Ugggh

Tough day for the diet. I didn't blow it, but I couldn't get my mind off of food. I was friggin' hungry. I stopped at Dunkin Donuts to get a coffee and get my free coupons. They served me an Egg White Turkey Sausage Flatbread sandwich whose egg was ice cold I think it was Monday. Disgusting. Who wants to eat cold eggs? Maybe hard-boiled eggs or egg-salad sandwich, but not an allegedly hot egg sandwich that isn't - hot.

I didn't make a big deal out of it in my usual terms of making an issue out of something, I had called the number on the receipt and left a message. The lady that called back was totally cool, we hit it off. She said she would be over at that store the next day so give til' Thursday to get some free coupons. I only expected one coupon to replace the sandwich that was bad, she had left 3 of them.

Well, I just went ahead and got another of those sandwiches, having absolutely no idea what kind of caloric content was in it. From the taste of it, not much but I had no idea. OH, and when the manager came out, she was VERY apologetic and said they had had to reprogram the ovens for the amount of time those sandwiches have to cook after I had voiced my complaint about it. So, a good thing came out of it.

I just found out the caloric content of the sandwich, DD has it posted online: 280 calories with 50 calories from fat. No wonder I have been hungry all day. Sodium content is a bit high at 34% of the recommended daily allowance, but otherwise, that sandwich really isn't a diet buster. I had all kinds of opportunities to have more food during the day - doesn't that ALWAYS happen when you are trying not to eat the bad stuff? There were bagels at work - and if you just have a plain bagel you're probably good. You have to be careful of "light spreads". Some of them write that on the packaging but when you check some of the nutrition labels, they are still loaded with fat, calories and sodium. I bypassed all of it, determined to keep on track.

The revelation that I had gone back under 200 pounds is what kept my focused. I weighed myself today, still at 198 pounds, which is hardly discouraging. My weight usually fluctuates a lot, to see it still there, under 200? Totally encouraging, really. Something happened in my head when I saw that 198 number the other day - it was THE motivation I needed to get even stricter on this diet of mine. I'm not sure what I'll have today, but I still have plenty of that frozen Talapia - VERY good. I cook some diced onions, put in the fish, wait til' it cooks a bit, drain out the juice and then dump a can of tomato sauce on it and load it with good spices.

I did that yesterday and also cooked some frozen potatotes with it. I was surprised at how small the calorie number is with certain frozen potatoes. It was less than 100 calories for a decent sized serving. It's when you start adding sauces, cheeses, ketchup - whatever, that's when the calorie value builds to astronomic proportions. I add none of that. Instead, I put on some Louisiana Hot Sauce which is basically zero calories for all intents and purposes and had a very nice meal. In fact, I ended up mixing some of spiced tomato sauce on the fish with the potatoes, very tasty, actually.

Of course, it's amazing what you will call tasty when you're ravenously hungry yet are forcing yourself to watch every single thing you take into your mouth. Still, this is the first time I have ever dieted where I don't feel like I'm dieting. In other words, I don't feel DEPRIVED of anything. That, folks, is what usually makes or breaks a person in that realm and probably why lots of folks take the variety of pills available to make you not feel hungry. I hate taking pills - but I would do it if I had to in this case - so far I don't really need that kind of help.

If you read about my devouring 2 pounds of meat in one setting in the next couple of days, well, no biggie to me. As long as I don't eat a half gallon of ice cream or some other sugary product, I really don't care about a splurge such as that. My biggest downfall are sauces and creams and cheeses added to foods that I prepare. Well, a whole cup of tomato sauce is only 90 calories - so the amount I put in there is about 23 calories with 1 gram of fat. Yeah, that's a sauce I can eat copious amounts of and not have to worry about it.

Anyway, now I can give myself permission to eat something. Spaghetti with meat sauce is 255 calories. I would probably eat about 500-600 calories worth, but it will be the extent of my eating today. I worked quite hard today so definiteley, my caloric output will far exceed any 2 meal intake that totals less than 1,000 calories.

Ponds? I forgot to write that yesterday, when I came home, one pond was down almost 6 inches. Yup. I drained that sucker out, took it out of the ground, half filled it with water and found a leak. I didn't check them before I put them in - my bad totally. My patch is holding in the other pond. Fix the leak today, dig out everything that fell into the hole and hopefully have it back in the ground - today.

Nothing else new going on, still looking for that elusive, temporary roommate, not a lot of inquiries now.

Anway, I have ohter stuff to get done and want to get at it.

Later.
ben