Day 9: counting calories is not my thing

Whole30 creates awareness, not just of what I'm consuming, but of how I view food.

Here was my mentality:
Eat small meals so there is an excuse to snack all day.
Not fatty-fried-10-cookies kind of snacking, or even a high sugar intake, but mentally I desired the freedom to eat a handful of granola three times a day and an apple or carrots or a bag of popcorn for anything to nibble on without consequence.

My solution was to then skimp on meals.

This is not a solution.

I told myself I was one of those people. One of those people who just does better on 6 small meals, not three big ones. However, my small meals weren't meals, it was laziness masked as a can of soup and 11pm cereal because I was starving.

I then tried the calorie thing, I even got an app on my phone to keep track, and it worked just fine, but my choices were based on numbers, not on nutrition. Though it is still tempting to snack, It seems to work for me to allow myself the freedom to give myself one snack per day, even if I don't take it, I am wiser in my choices because I have to ask myself if I really want that moment to be my snack or if I'd rather save it for later.

Breakfast

• 3 eggs w/diced tomato and mushroom, leftover brussel sprout leaves that fell off yesterday (Ben suggested keeping them to save for another dish. Such a smarty)
• 2 orange slices
• handful of cantaloupe
• a couple of cashews

Lunch

• Spinach salad w/diced tomato and mushroom, diced up carrot, & 1/2 of a chicken breast
• 1 peach
• carrots

Dinner

• Sauteed sweet potatoes and spinach recipe part two! (I accidentily added too much oil this time, but I am determined to perfect the dish!)
• Chicken breast

My continuation of dinner was eating my fruit/veggies servings while watching LOTR with Ben and one of our good friends from French class, Melisa! So much fun! 

We are all complete LOTR nerds. 

I mean it. 

The kind where we repeat the lines to each other, get a good chuckle out of pictures like this, and spend 20 minutes wikipedia-ing the entomology of a Balrog (not that Ben did this or anything....) 

However, the snacking began as a good idea since I needed some fruit, but then I also reached for a bunch of cashews/almonds because snacking with movies is a temptation for me. It was not a full on gorge, but it was significantly more than I would have eaten on a typical night. Not that snacking on a few nuts is bad, but this is an area I know is an emotional attachment.

However, I did resist the HUGE bowl of cheddar chex mix you can see in the picture to the left as well as two bags of popcorn I made for the other two.

Le sigh.

Yet I am reminded of this truth: every time I say no to an unnecessary snack, the guilt I am so used to feeling post-carbs is extinguished. Believe it or not (I hardly can) it's easier grit a "no" through your teeth before you eat it instead of moaning "no" afterwards.