Practical Means of Eating Well in a Crowd

Last night went well..
Before I left I had a personal pizza on a whole wheat pita with black olives on it. Then I had a bowl of homemade vegetable soup I'd made the day before yesterday. This really helped me. After I ate the salad I was not at all tempted by the lasagna.

The hostess filled up plates and we passed them around the table till every one had one. I just kept passing them and didn't keep one (the meal was lasagna with meat sauce and garlic bread). I did have one small piece of bread. I also had two or three small pieces of cheese. I filled my plate with salad and it only got a comment by one person who asked if I could eat the meat in the lasagna. So my veganism was a good smoke screen. SO the hostess was not offended (I don't think she even noticed....she was in the kitchen most of the time.)

I did have a very small piece of my birthday cake (ice cream cake this time). Wish I'd been more intentional about savoring that. I kind of ate it while talking to people so didn't get to enjoy the flavor. they also had two kinds of pies which I eschewed. Over all I did well.

My daughter brought a whole tray of cookies home from her work's Christmas Party. I had two of them and she told me there was a piece of cheesecake in the fridge with my name on it. WHY do I never think of the garbage can in time???? I gobbled it down and therefore blew away all the progress from yesterday. You can't ever let your guard down...because our modus operandi is to eat whatever we have edible in front of us. Whether we really want to or not. I need to come up with some "WHHOOOA Baby" questions to ask myself before I shovel food into my face.

1- Am I really hungry? (And I don't mean "toxic hunger" hunger pains....I mean with TRUE hunger. for more explanation on that look at Dr. Joel Fuhrman's book Eat to LIve_)
2- Is this item of food worth blowing a day's or week's progress?
3- If I don't eat it....If I put it in the garbage or back in the fridge and walk away...not only will I feel empowered, I will probably forget my desire to eat that thing in a matter of minutes. Maybe set a time...say a half hour...before you plan on eating something off the plan...During that thirty minutes l0ok over your notes from your journal, or read ETL or just ask yourself why it is you want to lose weight and is this food really worth diverging from your path. If you are in public put some distance between you and the temptation. And go somewhere and meditate on your goals or just focus on your breathing until the temptation has passed.

I'm preaching to myself here.
What have I learned? 1) eat before going out...and make your meal something you like so you don't feel deprived.
2) Do not eat mindlessly ..do not pick at appetizers or cheese trays
4) meditate or better yet, pray to the Lord to ask him to help you be disciplined and to give you a means of escape from the temptation.
5) Then once you've been successful KEEP YOUR GUARD UP...there always could be a slice of cheesecake in the fridge!!

It's a new week. I"m not going to weigh myself until Wed. I need to get a good grip on myself until then. I like what Chris Downy has to say about what you do when you get off track and make a bad choice. Then consciously do two GOOD things to over power the bad choice. I'm off to do some exercises now...My lunch was good...so now with these exercises I should be fine. I hope these thoughts have been of help to you.

you are not going to believe what a friend just dropped off.....a Whitman's Sampler. GOOD GRIEF Charley Brown ....do I ever get a break?