August 15
Lack of structured meals on the weekends will still trip me up. I play this mental game called “grazing all day, but never committing myself to a real meal”. It has the benefit of permission to eat foods that aren’t what you’d call food food, like tablespoons of PB, handfuls of almonds, troughs of watermelon (that I promise over and over to myself not to allow myself to cut up in such large quantities). Other benefits include, but are not limited to: since it is not a real meal on a real plate with utensils and everything, I am never really done; I can keep adding on and I can keep calling it lunch; anytime is snack time; I can even tell myself I never really had lunch.
The downside, aside from consuming in tiny, individual bites, the equivalent of an 8 course meal that I never got the real enjoyment of the restaurant experience, is that it feels like a bungee cord is attaching me to the kitchen. I stay preoccupied with food and actually have trouble focusing on the tasks at hand. Every half hour or so I get sucked into the gravitational pull of the kitchen.
One day I stopped and took a look at the math and figured out that I could have had a tuna sandwich on toast with the entire can of tuna and real Hellman’s for less than I was spending on the bagel and cream cheese that usually just started the roll. At least with a sandwich I felt like I had actually eaten a lunch. So now, rather than just heading out of the house on the weekend with no food plan in mind, I usually take a couple of BabyBel Lites, an apple and a little tin of almonds for a portable real food “breakfast” and I have at least started my day making a commitment to real meals.