Hopefully today’s edition of What I Ate Today is going to give you hope and make you quit beating up on yourself! It is okay to be imperfect! Check this out….
Today started like any ordinary day of eating. Breakfast was the usual and fabulous gluten-free oats with flaxseeds and blueberries. I had lunch and dinner planned but forgot I was meeting a friend for lunch at a Thai food place. (Yes, the one from last Friday. LOL)
Nooooo problem, right? I figured I would just have the same thing as last time, minus the salad rolls with all those superfluous carbs.
The only problem was veggies and peanut sauce was not enough food and withing an hour of getting home, I realized I had miscalculated badly.
Nooooo problem, right? I told myself that I was NOT going to make myself starve, so I went scrounging for something to eat. Hummus and GF crackers with some yummy salsa thrown on top tamped down the hunger pangs and I went back to work.
By dinner time I was *really* hungry, and worse, *really* tired.
Tired and hungry = danger zone.
I pulled out a Don Lee Farms quinoa and kale bowl from the freezer, because it was fast and easy and fit my eating plan. So far everything is working. When it came out of the microwave, I topped it off with more salsa. Yum.
But I was *still* hungry and the tired was not going away. THIS is where things went sideways.
I have a crossed wire in my brain that says if I eat something, the tired will go away. I totally understand this makes no sense, but the problem with being THAT tired is that the thinking part of my brain isn’t working very well…..so I eat.
Two helpings of hummus + salsa + gf crackers and I am asleep in my comfy chair in the living room with the news humming along in the background.
I woke up 45 minutes later with my sweet little dog giving me kisses and asking to go outside to go potty. I staggered around trying to wake up/get my bearings, walked the furkid around the block and went to bed.
A couple of lessons:
I always think that when I fall off my eating plan, its’ somehow worse than it really is. Yes, I ate more calories that I’d like, but it was only one day and one meal. The total amount of calories for the day was still below the estimated amount I need on a daily basis.
The second lesson is I ate healthy food, not garbage, which would have been a gazillion times worse for my health. All things considered, eating hummus and salsa and crackers is not the worst thing ever, for crying out loud.
Finally, I have noticed that sometimes I get really, as in really really hungry when I am (slightly) restricting calories. In the past I have noticed that if I just let myself eat more, the next day I am a lot LESS hungry, followed by a significant drop in my weight. This is not scientific and is only my personal observation, but I think my body is “resetting” itself when this happens, so I’ve learned to roll with it and not get freaked out.
This may not be the case for you. Our bodies are all different and what works for one person, doesn’t necessarily work for another, but intuitive eating (yes, it’s a thing; Google it) would say this approach makes sense.
Maybe being imperfect *is* perfect! Woot!
Total fiber for the day: upwards of 45 grams
Be NICE to yourself and carry on!
Gratuitous photo of happy daffys intuitively being happy!
