Making Different Decisions

One thing I have been noticing lately is that I have been making different choices about eating and having it feel very natural.

As you know, I did not and will not stop eating any food I love. If you've been reading along you know that I love chocolate and ice cream and keep them in rotation on an almost daily basis. (Yes, it's true — and I'm still losing weight, *gasp*!)

Well, something has been happening, especially in the past couple weeks it seems. There has been many a day when my eating has been less than optimum, whether it is eating too much or not eating enough veggies and the like. Like today, especially this morning. I won't go into detail with what it involved, but it definitely leaned more toward simple carbs and sugar than complex carbs, say, and protein. Then, I'm sitting there as lunchtime approaches thinking about how easy it would be to just go and have an old standby, my inexplicable fast food fave, McDonald's. If you can be addicted to the stuff, then yes, I probably was. So every once in a while I still think about getting it. Sometimes, I do, but seriously maybe once a month, which is a vast improvement over several times a week like I did not so long ago.

Anyway, so McDonald's was kind of floating through my head. Then I was thinking. Don't be a dope. I didn't want to be a dope. I also wanted something along those lines. This is what happens when you don't bring your lunch and you don't want to go to the awesome salad place a couple blocks away again.

I ended up going to Wendy's. I know it's still not great, but you can make a fairly decent meal of the Ultimate Grill chicken sandwich and a large chili and it's not that bad in the big scheme of things. In doing so, I avoided a lot of grease, salty french fries, and a diet soda that I would have inevitably ended up with from McD's.

For dinner we opted for Chinese take-out again (I swear that I do cook! We make awesome home-cooked meals much of the time) (NOTE: We've been trying out various Chinese take-out places lately and have found some gems, and I know how to eat Chinese take-out right.)

This particular place has a traditional menu available, so the selections are a bit off the beaten path and totally awesome. I wanted to keep it veggie and light to make up for the rest of the day, so I tried dry tofu with leeks and some egg drop soup with seaweed (!!!).

Well, sometimes it pays to be culinarily adventurous and sometimes it doesn't. I would say in this case it's half and half. The good news was that I ate about half of what I normally would have, and it was all quite nutritious and low-cal. And now I have leftovers for tomorrow's lunch, for better or worse. Nothing tasted bad, but it just didn't blow me away. And that's fine.

The final chapter of this little story is what happened after dinner. I ended up going for a walk in the dark, which was really nice — we live in a great neighborhood for something like that — and got a nice little workout, and then came home and spent about an hour doing some serious tidying in the laundry area of our basement. When I was finished, I thought to myself, Hey! I burned some calories enough to have a serving of ice cream!

And then, I thought... didn't I have enough sweets for the day? I can wait until tomorrow instead.

What?!?

What is happening to me? Stuff just like this is happening again and again lately. And it's not painful or horrible. I am not depriving myself of anything, however I am obviously learning balance and how to make better choices for myself. That feels pretty incredible.