Day 1 of Week 2, Cereal Saves The Day

Today's weight: same

Total weight loss: 4 pounds in seven days.

Today's Challenge: Keeping focused while feeling tired from the weekend

1 cup of frosted mini-wheats:200
1/2 cup of 1% milk:55
1 tbl of creamer:30
sweet-n-low:0
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running total: 285

vanilla protein shake:120
mixed with banana:70
and ice cubes in blender
total snack: 190
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running total: 475

2 eggs:140
lefse:120
cheese curds: 150
1/2 of big ice pop: 30
total: 440
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running total:915

snacking urge 1 cup of Blue Bunny Light Bunny Tracks: 300

3/4 cup of rice dish for supper: 250
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running total: 1465

jello:10
whipped cream:15

total for the day: 1470

fitness: 4 mile run
abdominal workout

Note on picture: This is quick oats with sugar and cinnamon. I normally eat this for breakfast. I didn't this morning because we're out.

Cereal Saves the Day

This post is about another strategy that I find myself often using when I first start my diet.

Cereal.

When you are eating and counting calories throughout the day, I have noticed that as it comes nearer to the next time you are scheduled to eat, for example, supper, your urge to snack will increase.

Picture if you will... you are preparing supper and you are getting hungry because you are restricting your calories. All of a sudden you feel your resolve begin to melt. You try to resist it at first, with maybe a chip here or ( in my case) a cheese curd there. But you've started something that can't be stopped. Soon, things begin to escalate into full-scale, uninhibited snacking.

Before you know it, you've just consumed 50, 100, 150 calories in the space of several minutes.

How did things get out of hand so quickly and how can you stop them?

The first thing you need to do is to recognize when you are getting hungry to the point that it is clouding your ability to resist food. There are cravings based on habit and emotion and then there are cravings because you are actually hungry. The latter are harder to resist... especially if you perceive in you mind that it may be awhile yet before you will eat.

What has worked for me, is to have on hand a box of high fiber cereal, like Quaker Oat Squares, Frosted Mini-Wheats, oatmeal or I really like Chocolate Malt-o-Meal. Pour yourself the equivalent of a cup of cereal and about 1/2 cup of milk till you top off at about 300 calories. You will find that once you've eaten, you no longer have cravings, your sated, happy and...well, you had cereal for supper but you kept to your calories.

This may not seem like the ideal situation because you were perhaps looking forward to supper, but that supper can always be saved for lunch the next day.

Using this option is a huge success for you because unplanned snacking always completely throws you off your game. By recognizing the situation for what it is and taking care of the problem quickly, you will nip the snacking in the bud before it grows uncontrollable. By doing this you probably easily rescued yourself from going over by a few hundred calories.

You can also use cereal in the evening if your going crazy with cravings. Maybe limit it to 200 calories this time. Cooked oatmeal is good for this because you can get by with very little milk added.

It's better to control and calculate what goes in your mouth than to slip into reckless uncalculated bites. And, also it is better to have the cereal put you over your calorie limits than to succumb to snacking.

Snacking always uses more calories and is almost always less filling.

However, if you snack (like I did today)...the best thing then is to estimate what you ate.

Finally, another way I have used cereal to save me is to eat a bowl of oatmeal before going to a function that involves dinner or snacking type of food. Sometimes the thought of trying to get through that type of function, and calculate the calories too seems just too difficult. So simply not eating there at all is sometimes the best that I can do until I can use a strategy that will get me through that situation too.

Hope this helps you all as you work toward your goals.