Moderation Experiment/Staying Motivated

Well, my moderation experiment yesterday turned out not to be with cookies. Instead, I tried a "moderation day" out at the ball park with my son for his class field trip. I decided I would experiment with just eating what I wanted - not bingeing, but not censoring. Breakfast was from Panera - a french toast bagel with honey walnut cream cheese and a cafe mocha. Lunch was nachos with a side of cheese sauce and chili at the ball park. I also had 4 cinnamon sugar pretzel sticks later with buttercream frosting. On the way home I wanted a pick-me-up so I swung through McD's and got a medium plain iced coffee. Dinner was at home, fish taco salad. Later in the evening I had 2 Milano cookies, 4 squares of a Lindt white chocolate and coconut bar and 2 squares of a dark chocolate bar with orange.

I didn't feel stuffed at any part of the day, though started to feel a little overly full with the pretzels so stopped at that point. I put everything in my points tracker this morning and it was definitely high...around 2500 calories. I felt pretty good about the day overall, though. Obviously I couldn't do this every day and expect to lose weight, but I think I could have a moderation day once a week and still lose, just as long as 1) it didn't turn into a binge, and 2) it was limited to one day only. Also, there are ways I could have fairly painlessly cut back the calories looking back...I could have ordered a nonfat latte instead of the mocha and saved about 250 calories, skipped the pretzels and saved about 300 calories, and had only the white chocolate squares (which is what I really wanted) and saved 175 calories. I don't think I would have missed any of those things particualrly, and my day would have clocked in at around 1700-1800 calories...a maintenance range for me.

I realized yesterday that when I started my bcp pack this past month it was delayed by close to a week because I didn't fill it on time (no fear of pg, DH is snipped). It's possible that threw off my hormones and contributed to my struggles with food over the past week or so. In light of that, I will be sure to start this next pack on time! It does make me feel better to think that could have caused some of my issues.

Another thing I realized this week was how critical it is to have a goal I am working towards - outside of "I wanna look good" - to keep me on track with food. In the past I have used running in that way, training for races. If I want to stick to my training schedule so I am prepared for race day I need to eat the right foods, otherwise I won't feel like working out and I might skip a workout and then I won't get to feel awesome about my dedication and knowing I did my best to prepare for race morning. Thoughts like that help me embrace making good choices because they get me closer to my goal, and making bad choices becomes unattractive to me, for the most part. In other words, I need to find something that makes me feel good about myself NOW, not something that will make me feel good about myself a year down the road (looking good), if I am going to stay motivated for that length of time. Otherwise the reward of feeling good about myself is too far removed to keep me from succumbing to the temptation of the immediate reward of food.