[Gemme]

Originally Posted by DapperButch

Damn, girl, 18 lbs! I had no idea. You don't talk much on the exercise thread about what you are eating. You need to clue us in. I didn't even realize weight loss was a significant part of ahy you were working out. You lost that fast and all with hard work. Congrats!

Thanks. It wasn't fast at all, though. It's taken me 3 months. After my last birthday, I started getting serious about my health again.

A store chain here, Stop 'n Shop, has some pretty nifty pre-made salads in their deli section. The ones that I usually get are the health salad, the broccoli salad and a Greek pasta salad. The last one's not necessarily 'healthy' eating with pasta and a heavier sauce so I don't get it as frequently as the other two. Mainly, it's the health salad I love and I haven't found it anywhere else and I don't find it at every Stop 'n Shop either, so when I find a store that sells it regularly, I stalk them.

The health salad contains small seeds, finely chopped nuts, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, raisins, dried cranberries, diced red onion and a very light sauce. It's basically all I need on a daily basis....protein, veggies, fruit and something to make it stick.

Breakfast and lunch, on working days, are pretty routine. Breakfast is high fiber oatmeal with chopped pecans and walnuts and blueberries mixed in and it's cooked in fat free milk. I drink a small glass, maybe 4 oz of oj with it. Lunch is a frozen lunch. Either Smart Ones or Healthy Choice something or other, 300 calories or less. I have a couple of small sides with it...usually fresh fruit (grapes are my fave) and either a container of pear applesauce or mandarin oranges. What I have depends on my frozen entree. If it's acidic already, I chill on the oranges, for example.

Those are very structured meals and are easy for me. Dinner is the wildcard. I cook more than I go out. Luckily for me, I'm happy to eat something until it's gone, even if it's 2-3 nights in a row. For example, last night I had turkey bacon with a little Greek pasta salad and a big tossed salad. The night before, I cooked a thin steak and cut it up and made a steak pita with a whole wheat pita, pepperjack cheese and a smidge of steak sauce. Tonight, it'll be steak again (I do love my red meat) but I'll saute some mushrooms with it in a sauce and have a big salad. Basically, I try to hit the major food groups and I try to not go overboard on the fat and unnecessary stuff that I won't taste in the final product.

Some days, though, I want ice cream. I just choose the best ice cream that I can. I have a crazy intense sweet tooth and root beer barrel candies and Tootsie Pops seem to be enough to take care of that when it crops up.

I don't skip meals. I always eat breakfast. I try to drink as much water as I can in the morning and at work because I only want soda with dinner. I drink water after dinner as well. I'm active either with my workouts or doing manual labor at work during the day. I listen to my body more now. Before I stuffed my face until the emotional urge to eat was over. There are certain foods that I just enjoy the feeling of eating...it has nothing to do with nutrition or hunger at all. By that time, my stomach is too full and uncomfortable. I take longer to eat now, so my brain registers that I'm eating and I've had enough. When I do get cravings, I try to talk to myself to find out if it's a random, meaningless craving that maybe a commercial initiated or if it's something I really and truly want.

No one's perfect and I've still had more sweets and junk than I would care to eat but when I am driving home and I pass by Burger King (I used to work there many moons ago and still love the smell of the broiler in the air), the smell gets me once in a while but most of the time, it's now a fond memory versus a Pavlovian response.