By Sarah
For the last two and a half weeks, I've been tracking my food on the weekly calendar that Marissa gave me. I've kept a food diary before, once while on Weight Watchers and more recently on my phone with the Lose It app.
But there is one small difference this time: The calendar instructs me to note my hunger level after each meal (e.g. if I am still hungry or too full). I've never paid careful attention to my hunger levels before, and I've already noticed a lot of interesting patterns.
I'm often too hungry between breakfast and lunch, but too full after dinner. I guess this is a common issue, as we're conditioned to think that dinner should be a gigantic plate full of food. When I was on vacation, I was way too full at some point almost every day—not surprising, given the things I was eating!
This past week, the tables were turned: I planned my food very carefully, ate lots of fruits and vegetables and grains, and tried to eat smaller dinners…but found myself too hungry a lot of the time. One night I couldn't even fall asleep, I was so hungry—I had to cook up a midnight scrambled egg taco!
So this week my goal is to be like Goldilocks and find an amount of food that is just right. This is complicated, of course, by the fact that I'm working out so much more than I'm used to. I definitely need to eat a more filling breakfast or a mid-morning snack, and I'm going to work on bulking up my other meals with more vegetables and protein.
I have some super fun, super delicious, potentially fattening events on the horizon, so I'm going to try to be as careful as I can this week so I won't feel guilty about a little (but not too much!) special occasion indulgence next week. Wish me luck and self control!!