Today was a day of no snacking at all. I’m not actually sure how I managed it without getting hungry. I guess I spaced the meals optimally.
I also hit a milestone this morning on the weigh-in: I dropped to 171.3 pounds, which puts me below where I was at the start of the year. As of today, at least, I have actually, officially lost weight in 2020. Fitbit also decreed that I am no longer overweight, instead I am normal. This just means my BMI dipped below 25 (to 24.9 to be exact), which is the somewhat arbitrary line where one shifts from not fat to fat.
The reality is I am still rather pudgy, but now just over 20 pounds short of my goal. That may still seem like a lot, but given the results I’ve seen in the past 12 days vs. the rest of the year to date, it seems entirely achievable.
There is a small chance I could dip below 170 pounds before the month is over, but it’s also just as likely I could gain water weight or swallow lead ingots encased in chocolate or something, and see an increase instead. I’m hoping for the former, but braced for the latter (don’t worry, I don’t have any chocolate-covered lead ingots handy).
There was a tiny smattering of Goldfish crackers left, so I ate them and another temptation is no longer within easy reach. The only other snack I had today was a small banana. That’s pretty good, I’d say.
To my surprise, I was down this morning, all the way to 172.7 pounds–my lowest since February and less than a pound off where I was on January 1st (171.8). This is encouraging.
I will not celebrate by stuffing my face with candy.
You see the phrase “As long as people wear masks and don’t lick one another” in an article in The Atlantic.
I was looking through some photos today and found some from November 2019 and it felt like looking back on a different world. Not just a different time, but a different place. I don’t know how much we will return to “normal” when the pandemic ends–especially as the world is also grappling with protests over racial and class equality, climate change and its accompanying litany of freak extreme weather (California on fire, multiple storms hitting the east coast simultaneously) and probably an alien invasion if things stay on track–but we will never be the same after this, I think. The memories will linger and carry into the next generation.
On the other hand, some argue, with some validity, that the average person has a memory comparable to the lifespan of a fruit fly, so maybe things will just go right back to how they were before and lessons will not be learned, or learned minimally as we slowly careen toward our next awaiting global disaster.
I want to say we won’t forget, in part because it’s going to linger around for probably at least another year or so in some form, that we are a good ways off from being able to put it behind us.
In the meantime, The Keg is running an ad that shows one of its restaurants bursting with activity, every table packed, people everywhere. I thought this was an odd thing to show with a virus rampaging across the world, but when I saw the ad again I noticed a small disclaimer at the bottom of the screen just as the ad started: Filmed before COVID-19. Now I’m really wondering why they ran the ad when they knew it was showing something that basically doesn’t match reality. Lazy, I guess. It’s an old ad and a new, more accurate one would just be depressing–a half-filled restaurant with all the staff wearing masks.
I won’t be eating in a restaurant until we have a vaccine, some kind of on-demand testing everywhere or benevolent aliens (maybe they won’t invade) make the virus magically disappear, like a certain sociopath south of the border mused it would. And though Tenet is now playing in theaters, there’s no way in hell I’m going to risk watching it in one. I can wait four months and watch it virus-free on a 60″ TV.
This concludes another kind of depressing post about the pandemic. Maybe in a year I’ll look back on this post and shudder over how bad things were then and how great they are now.
Yes, I cheated in a minor way with some Goldfish crackers again. This time I stopped and let the guilt wash over me in real time. I behaved for the rest of the day.
I was up to 174 pounds even, I think that may have pushed me to the crackers. But I did work them off later in the afternoon with another run/walk.
Still, I vow to do better for the rest of this 14 day experiment. I’ve been pretty good so far, but I can be better than pretty good.
For the second day in a row my weight was up (sob), but my body fat was very slightly lower (yay).
I stuck to meals only today with two exceptions:
I scarfed down some sugar snap peas in the early afternoon and they were yummy (and perfectly fine as a snack)
I had a serving of Goldfish crackers mid-afternoon. These were somewhat yummy, but very much not on my approved snack list. But I did hold off on scarfing them and they totaled about 90 calories in total, which I more than burned off on my post-work walk/run. so not great that I broke my rules, but I think I’ll be okay, and the heavy guilt of eating those baked fish-shaped things will weight heavy on me for perhaps hours to come.
