2 out 7 and Climbing!

Last night I was able to earn another star to put on my calender. I put a star on my calender for each day of the week that I stick with my Sacred Snacks.

What helped me earn my star last night was performing my "Cycle of Distractions." After I eat my 3 allotted Sacred Snacks, before I consume any thing else I must perform three task. I must read a chapter of something, watch a youtube video and draw a picture. Last night around 9:45 pm I felt myself wanting another round of snacks and I stopped myself and said, "It's time to read." I ended up reading one month's worth of a blog, " A journey to thin." Reading that blog certainty took time and kept me distracted  long enough to see that my urges to eat went away after twenty minutes. I would get second waves or urges to eat, but they also went away after another twenty minutes. I now know that it takes twenty minutes for an urge to eat to pass and that I can expect multiple waves of urges to eat that will also go away within twenty minutes.

My second distraction was watching some youtube videos. I looked up some videos on, "How to make Kale and found the following video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RfvhzLmfn4 . I will have some Kale chips tonight as a snack!

I then moved on to my third distraction of the evening and drew a picture. I love drawing cubes and flowers so I drew a cube with flowers on it. I played around with three colors, on for the petals, on for the outside of the cube and one from the central bud of the flower. Each side of the cube featured a different color flower, a different color back ground a a different color bud.

All of these exercises in distraction kept me from reaching for more snacks. I finally hit the deck around 11:30 pm and I was able to live with one round of snacks and earned my star.

The rest of this week features some busy days at work, including working nights and part of the weekend. I will try to maintain good eating habits and continue to practice using these new Sacred Snack techniques to stay on track.

CLM

Reality Check! Giving up sweets and snacks does not work for me!

I talked out my crazy 3 meal a day plan with my therapist and she was able to help me see the light that the plan is way to restrictive for me. I am back to my harm reduction model of my Sacred Snacks with some new tools.

I have expanded my Sacred Snack Choices ( jello, cereal bars, chocolate covered raisins, fruit leathers and skinny cow ice cream bars, special k chips, popcorn, pirates booty chips and pringles)

There are new parameters for eating the Sacred Snacks. Each night I get to choice three items that  I can have, and then after eating those I must complete three task; watch a youtube video, read a ch of a book and draw one picture and if I still want to eat after that I can have another round/ cycle of my Sacred Snacks until they run out. This plan gives me a little more structure and control.

For certain snacks I have an additional parameter, for instance the ice cream can only be purchased once a week on Fridays. I can eat it all in one day if I choose, but I have to wait a week to get more. The pringles and chocolate also are Friday only purchases.

These new parameters along with my expanded Sacred Snacks should help me to manage my compulsive eating better and help me maintain more control without me being so strict that I end up going off the rails.

CLM

My Only Shot At Healing!

I have come to the realization that my eating is totally out of control. I binge every single night, and every single weekend. I am highly addicted to sweets and I cannot stop eating them. I am highly addicted to after dinner snacking. As a result of my compulsive eating I have a 300 pound body. There is really only one solution that will offer me healing and physical recovery. I will as of today, Tuesday, May 13, 2014 adopt this policy and will no longer live in denial.

The Solution:

Eat three meals a day with no sweets and no snacks.

CLM

MM: Earned a 4 out 7 and Struggles

This past week I earned a 4 out of 7. On the bright side I was able to double my success from the week before. Hopefully this week I will do even better. I did a lot of things right last week. I drank a ton of green smoothies and even increased my spinach intake from 1 to 2 cups in each smoothie. This week I am thinking about trying out Kale for a 1 cup Spinach and 1 cup Kale in my smoothie. I also got in some good walks, even some evening walks. Over the weekend I had a hard time. This is my first Mother's Day without my mother or my grandmother. I also attended a funeral for someone who had just lost their mother and the pain was very real and raw for me. I tried to keep it together but by Sunday I was in total sloth mode and I ate very poorly. I am thankful that I get to start over fresh this week. This week has it's own challenges since, I have to work on Friday Night and Saturday morning for a truly busy week at work. I am going to try to stay on chill mode and just get through this week on faith and taking it One Day At A Time.

