‘I Resisted My Boyfriend’s Junk Food Stash To Lose 3 Pounds Of Holiday Weight In One Week’
8:10 a.m. I wake up and make breakfast: a half cup grits with a dab of margarine, one scrambled egg, and one medium toasted almond coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts with four Equals and half and half.
I usually do oatmeal for breakfast, but this was leftover from a breakfast I made my live-in boyfriend yesterday that he didn’t want. It’s nice to change it up sometimes. Also, I usually only allow myself eggs on weekends. I think I’ll be going back to egg whites this year because calories from whole eggs add up quick. But I hate letting good food to go waste. I decide that I’m not going to make breakfast for my boyfriend, since he only eats breakfast sometimes. That way there will be no temptation.
10:45 a.m. My stomach starts growling so I snack on a vanilla yogurt and a 20-ounce water. Sometimes I worry I may eat snacks out of habit, but right now I’m sure I need this.
1:00 p.m. I take my usual 45-minute boot camp class, but my instructor is out today. The substitute taught the class in a completely different way. She does loads of exercises I’ve never done before and many multi-step exercises that were hard to follow. I wind up modifying them with simpler versions. I’m not a visual learner at all, so I take half the time just to figure out what she’s doing. I work up a good sweat though, so I guess it’s worth it. I’m working to burn off the two pounds I gained back over the holidays. I’m hoping to get them off this week.
2:15 p.m. For lunch, I have one cup of white rice with one-third cup black-eyed peas, and a 20-ounce bottle of water.
I wonder if I should switch to brown rice as a New Year’s resolution? My boyfriend will no sooner eat brown rice than veggie burgers, which might be a problem when it comes to cooking our lunches for the week. Though it’s not like we eat rice every day, so maybe making the swap will be easier than I think. I’m not shopping for food for another week though, so I can decide later. I like to have strict deadlines set for making changes to my diet.
I find that makes it easier to plan for the change and stick to it. So I’ll be eating brown rice and egg whites as of January 15th. This worked for me when I cut out juice, soda, and sweets on October 1st. (Though, I do have a couple of cookies on occasion, but nothing like the massive number I was eating before I started dieting.) I hope that cutting out white rice and whole eggs will help me lose more weight like cutting those three sugary foods did.
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5:00 p.m. When I arrive at the after-school center I volunteer at, the kids are still in classes. The next one starts at 5:15, which makes this the perfect time for a snack. The kids are having a light snack now, too. I generally have my afternoon snack before leaving work, but since I ate lunch late today, I wasn’t hungry yet.
8:15 p.m. I didn’t meal prep this week because we had company for the holidays, and everything was a bit hectic. That means I have no Tupperware filled with tasty homemade dinner waiting for me when I get home. But my boyfriend ordered Chinese takeout for us, and got me fried fish and white rice. He said he never knows what to get me, but somehow his default is always fried fish and white rice. I have no idea why. On top of that, I had white rice with lunch today, which makes this extra annoying. Anyway, I decide to have a half cup of leftover collard greens in the fridge that were juicy enough to make the rice edible. I also down two glasses of water. Then, I start cooking dinner for tomorrow so that there’s no repeat of this.
10:15 p.m. I eat a cup of flavored Jell-O with a slice of pineapple and a teaspoon of Cool Whip. I realize that I’m eating because I’m bored more so than because I’m hungry, but it could be worse. I have not had dessert since Christmas, which was almost two weeks ago, so I’m still doing well.