And with that I am halfway through my two week experiment. So far the signs have been encouraging and I’ve stayed pretty much on track. We’ll see how things go in Week 2.
This is the second day in a row in which I’ve had zero snacks–not even healthy ones!
Plus I did a 10 km walk/run that burned over 700 calories, so in all, a pretty decent day.
I did gain 0.4 pounds when I stepped on the scale this morning. I chalk it up less to the pizza I had last night and more to the fact that the pizza made me so thirsty I drank enough water to fill a pumper truck.
(The beef was beef and broccoli stir-fry, one of my rare sojourns into red meat.)
Today I had breakfast, lunch and dinner and no snacks at all, not even healthy ones.
I did have pizza for dinner, which is both delicious and a caloriepocalypse, but I also did my 70 minute workout and walked around Deer Lake and Burnaby Park–over 21 km in total. So I should be good there.
Weight was unchanged today, we’ll see what the pizza does for tomorrow morning.
Good news: I was down in weight again, another 0.9 pounds, down to 173.4, my lowest weight since the start of the year. Woo.
Bad news: Mid-afternoon and the day felt like it was dragging on interminably. I gave in and had one serving of crackers, which I ate over a period of time instead of just shaking the box directly into my mouth.
I was very good otherwise, though, and was actually too low on my calorie goal for the day, so ate just enough to tip me past.
I felt guilty eating the crackers–as intended–and as I type this I am noshing on carrot sticks. I could learn to like these.
We’ll see if the crackers instantly convert to fat when I weight myself tomorrow morning.
I once again managed to skip snacking today. I would clap myself on the back but it hurts when I try.
The closest I came to Unauthorized Snacking was when I added a 50 gram serving of Havarti cheese to my dinner. I later found out this has 189 calories, which is a lot more than I’d expected. Oops. Fortunately I still came in under my calorie goal and cheese is a better snack than, say, a bag of chocolate frosted Skittles.
Also, my weight was different this morning–down 1.5 pounds. Now I am really expecting to be up tomorrow. We will see.
I have allowed myself to indulge in healthy snacks of the fruit and veggie variety. Today I had the following:
A small banana
Some sugar snap peas
A few baby carrots
Other than that, it was another day of meals-only. I am noticing that I am feeling hungry at certain points through the day now, but this is good–it means my body is noticing the loss of food and over time will adapt to less snacks and more normal eating.
Curiously, my weight has remained unchanged for the last three days. I would not be surprised if it went up tomorrow.
An interesting thing happened while I spent today being snack-free. Actually, it happened many times throughout the day.
I thought about snacks. Specifically, I would be sitting (or standing) and suddenly think, “A snack would be nice.” This would happen regardless of whether or not I felt hungry or if I had just eaten. The first time it happened today I had just finished breakfast. I sat down after cleaning the dishes and instantly thought about getting a snack.
My amateur psych analysis of this is simple: snacking has become a substitute for something I need or crave. I don’t snack because I’m hungry, I snack because it provides comfort, it makes me feel better (unless I plow through half a box of crackers and feel gross and somewhat regretful after). The phrase “comfort food” looms large, like a giant box of chocolate glazed donuts. Mmm, donuts…
Anyway, I ended up not having to engage in any of the cheap tricks I listed yesterday to keep myself from snacking, because I also felt headachy and kind of listless for most of the day, so getting up and gathering snacks never registered as more than a distant thought. On top of the headaches today, allergies the past few weeks have been beating me up like never before. I can see myself becoming a nasal spray addict before the end of the year and having to join Nasal Sprayers Anonymous or something.
However, to bring things back to a positive note, I made it through the day and did not snack. Go me! If I’m up in weight tomorrow, I’ll just chuckle at how day-to-day fluctuations don’t matter, it’s the long term trends that show the real results. (I’ll still be mildly peeved, just because.)
