Breaking Habits: My Log Count

[[ Side Note: Breaking Bad Habits

First off, thank you to everyone who was extremely supportive with the drama that ensued after my last Side Note about boys.  I appreciated each and every comment and email I received and it has helped me keep an uplifted spirit to continue doing my Side Note feature for the blog.

So what is this one about?  Most certainly something I still struggle with, just like the post I did about Mirror/Body Checks a bit ago (which btw, how is everyone doing with that?!  I know that I have gone 6 straight days without checking the mirror first thing when I wake up in the morning and maybe a total of 4 times in the past week when I’ve been at home!  Yippee! )

This struggle is something that comes and goes with time, sometimes for an extended period of time, or a short bit…but it always seems to come back and haunt me.  And it’s something I try insanely hard to hide from everyone I know:

CALORIE COUNTING

I feel like this is and will be one of the hardest things I’m going to be able to completely drop from my life.  When I am able to get away from it for a while it’s because I become so busy that I don’t have the time or patience to track every morsel of food that goes into my mouth and body.  But when I’m left with too much time, too much change or stress/anxiety, it comes back with a vengeance. 

And this is where I hide my guilt:

In an excel file dubbed “Log Counts” on my desktop.  I’ve deleted it as a shortcut several times over the past few months, but all I do instead is go to my most recently viewed items and open it there.  Boo.

This document has been through quite a journey, because it actually started all the way back in the Spring of 2007 in my senior year of college.  But it was created not with the intention of watching my calories to make sure I wasn’t going to go over, but to make sure that I wasn’t going under, as I was training for the San Diego Rock n’ Roll Marathon at the time.  So yes, there were good intentions for it in the very beginning.

Alas, over the years it has been morphed into a vessel of torture for my brain and body. I could be away from it all day and not give it a second thought (say for a day that I spend entirely in the field) but as soon as I turn on my computer and start writing a post, reading blogs, checking emails…the thought of it is always lingering in the back of my head…how many calories have I consumed today?

Granted, I always have a rough number in my head because truthfully, I know the calorie count for just about anything, so it’s hard for me to not look at something and know the number.  But this usually solidifies things in my head about how many calories I’ve really taken in.  And you can see how detailed it is too, down to food groups, which meal or snack it was, and the amount of exercise I got that day.

There are actually columns further over that ask questions like:

• How was this meal?
• How did it make you feel?
• How did you feel before and after you ate it?
• What tasted good?
• What made you full?
• What didn’t?

As you can see, it was not only an outlet to track calories, but also to track the emotions I was having at the time of eating as I also struggle a lot with emotional eating. I don’t really use these questions much now a days but I do thankfully find myself asking them when I am eating to make sure I’m doing it for the correct reason (ie I’m hungry, and not bored or thirsty).

Where am I going with this? Obviously I’m still struggling and this is one of the big things I’m trying to move away from.  I like the days where I don’t track everything I eat on this damned file, or where I don’t whip out my phone to manually calculate the number of calories I’ve consumed now that I’ve say, eaten lunch.

It’s a whirlwind of a cycle I’ve been through with this thing, but with this blog and it’s turn towards a bigger focus on my recovery, I’ve become more and more determined to kick it to the curb.  All it does is cause more stress and anxiety in my life that I might already be having, and I surely don’t want that.

If you’ve had struggles with counting calories and then nixing the habit, how did you do it?  I know and have heard that it can take a long time to finally release yourself from the cycle, but I’m motivated to get this bad habit to move out of my life. ]]

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It’s been an odd morning for my belly today, because seriously, it does not want to be satisfied at all!  I believe it’s the heat…HOT WEATHER = RAVENOUS BELLY for me!

I wanted something different for breakfast and decided on some oatmeal pancakes ala Kath’s true and trusted recipe…that I of course tweeked.

• 1/3C instant oats
• 1/2tsp baking powder
• 1 egg white
• splash of USAB
• cinnamon

I topped it off with a smashed banana mixed with a tablespoon of Sunbutter and more cinnamon and the last of my fresh strawberries.  Everything tasted great!  I think my pancakes need some vanilla next time though!

I spent the morning catching up on much needed blog reading (as my reader has skyrocketed over the past few days I wasn’t able to check reader with my computer messed up) and really wanted some iced coffee. 

What, Melissa drink coffee voluntarily?! 

Yes, why yes I did.  I mixed together:

• 2C mild coffee
• 1T Ovaltine
• 1 packet of Sun Crystals (a type of sugar)
• splash of USAB
• several ice cubes

And paired it up with a small bowl of Kashi H2H for some carb love’n. 

That didn’t last me very long at all…but most certainly left me wired.  I tried my hardest not to go back into the kitchen and guzzled water like no other but I still had a horrendous empty feeling in my belly.  Enter a super early lunch for me!

It’s seriously hot and miserably humid here so I wanted something cool to eat: Yogurt Mess!

• last of my Greek Yogurt
• two handfuls of Kashi Puffs
• pear
• tablespoon each of TJ’s PB and Crofters Spread

Now I’m off to Publix to do a little bit of grocery shopping and be in an air conditioned place! I feel like I’m melting!

And grabbing an apple spice muffin to nosh on as I drive.  I’m hungry, AGAIN.