Twenty three: aquarium

Wednesday:

Today we went to the aquarium with Ping and little Emma. It's quite a long trip in, an hour and half to the city (drive to the station, train) and then a few blocks walk. The aquarium was nice, with glowing jellyfish:

and dugongs (how anyone ever mistook them for mermaids I can't understand! Sea cow is a better name):

and those huge tanks where the fish swim over and under and all around you.

The whole place was enormous and you can't leave halfway through, you have to follow the chain of interlocking rooms until the end. Quite tiring! 8700 steps today.

Food was a real challenge today. When we got to the city it was 11:30 and it was decided to have morning tea. Everyone else had pretzels (the big salty bread kind, not the cute little snacks) from a German bakery, I had some nuts left over from the movies the other day instead. I was a bit worried that everyone else was eating a lot so close to when I would normally have lunch, knowing they wouldn't be hungry again for a while but I would be. We went into the aquarium, and at 1:00 Ping suggested quietly to me that we get ice creams from a stall there but I said no we'd be having lunch soon (I wasn't going to have one either way, but I didn't want to let them fill up again and delay lunch more). I totally underestimated the size of the aquarium. We got out at nearly 2:00. I normally eat lunch at noon! And when you are restricting calories you are generally very ready for your next meal at your usual time.

We went to the first place that looked like it had kid-friendly food. I thought it would be ok for me too. Unfortunately it was either heavy on the carbs like burgers and pizza, or crumbed and deep fried. But it was so late and with three tired hungry children I didn't want to push to go elsewhere. I was still trying to decide what would be most adaptable to my low carb plan when Aiden said he would like pepperoni pizza. There was no way he would eat a whole pizza, even a small café one, so I decided to share it with him. There is nothing about pizza that goes with my food plan, but I ate and enjoyed it and it filled my tummy. I am not disappointed in myself, I think I negotiated some pretty tough challenges today, but I am disappointed that it didn't work out the way I would have liked. Especially since I got down to 79.9 kg again this morning and now I might bounce back up! And also the pizza was nice but it wasn't fantastic for something I was breaking my diet for! If I had my druthers I'd have a healthy lunch and a chocolate éclair! Or just the healthy lunch.

What I am most pleased about today is that I got through to 2:00 without having some kind of food-deprived meltdown. When I was eating junk regularly, there was no way I could have gone that long without panicking. I would have felt like I was starving, my blood sugar would have dropped making me cranky, I would have shovelled in whatever calorific food I could get my hands on. I would not have said no to pretzels or ice cream. Today I was hungry, but I was ok. I was more worried about finding food the kids would eat.

B: chicken, cucumber, tea.
S: raw mixed nuts.
L: pepperoni pizza.
S: tea.
D: veal in mushroom sauce, salad.