Blogs > Lighten Up With Margaret

Margaret Pizzi of Mentor is a contestant in The News-Herald's Lighten Up in 2013.

Monday, April 29, 2013

made the cutoff!

Well all my hard work and motivation paid off these last few weeks and I lost my 5% with a little over a pound to spare!

To avoid falling off my "straight and narrow" diet plan I decided to loosen up a little bit and prove to myself that I can make better choices in the long term eating "real" food, just for the weekend. Sometimes in the past, deprivation of favorite "not-so-healthy" foods has led me to binge eat. I gave myself a free pass to have anything I wanted then back to my diet today.

My grandson Devin has been taking Taekwondo lessons since just after he turned 5yo, and now 3 yrs later, earned his 1st Degree Black Belt Saturday afternoon.  Of course this was a major event so we all celebrated at one of his favorite restaurants. Since it was a "free pass" day and I haven't had a good burger and fries in a long time I ordered a burger and fries with the sauce on the side in case I wanted a tiny bit and no condiments. I only ate half my burger and had the rest for dinner. I bought Devin an awesome celebratory cake and had only a small slice. Later the kids were passing around chips and it took only a couple chips until I was satisfied.

Yesterday we went out for MY celebratory dinner and I ordered steak and ribs. Ya know, sometimes I just want to eat like everyone else is eating.  There was actually little fat on the meat and I discarded what little there was. Well I could only eat a portion of my meal and ate a light dinner later.  

I ended both days with calories in the 1900s. Add in the exercise I did and I should be OK. What could have been a binge weekend ended up being a maintenance weekend. It was nice to know I could "let loose" and not lose total control.  I think a key was that I drank a whole bunch of water so I wouldn't over indulge much and ate slowly so I was really getting a taste of what I was eating. It takes a lot more fries to cure a fry craving if you're just shoveling them down and not savoring the indulgence.  It's also interesting that I'm a self-proclaimed Cheetos addict and could previously almost polish off a whole bag. Since I gave myself permission to eat them this weekend I didn't even want them. I'm thinking that maybe every Sunday, as long as I'm "good" all week I can allow myself a small portion of a "forbidden" food. 

Today I had leftover ribs and half a potato for lunch and a roll. The rest of the steak may go on a salad for dinner tonight. I don't know, this food seems way too heavy for me now.  I'm looking forward to getting back to what may be my new definition of "real" food tomorrow. Bring on the KALE!!!!

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