Lazy

Woah - it's been over a month since I posted here. Though I think that's more to do with the fact I forgot my blogger password than anything else.

My CRON for the past month has been a mixed bag. I had one week of pure binging on Free Food on a training course which wasn't good and wasn't CRON. Also had a few meals out so I couldn't measure my calories there. However, when I'm at home I do much, much better and am measuring nearly everything I eat. Eating outside of the house is a bigger problem, unless I'm eating a pre-made wrap or something.

While I was on the training course I made a list of things to do to help improve my CRON, so now I'm going to see how well I've been doing at them!

1. Prepare lunch the night before and take with me to work. This has been going really well! I was always good at measuring my breakfast and I've now added lunch to the list. I usually have a big salad for lunch with spinach, rocket, other green leaves, tomatoes, mushrooms, spring onions, green and red peppers. I was adding tuna to the salad but have given up recently because it smells and I've become a little tired of it. Lately I've been adding in a small amount of cous cous to use up the packet I have in my cupboard. I find that some carbs with the salad really help control my carb cravings during the afternoon. I usually eat an apple mid-morning and then the salad at 12.30 or 1. I've also been adding in some of the vinegar/oil/cinnamon salad dressing April mentioned in her blog.

2. Don't even go into the canteen. My work canteen is home to all kinds of tasty treats including some very "healthy-looking" lunches. I used to buy my salad there every day but that meant I couldn't measure and therefore didn't quite know how many calories I was eating. It also meant that other higher calorie (and higher priced) lunches caught my eye. Now I don't go in there at all so I'm not tempted to splurge.

3. Don't keep cash in purse. I have been trying to use this as a technique to stop purchasing impulse food and it has worked to some extent, but I've found that if I really want something I'll buy it anyway. The next point on the list has actually helped more than this.

4. Tell yourself NO and just walk away. When this works it really works well. I feel annoyed at myself for a few minutes sometimes because I might have really been craving that piece of chocolate or bagel but later on I feel better and am glad that I just walked past the temptation. There is definitely room for improvement here though.

5. Reinforcing thoughts. What I mean here is thinking how much better I'll be at exercising and how I'll fit nicely into my favourite clothes. If I do this with point 4 it really seems to work and helps me not to give in to petulant cravings.

6. Brush teeth after dinner or when I come home if I've already eaten. The idea behind this was that if I've brushed my teeth I won't eat snacks in the evenings because I'm lazy and don't want to go to the effort of re-brushing. I haven't been doing this very much at all though. One of the things I did when starting CRON was to replace my snack food with healthier snacks like almonds, hazelnuts, pumpkin and sunflower seeds. However, I've found that I am the kind of person who can eat several handfuls of nuts and seeds in one sitting. I was starting to eat way too many and they're so high calorie. So, I've decided that I'm going to stop buying the nuts get my fat from nut oils instead. I definitely don't feel like snacking on oil when I get home!

So although I've had some bad days I feel like I'm getting more control over my meals and snacks. Dinner is the next hurdle! So I've made some new points to add to the list.

1. No restaurant food until I've got down to my desired weight.
2. Avoid Free Food situations where possible.
3. Make (and measure!) as much dinner at home as possible. On this point I think I'm going to try experimenting with soups and steamed vegetables as they seem to be more filling and lower calorie than my usual dinners.
4. Find more nutritions fruit options than apples and bananas.