So last week I set a goal for myself to try to stick to
eating just fruit for dessert for a week. I’m usually a pretty healthy eater,
but lately I’ve been a little stressed and anytime that happens I switch into
this mode:
I always have a green smoothie for breakfast, and at work
I’m usually too busy to eat anything besides my packed lunch, which is always
homemade hummus, veggies, and a piece of fruit. Then once I get home I eat our
previously planned healthy dinner. Then
I convince myself that I’m dying of starvation and start eating tons of snacks.
A typical day’s dessert might include a piece of fruit, a bowl of popcorn, a
peanut butter spoon, and a few squares of chocolate. So I know this doesn’t
sound so bad, but usually I’m not actually hungry after dinner, so it’d be nice if
I could train myself to limit excessive food intake to save on calories and
money. So the plan for the week was to stick to just fruit for dessert – here’s
how it went:
Day 1: Work wasn’t too bad today, so I don’t feel like going
home and eating the whole world to feel better, this is good. I ate a big bowl
of roasted veggies, salmon, and brown rice for dinner, so I’m pretty full after
eating, plus I have to go do errands and don’t have time to think about
dessert. Errands are finished, now I have to run to the store to get
ingredients for quinoa salad to make for a potluck at work tomorrow. Zach asks
me to pick up some dark chocolate peanut clusters for him…argh. I get Zach’s treat, and for myself I pick up a whole
watermelon. I eat about 1/3 of the watermelon and it’s amazing. And at this
point my belly is too full for me to think about eating anything else. So
staying busy and filling my stomach with watermelon worked well for today. I’ll
need to keep that in mind for next time.
Day 2: I stuffed my stomach with watermelon again, since it
worked so well yesterday. We’re running a half marathon tomorrow so Zach is
carbo-loading on bread and cheddar “cheese.” I gave in and had a few slices of
bread with “cheese,” but I think running a half marathon is a good excuse for
breaking the fruit only rule for now. I have to make this large cookie cake for a dinner party
tomorrow and I have extra chocolate chips. Uh oh. I ate a handful of chocolate
chips while baking and licked the spoon from the bowl, but I guess it could
have been worse, plus I still have the half marathon excuse.
Day 3: Okay, so my goal went out the window today, but I’m
going to go ahead and use the half marathon as an excuse – since I rarely run
that long of a distance. Also, I went to a dinner party with my large cookie
cake (which turned into a fruit pizza) and ate a slice while we were there.
This was unavoidable since I brought the dish, so it would have been super
weird not to eat it. No worries, this is just a minor setback, plus there was
fruit on top of the cookie, so it technically still counts as fruit for
dessert.
Day 4: I was doing so well today until Zach insisted on
buying Easter candy when we were at the store! He did have a good point though.
Easter only happens once a year which makes Easter candies a precious commodity,
so we have to take advantage while we can. I got a small bag of milk chocolate
eggs (not vegan and not fruit, oops). But other than that slip up I stuck to
the plan today.
Day 5: So it’s Monday and I’m planning to stay on track
today. After dinner I finished the rest of my watermelon then went to the gym.
After the gym I was super hungry though, and ended up eating ants on a log
(celery, peanut butter, and raisins). I would have eaten fruit but we didn’t
have any more in the house, so I have to stock up better in the future.
Day 6: After work Zach gave me some candy he got from a
meeting (argh, he is really interfering with my goal). I ate the candy in the
car, but reasoned that I wasn’t eating it for dessert, so I’m still in the
clear. After dinner I had to go to the grocery store so I got another
watermelon. I ate the yummy watermelon, but then I was bored so I made myself
some popcorn later.
Okay, so as you can see I did horribly! I only completely met my goal on the first day. So I’m going to try
again this week, this time with a few modifications to help things go a little
smoother:
1.
Tell Zach
about the plan: So Zach unknowingly sabotaged my efforts on Day 2, 4, and 6.
This time I’m going to let him know what’s going on so he doesn’t continue to offer me delicious treats.
2.
Wait 1
hour after dinner for dessert: So I usually eat dinner really early
(between 5:00-5:30pm). The problem though is if I eat dessert right after
dinner, that leaves me with 4-5 hours of no eating time, which is probably
fine, but it makes me feel restricted, which leads to snacking. So this week I’m
going to plan on waiting one hour minimum before eating dessert. This will give
me time to digest, workout, and prepare an elaborate fruit dessert on the days I’m
feeling fancy.
3.
Stock
fruit: This should have been a no-brainer, but I didn’t stock much fruit in
my house last week because there is a grocery store mere feet from our front
door. It turns out that after I’m inside, I don’t like to go back outside, so
it’s best if I just stock the house with fruit in advance rather than relying
on myself to be in the mood to go to the store to buy fruit after dinner. I'm also going to look for exciting fruit for dessert recipes so I don't just have to eat watermelon every day.
I’m going to work on this same goal with these changes for the
next week and I’ll let you know how it goes. Wish me luck!
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