Diet Wellness

Today’s breakfast:
Five Caramel Swirl cookies and coffee
320 calories

I’ve decided to, sigh, once again, recommit myself to eating better. I have Project 365 to thank for the inspiration. Inspiration and the plain desire for something to work is so important for making it work. I’ve also found some daily inspiration from that Skinny and the City Newsletter. I’m telling ya, even just the words of wisdom and cooking ideas in the email are a great addition to diet wellness!

Diet Wellness, I don’t know if anyone “official” uses that term, but it was made up by me in this context, is simply how easy is it to stick to a healthy plan. Creating diet wellness is up to the person developing the plan and any plan is best when its controlled by the person living with it. I liked the fact that today’s Skinny and the City newsletter addressed excessive fasting and the fact that it slows down your metabolism so you actually lose weight slower and can even gain weight on too low a calorie diet. That was my folly when I tried The South Beach diet back when it was new. I knew that with elevated cholesterol, I couldn’t eat all the fat that diet required, so I cut the fat out. With no fat and no carbohydrates in my diet, by the end of 2 weeks I was sick and had gained weight! Less than 600 calories a day will do that to a body!

I found that when I’ve been successful, the key is balance and portion control. Sounds simple enough, but what I really have to do is abstain from eating at all when I watch TV or work on the computer. When my attention isn’t focused on what I’m eating, it gets out of hand. Even switching to healthier snacks didn’t make a difference. I once ate a whole bag of baby carrots watching an hour of TV!

Where Project 365 comes in, is that I’ve also had great success when I photograph my meals. I LOVE the digital age for that! Since I’m photographing them, I spend extra time making the plates look nice. It actually makes me wait a little longer to eat, which makes me want to eat slower and enjoy the meals. Maybe that sounds a little silly, but hey, what works for you is the measure of your diet wellness!

The most important thing for diet wellness is to NOT torture yourself! A sure way to gain every ounce back or not stay on the plan at all, is to create a diet that is so different from what you enjoy eating that you’ll change right back to the old habits you determined were giving you results you didn’t like in the first place.

My number one diet wellness rule is chocolate. I’m a Chocoholic, so any diet that denies me chocolate or allows lower quality or chocolate substitutes, isn’t going to be one I stick with. Besides, I’ll binge the first chance I get due to chocolate withdrawal! I stick to a diet that REQUIRES that at least 50 calories of my food must be chocolate every day. Some days, It’s 220 calories of Hershey bar or a scoop of ice cream, some days it’s 2 Hershey's Kisses to meet that minimum. This way I can avoid an easy downfall for cohabitants, and really an important part of the total diet wellness package: dessert with ones mate! I can enjoy a treat with David without straying from my personal plan and I never go insane from craving chocolate!

So, the photograph above was this morning’s breakfast. Usually, I have a banana and some toast or cereal, occasionally eggs and a breakfast meat when David and I have breakfast together, but this morning I woke up hungry and craving cookies! I think some grapes with lunch, maybe veggie soup, is in order. But what an awesome “diet breakfast” it was!