Sometimes it’s hard for me to focus on the positive when I’m attempting these things because they’re so few and far between, but one thing I want to try a little differently this time is looking for progress in places other than simply the numbers down there on the scale…
For example, I think I’m starting to notice a positive change in my appetite, in that I find myself (most of the time) not eating as much food or as big of portions as I have in the past. Tonight was a good example because I made homemade pizza – I ended up having three slices, which still sounds like a lot, but it was pretty much both lunch and dinner combined and I hadn’t eaten for quite a while when it finally came out of the oven.
Another example would be eating in the middle of the night because I used to have a really bad problem of getting up to snack at 4:00am, to the point where I would consciously close the pantry doors before I went to bed so that when I got up to snack later, I’d hit a brick wall (well, wood, anyways) and hopefully just be too groggy to go through the ordeal of opening the door to grab a couple of granola bars or a handful of chips before wandering back to bed. I haven’t done that in a long time, though, and I don’t even have to trick myself into keeping out anymore!
I like to think that all of these are little signs that my efforts are actually working – that I’m less hungry because I’m actually eating less calories and my body is getting used to it. I could probably write a lot more about specific foods that I’m trying to focus on and eating intervals to try to change my previous just shovel it all in mentality, but for now just a few baby steps here and there are enough to make me feel better and stop beating myself up … at least for a little while, anyways… 😉