I have also begun to see a pattern with myself. When I have struggles I am tempted to over correct and punish myself by adopting a strict plan. I also notice that when I am doing well I want to ride the wave of success and become distracted and try to make my plan more strict. This week I am going to try to stay in the middle and just follow my plan allowing myself my Sacred Snacks whether I have a good day or a bad day.

CLM

It Tasted Like Cake Frosting!

I had my husband order some white chocolate from Switzerland. The candy is hard to find here in the States. I had the candy a long time ago and I thought the candy tasted like heaven. Every year I tell my husband he can buy me some for my birthday and every year I am on some kind of diet and can't eat it, so I always cancel the order at the last minute. Finally this month, I told my husband to go ahead and order the candy for me. Last night I ate my precious coveted Swizz white Chocolate and it tasted like Cake Frosting! Like Cake Frosting! I loath the taste of Cake Frosting and usually will scrap if off of cup cakes or cake. It just goes to show the desire for a thing is some times better than the actual thing.

In a strange twist of events I was craving a green smoothie for dinner last night so I drank one. I felt like I would be hungry later only drinking a green smoothie so I planned to have a bagel thin and some sliced turkey if I got hungry. I did get hungry to I had the toast and turkey. I am so happy I did trust myself enough to drink my greens when I was craving them.

Imagine craving green smoothie and being put off by white chocolate!

So far I have earned two out of 7 days on plan and still have the potential to earn a 7 out of 7.

I found a new technique this week of rating my mood on a scale of 10 to -10. 10 being based on the best day ever and -10 the worse day ever. My goal is to begin practicing sticking with my Sacred Snacks on the good days on the scale, while not worrying so much about the really bad days. I began putting it into practice the other night. I was at Target and I was looking at the muffins. I really wanted those muffins in that moment. I turned the muffins around so that I could see the stats. The muffins had 12 grams of fat! I was like "Oh No, I can do better than that!" I ended up purchasing some chewy granola bars with chocolate chips instead which only had 2.5 grams of fat, much better! On this day my mood was at a level 7. I could have easily eaten the muffins as easily as the granola bar on a level 7 day. Little by little I hope to improve my eating in this way.

I have also come up with a new weekend strategy for manage my eating! I am thinking about implementing the following tricks to have better eating on the weekend:

1. Have a healthy breakfast to start the day ( Green Smoothie)

2. Have a 2nd Breakfast instead of mindless munching ( Turkey and Toast w/ fruit ex.)

3. Have all you can eat fresh fruit to fill up on!

4. Snack on my Sacred Snacks throughout the day! ( Jello, light chips etc)

5. Make smarter fast food choices such as Taco Bell two chicken soft tacos.

6. Eat out at restaurants without going over board by cutting drinks, appetizers and bread and only eating 1/2 of the food.

7. Don't keep left over junk by ordering a smaller pizza and keeping the damage contained to just the one meal!

8. Get in some activity on the weekend to keep my mind off eating!

CLM

Totally Off the Rails and a 2/ 7

This weekend was pure chaos. I was on my cycle and I went to this marriage retreat that brought up this explosion of emotions. My eating became totally erratic. Instead of reaching for planned meals I ate random comfort foods such as fish sticks and tater tots, and frozen pizza. I allowed a ton of junk food in the house, cheese, chips, chocolate and ice cream. I just ate to stuff down all those emotions. I am thankful for the fresh start on Monday and I am happy that even though I had some chaotic eating, all is not lost and I can begin to eat with some order today.

As easily as I can eat in a chaotic manner, I can just as easily resume eating in an orderly way. I am beginning to see that I am not perfect and every day will not be sunny. I am just beginning to teach myself how to eat well during sunny days, but there will be some storms and even some tornadoes, and there will be times when my eating is the last thing I am concerned with. I can't waste energy judging myself for how I eat during a tornado, because tornado's are not the norm. All I can do is improve my eating on a daily basis, and I will not worry about those times when my eating is a lower priority.

This same week that I earned 2 out of 7 days with my Sacred Snacks. I had 7 out 7 days drinking fruit juice smoothies, and 5 of those 7 days I drank green juice smoothies with Spinach a first for me!

CLM