ouch! Been there man.
I've never used quinoa for sweet stuff... I make a pretty bangin' asian salad out of it, but I really dont use it for anything else now that I think about it. Maybe have some super freezer food back ups?
sometimes having a $3 freezer dinner that doesn't suck is way better in the long term than spending $6-12 on a fancier convenience meal. I've had prepackage freezer food save me from buying expensive food many-a-times.. and really there are some super yummy things out there now-a-days. They have some awesome burritos and things like that that aren't total garbage for $2-4 and things like that.
Also, maybe think about investing into some snack foods to keep in your car or something? I keep some breakfast biscuits, tuna-lunches, and stuff like that in my car because I seem to always get stuck in a place where I'm feeling hungry but won't have access to food for a while. They're either bulky-and-low-calorie like the biscuits, or they're fairly guilt-free snack-worthy like the tuna packets.
Very nice young man just came out to my house to deliver my CPAP and show me how to use it. And to have me sign a stack of papers that rivaled the mortgage papers we signed back in October. Insurance is crazy. In other news, I am a sucker for an accent. This young man had a beautiful island accent, and I could have listened to him talk about my CPAP machine all day.
Mmmmnf.. Island accents.. <3
