Coping Strategy

Off work, and TMM and I went out for a coffee this afternoon. As I said a day or two ago, this usually becomes coffee and a bun, and that's not great for healthy eating. But it's hard not to feel as if I'm denying myself when I have only the hot beverage. Today it was okay initially, as TMM just had a cup of tea, but when I went for second coffee, he asked me to get him a caramel square, and I was back to feeling hard done by. That's when I remembered something that I used to do. I bought a small bar of chocolate instead of a bun or a traybake. It was tiny to look at, just twenty-five grammes. That's not normally good for someone like me, who eats with their eyes. That means I like to see a lot of food in order to feel as if I will be satisfied. In the case of chocolate though, if it's dark choc, a little goes a long way, so the six squares were plenty. I like to bite them in half and let the small piece melt in my mouth, especially with a sip of black coffee. It's delicious, and lasts for ages. And it feels like a real treat. This process doesn't always work for me. There are time when I still feel hard done by, but at least it's an option some times, just as having a low fat hot chocolate also works occasionally.

I felt no guilt about the choccy treat as I'd been for a short walk before hand. I'm lucky enough to live by the sea, so walks are picturesue, regardless of weather. It makes things a bit easier. I am so annoyed with myself at how unfit I have allowed myself to become. This time last year I was training for the Belfast Marathon, and here I am now, hardly able to walk the length of myself without becoming a puce, sweaty mess. Disgusting! Such a waste of last year's progress. But, positive thinking (which is so hard sometimes) I went for a forty minute dander today. It was slow, I was sweaty and out of breath after a disturbingly short time, my lower back hurt and I felt guilty for holding TMM back with my crawl of a pace, but the thing is, I did it. I voluntarily took some exercise, despite being self consciousness. And I earned my chocolate. Yay me!

Actually, I could have had the chocolate anyway. It fell within my mfp calorie allowance even before the exercise calories were added on. This was surprising, as my allowance seems very low to my mind. Even bearing in mind that I set my profile to a two pound a week loss, and that I have a sedantary lifestyle, I would still have thought that a woman of eighteen and a half stone would have been on more than 1210 cals a day.  I've been surprised that I've been able to have three meals a day within that total. Mind you, my meals have had the daily calories very unevenly distributed. Breakfast and lunch are light, so as to leave plenty of cals for dinner.

I have felt some hunger over the past five days. Is this a bad thing, or should I stop being afraid of being a little hungry? My next meal is never that far round the next corner, so surely it's not such a bad thing. Maybe the old idea that the body goes into a sort of starvation mode if it feels hungry is behind the notion of constantly grazing on healthy snacks. Howsoever that may be, I'm going to try to stop seeing feeling a bit peckish as a bad thing. A couple of nights in a row now I've gone to bed feeling a bit empty, and it has yet to keep me awake.