So Much Food, So Little Stomach

I believe I've mentioned before the lady that came to one of my Weight Watchers meetings who had legit food addiction. It wasn't just ooooh there's some chips in my kitchen, I can't help but eat the whole bag cause it's there... it was more like I'm going to have to get in my car and drive to the cupcake shop because I have to have a cupcake now and if they are closed I'm planning to throw this brick through the plate glass window.

I don't have a food addiction.

I just really like it.

When we eat when we're stressed, eat because we're bored, eat to fill some void that we'd rather not notice as empty... it's not an addiction so much as comfort. When we stop eating for comfort and succeed at losing weight, we have to find something else. Sometimes we have to deal with comforting ourselves and that can be scary. Food did all the work before this; I'm really not used to dealing with myself on so many occasions. Leads to a lot of tears and curiosities.

The last few days I've been terrible with the overeating. Don't get me wrong, it's not exactly for comfort... but the dangerous realm of hunger. I've graduated to 5 small meals a day now; First Breakfast (protein shake), Second Breakfast (anywhere from 100-300 calories), lunch, afternoon snack (100-200 calories) and then dinner. It's funny how little I can usually eat at any given sitting, but it's actually a little annoying how often I need to eat.

First and second breakfast I can understand. The main reason I don't eat both at the same time is because I get hungry at 10:00 AM no matter how much I eat before work... so rather than add to the calorie count, I've been splitting it in half. Works great! And I'm hungry again by noon...

The afternoon snack is a new phenomenon that occurred when my office switched back to normal operating hours, 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM. Getting home before 5 allowed me to eat dinner early and then do the exercising... or exercise and then eat dinner by 5:30 PM. Now... well, I'm hungry at 4:30 and it's really really REALLY hard to run when you're hungry. You get a little pass-outy... at least I do.

Here's what happened to my stomach in the last few days. I had intentions of not repeating my pattern today but I'm sitting here stuffed. Makes me upset, so hopefully if I talk about it, come clean about it, Monday will start off as a better day. It's got to, honestly, because I won't be around so much food.

So Thursday night my gentleman caller (the one who likes vegetables and we kind of broke up but not really because we kind of see each other more often now and that's a story for another time and another blog and I'm going to get back to the food now... you're still reading the paranthetical aside... la la la... doo doo doo waaaah. Okay, I'm done) invited me over for dinner and we got some Applebee's takeout. I went running before I went over, ran 5k, and didn't have my afternoon snack. I was ravenous.

Against my better judgment (salad) I decided on the Lemon Shrimp Fettuccini because dammit I had been really good all week and I deserved the calories.

I was pretty damned stuffed.

And I always say bad behavior breeds more bad behavior... and that's absolutely the case.

Friday we had a luncheon at work. Had to leave the office around 9:30 AM to get there, set up, do all that, then the attendees started showing up around 11:30. What's that mean? That means I didn't get second breakfast. So by lunch... I had one and a half desserts on the table, had all my salad, and TWO dinner rolls. With butter. Fortunately I didn't eat all of my main course... but I was pretty full. The belt around my cute new dress that I got for the occasion was fairly tight after that meal.

Then I go hang out that evening with my gentleman and his kiddos and there's potato chips and I eat those... then there's spaghetti.

I felt about thirty pounds heavier.

Saturday? Oh, Saturday was hellish in the food world. I had first breakfast and then didn't eat lunch until around 1:30 PM. Had another event for work that I went to. I didn't really eat too much there... but I was so hungry that food didn't actually sound good. So I ate a lot... then when I left I stopped and got a frosty shake, which was sucked down before I even got home (I did get a small, at least) and then I order CHINESE FOOD because I can. Yea.

So this morning I was only up 2 pounds... still below goal, so that's good.

But today I thought would be better. But I'm so full. I didn't go too much over my allowed calories though, since I went running this afternoon.

Tomorrow my goal is to not be over full. Hopefully that'll create positive habits again. Detox that pesky overeating out of me.

I made some tasty stuff this week though that I wanted to share.

First, simple stuff. More ways to eat avocado? Yes please. I had some Special K crackers, Laughing Cow Cream Cheese wedges and avocado. The flavor on the Special K crackers didn't really compliment the avocado well, but the cream cheese and the avocado was super together! I'd recommend a different cracker, something without spices on it, spread on the cheese and top with a slice of avocado. Yumtastic.

Next up, I saw a Sweet Potato and Black Bean Quesadilla on Pinterest so I decided I was going to make something similar. I had butternut squash though. So I used a serving of butternut squash, half a serving of low sodium black beans, used La Tortilla Factory's low carb tortillas (80 calories, what?) and some reduced fat Sargento mexican shredded cheese. It was good. :D

I finally tried that new Perdue Simply Smart frozen chicken... I used it to make Chicken Parm.  Yum.

I went crazy with the food making today. Did some more baked boiled eggs to have this week at work. Today I made some cupcakes that I saw on Pinterest (sans filling because, hey, too many calories) and I FINALLY cooked myself some spaghetti squash. Let's start with the cupcakes. Here's what I did:

Halloween Cookies n' Cream Cupcakes

1 box white cake mix

3 egg whites

1 cup water

1 stick butter, melted

24 Oreos 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 muffin tins with cupcake papers and place one Oreo in the bottom of each one.

In a mixing bowl, combine cake mix, egg whites, water and melted butter. Mix with a stand mixer, hand mixer, or with an arm of steel if you happen to have one of those until well mixed and creamy.

Divide the batter evenly into each cupcake paper. I used a knife to get the batter to drop down around the cookie because it is rather think. Don't fill the whole way, but it will be more full than you'd expect.

Bake each muffin tin separately for 20 minutes. They'll be golden on top. Cool for a bit in the tin to finish cooking, then cool on a rack.

For the frosting I went lazy and did the following:

1 ½ tubs of Pillsbury White Frosting

Remaining Oreos in the package, crushed well.

I mixed the two together with my mixer. If you're planning to pipe your frosting onto the cupcakes be sure ALL big pieces of cookie are pulverized because there'll be a lot of annoyance digging those chunks out of the tip.

One cupcake comes out to 300 calories. It was good and dense and tasty, not too sweet. The cookie is a little softer so not too hard to bite into.

Yum.

On to the spaghetti squash. The entire time I was fixing this I thought to myself, “there's absolutely no way that this is a good pasta replacement...” and I looked forward to chomping down on stuff that tasted a lot like squash.

But then I tried it smothered in marinara sauce.

It's absolutely sufficient for a pasta replacement. Holy crap. It feels just like angel hair pasta in my mouth. And it's 40 something calories for a cup! Holy night! Here's what I did:

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Split your spaghetti squash in half with a machete, or perhaps some sword you just pulled out of a stone. Scrape out the seeds and innards of the squash and spray the inside with a little olive oil spray. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

I baked mine for 45 minutes. Let cool for a bit before you start scraping the insides with a fork. It really does shred up like pasta, it's creepy and strange! I really didn't believe it until I started doing it and wow...

So I had 2 cups of this stuff. With a ½ cup of marinara. And a cupcake.

And I'm stuffed again.

I'm not looking forward to stepping on that scale in the morning.