A New Hope

Friday:

I've had two whole days of eating cleanly -- yay! Yesterday I actually ended up only eating about 750 calories, which is really weird and certainly wasn't planned, but when you cut out sugar and flour and replace it with lots of vegetables you end up being full on very few calories. Who knew? More balanced today, with quinoa at lunch and potato at dinner, although I am a bit pissed off right now after plugging my dinner into my tracker. I had oven-baked salmon to be healthy, we don't eat fish much in this house and I had to cook something else for my husband and daughter, and it turns out my 200g fillet was 400 calories! It was quite a big serve, but still. It was FISH! It is supposed to be all healthy, damnit, not fatty and calorie-ridden.

My dietitian told me to stop having sugar in my tea six months ago and I resisted and resisted, telling myself I would cut down, buying low-GI sugar, even trying fructose instead. But I was just in denial. Yesterday I went cold turkey. "They" say you get used to it, and eventually prefer it that way. At the moment it still tastes a bit nasty. Oh well, I switched from a tiny splash of lemon cordial to a squeeze of real lemon juice in my water ages ago and I definitely prefer that now so I hope it does work out.

While in this slightly annoyed after-dinner mood I read a post from a weight-loss blog I follow and it was all about God loving us. It's her blog and totally her right to talk about her Christianity as she does sometimes, usually I think it's kind of sweet if deluded. Tonight I wanted to comment: yes, he shows his love with earthquakes and cancer, he embraces us with his bushfires. But I restrained myself. Earlier today I also stopped myself making a irritable comment on another person's blog. Hmm, seeing a pattern here.

Aside from this rant, I've been feeling pretty good. I thought I would have big sugar cravings but I haven't really. I've probably had small amounts of sugar in the soy sauce, tomato salsa, and splash of salad dressing I've had over the past two days. Anything in a bottle or jar is going to have salt and sugar. But I've cut down a lot. I didn't even put salt on my potato tonight, maybe for the first time in my whole life.

I'm never sure if tracking is a good idea for me. I get so calorie-focussed. Suddenly yoghurt, or any dairy, seems too high-calorie to fit into my day. Salmon is evil. I'm tracking for the moment because I do like doing it, but I'll keep note of how it makes me feel. I do need to keep track of carbs though.

I'm not really sure what my long term plan is. I'm cutting out sugar and flour (and salt) but still having other "white" starches like rice and potato -- in moderate amounts of low-GI versions. Chips (crisps) are my worst binge trigger and I don't plan on having any of those for a while but I will have some chocolate a couple of times a week.

I am feeling tentatively hopeful.

I wish I had weighed myself yesterday before I started, but I was up to 79.6 (or was it 79.7?) kg a few days ago. I was 79.0 kg this morning. It's a start.