The Diet Diaries

Normally when I live alone (which I did for most of my adult life) my weight is stable because I follow the cardinal rules that weight loss guru Paul McKenna says naturally thin people observe: I eat only when I'm hungry, I eat what I'm hungry for, I pay attention to what I'm eating, and I stop as soon as I start to feel full.  Over the past two months, in fact, by following this routine I've lost the extra weight I gained while living with my parents and stabilized at my previous poundage.  That's in the normal zone for my height, but to reach my ideal BMI I still need to lose another 15 pounds, and it's not happening.

I think the problem is a habit I picked up while living with Barry - one last snack before bedtime.  This is usually in response to mouth hunger, not stomach hunger, but if I don't eat something I can't sleep because I'm lying in bed obsessing about food.  The diet literature I've read doesn't agree on whether evening eating is a good thing; some authors say late night snacks don't digest well and go right to the hips and stomach, but Weight Watchers says four hours is the longest one should go without eating (while awake, of course) in order to keep hunger under control and prevent food binges, and I go to bed more than four hours after supper.  I'm hoping the answer is not to stop eating before bed but to control how much I eat then.

I'm going to start tracking what I eat during the day.  Then, when the nighttime munchies attack, I'll know how many calories I can afford to ingest.  This will also give me an incentive to stop eating sooner at supper to be sure I have a few calories left for the end of the day.

A few years ago I was on the Weight Watchers online plan (trying to get rid of the eating-with-Barry weight) and the whole "planning what to eat for the entire day in advance" thing was a real pain.  I hope that adopting just the tracking system will make me more aware of what I'm eating and let me shave the 150 calories a day that will lose those 15 pounds over the next year.

"My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four.  Unless there are three other people."  ~Orson Welles