Reflections on day one

Woke up yesterday in a very foul mood indeed. I felt like I had the entire weight of every mistake, or misstep that I had ever made on my head pressing down like a 50 pound barbell. Work the prior night had been long, and while I thought my new Sketcher Shape Ups would put some exciting spring into my step, I just felt worn to a frazzle by the end of the night. Hence the morning wake up call of negativity, and just plain bad feelings.

So shaky, and nervous I combed through my books, and articles to figure out my first day's menu. I stood in the kitchen, and prepared my days meals. Eating 6 times a day is difficult for me, but preparing meals so that I could follow this plan seemed tedious. I'm not gonna candy coat things here, either literally or figuratively tedious is the truth. Standing in the kitchen for 3 hours is not my idea of a good time when I'm nervous. I do enjoy cooking, but not when I'm cranky. I settled on my meal plan, and got down to business.

I made my breakfast an egg casserole, with peppers, and mushrooms. It tasted pretty good, and looked appealing. It was also 11 year old approved. For a snack it was cherry tomatoes, and a string of mozzarella. I went on to making a curried soup. I had found the chili recipe, and since I don't really like meat all that well I modified it, and made it curry instead. Plus it cut out the tomatoes, I swapped those for a few peppadews. Snack for the PM was a few almonds. Then dinner, I made a sugar free dressing for a salad, made some steak, and cauliflower mashed potatoes. Whew, by then it was time to get ready for work. I barely had time to squeeze in a quick workout.

I placed my parcels of South Beach goodies, into a giant walmart bag. This much food would not fit into a conventional lunchbox. I looked like a bag lady walking into a five star restaurant asking people for change.

Reality is we have fantastic food at work, this is why so many people who come to work there gain weight. The employee packet should come with a hazard sticker, warning you will chub up due to very rich, and decadent morsels of goodness. It is a trap, and a pitfall. As much as you try to keep it healthy the cheesecake, and creme brulee lure you in the next thing you know the scale is an enemy, and the kitchen staff look like minor demons in white and black checkers.

So I did pretty well my first day, it was difficult forcing myself to eat when I wasn't hungry. Dinner was a challenge because of the steak so I only ate a very small portion of it, but the cauliflower was good. The ricotta, and chocolate dessert got half eaten, as well as the salad. All in all day one was successful.

I will begin today with the knowledge that my nervous nature yesterday stems from my monthly bout of PMDD... note to self increase soy intake for the natural estrogen, and do streching exercise during my daily mediation.