I'll be the first to admit that I have a sweet tooth. I always have since I was little and my granny would let me stir the cake mix or something when we'd bake together (I was about 2 in a high chair). I always wanted dessert after dinner, or lunch even. Holidays were dangerous because of all the desserts my family would have out on the table. And then I'd bring home leftovers. But I've realized something unfair, and terrible, and maddening about desserts...
THEY HAVE SO MANY CALORIES!!!!
It is hard to find a good dessert that doesn't double the calories from eating a sensible meal beforehand. It's a terrible tradition, really. I realized this today logging my sensible Thanksgiving lunch from the work cafeteria. I told the woman dolling out giant scoops of mashed potatoes and easily 5-6 slices of turkey per plate to keep the portions small. I ended up with one scoop of mashed potatoes, 2 slices of turkey with a drizzle of gravy, and a scoop of corn. Grand total was around 350 calories for the meal. And then it came with a slice of pie. Delicious apple pie with whipped cream on top (just a little). And then I try to enter that slice of heaven into my food diary. To my horror (altho not exactly surprise), the total calories for the meal jumped to 700. FROM PIE! I mean, it's bad enough I took the biscuit against my better judgement, but even that didn't break the food bank. It was THE PIE. So yummy... SO DEADLY!
So I think I'm gonna need a gameplan, because I've realize that despite all my amazing self control that I seem to have, I cannot say no to dessert. And that's kind of a problem.Given how many dinners and family meals and the like I'm going to be encountering between now and January. So we can take a few approaches here:
1.) LEARN TO SAY NO! Yeah, easier said than done. It's easy when I have to pay for it, I'm not shelling out another $5-7 for something of unknown calorie content. I'll skip it. But if I'm home or at a homemade meal, it's really hard not to take one. Which leads me to my next plan.
2.) PORTION CONTROL BABY! I do it with everything else, I still eat yummy meals, I'm not depriving myself, I just eat small portions. For some reason, that slips a bit with dessert. But if I can stick to one small brownie, one scoop of ice cream, or a tiny slice of pie, it's much better than trying to hold out and scarfing down a giant slice of pie out of weakness. Or I could...
3.) EARN IT! I can easily go home today, Turbo Fire my buns off and burn 400 calories and negate the pie! It's math! EASY! Work out = pie goes away. Except for that junk that I put in my body... oh the delicious junk. My tummy usually isn't happy either way. But it's feasible to trade off a workout for a dessert. As long as I don't go crazy and get a giant plate of desserts and eat them all (totally used to do that...), I can easily negate the dessert. It's like it never happened!!!
But it did, and it's not entirely healthy. And I know how much I love dessert. So, I might need to employ some combination of these tactics to get through the holidays. I'm thinking I'll skip dessert when it's not something I absolutely love, not worth the calories. I'll stick to small portions when possible and only sample a few things when I have a selection. And if I'm presented with something amazing that I cannot say no to (red velvet cupcakes and anything pumpkin fit into this category) I will live a little, eat my favorite things, and work it off. I can't stay on a diet forever, in fact I don't consider myself on one now. I just make sensible choices of what is worth putting in my body. And damn it, a red velvet cupcake belongs in my tummy!!! That doesn't mean that the extra poundage from consuming it belongs on my ass.
Now that I have a gameplan... let's see how the next 2 months goes. I've got 7.8 lbs to reach my Christmas miracle goal of 145. In between lies two Thanksgiving dinners, a couple dates with the guy I'm seeing, a holiday party, and everything Christmas. Looks like I might be doing a lot of exercising... teehee
No comments:
Post a Comment