Week 8: Choices

This week I didn't introduce any new foods to my diet, but I did become more aware of the foods I have already added to my diet, such as graham crackers.  I am able to eat them in reasonable quantities, as long as I have a "bread" left over to substitute for, athough I do find myself wanting some on those days I don't have a bread left over.

I'm becoming more aware of choices I make about eating, which is a good thing.  It means I've become more aware of what and how much I eat, something I was not fully conscious of in the past. So it seems that I make trade-offs all day long, most of them consciously and directed toward a goal.

For example, at breakfast time I must choose what to have for breakfast.  In the past, I would simply eat whatever I was in the mood for.  Now I consider appetite as a factor, but also consider how to line up my breakfast choices with my snack choices.  If I eat an egg for breakfast, I'm going to want to have bread with it and also juice of some kind, because that's what goes together in my mind.  I usually like to have an over-easy egg, which means runny yolk and that requires bread to soak it up.  The juice is required to add tart to the taste of the egg.  But I like to save my breakfast bread for my mid-morning snack, so if I eat my bread at breakfast, I won't be able to have it for my snack later.  I have to be willing to have something else for my snack that day--fruit or yogurt, maybe.  Also, a consideration of the egg involves whether or not I've had my quota of eggs for that week (<=5).

If I choose cereal for breakfast, then I've used a milk allocation (1 of 2), which means I can't have yogurt for my afternoon snack, since I'd only have one milk left.  Or, if I have yogurt in the afternoon, that means I can't have it for my evening snack.  Most of the time, fruit will substitute for milk or bread in my snacks.  But I don't want to run out of everything before my evening snack, or I'll end up eating celery sticks, which are not appetizing at that time of night.

So you see, I reckon the impact of every choice I make on the rest of the day's (or the week's) menu.  It's as if my food consumption were a kind of ecology--all choices impact other choices and outcomes.

Now, some may say this is bleak because it seems so unspontaneous.  Well, to those people I say that spontaneity is what got me where I was 8 weeks ago--70 lbs overweight.  Like the big corporations, my appetite cannot be trusted to self-police.  Controls have been wanting.  So like the government, I'm instituting regulations and monitoring procedures to bring Big Appetite back into line with what my body expects--behavior conducive to the health of the entire organism.

In the coming weeks, I'm going to continue making healthful choices and reigning in Big Appetite while trying to add new foods to my diet plan in a controlled manner.  As always, I'll let you know how it goes.