Do It Til' Your Satisfied

           This week's meeting topic was satisfaction. This is in regards to being on the Weight Watchers plan. Before WW, satisfaction meant eating until I passed out. Okay so I did not always pass out but we think of satisfied as being full. Full does not always feel good. When over eating poorly, FULL can feel really bad.When you change your eating habits ( or for lack of a good word DIET), you may start feeling deprived because suddenly you are not eating until you cannot eat anymore. So how do you chane these eating habits?
1) Plan, plan plan
2) Research
3) Analyze
           Unless you regulary laugh in the face of danger, plan what you are going to eat. I plan everyday. Not only do I plan to eat things that I enjoy, but I plan to eat things that will sustain me until the next meal or snack. Here is an example;
Weekday breakfast: 2 egg whites, one slice of cheese, on english muffin or bagel thin and two oranges.
The english muffin /bagel thin satisfies the bread eater in me.
The slice of cheese is the fun side and provides some dairy.
The oranges are my fruit plus they help balance out my blood pressure medication.
The two eggs whites are the true hero of this breakfast because they provide the PROTEIN element that will hold me over until lunch.

Weekday lunch: Creative salad.
Two cups of tossed salad is a filling food (plus it's 0 points)
3/4 of granny smith apple or 4oz of raspberries is also a filling food and lends a hint of sweet.
Salad dressing- you don't have to have it but I enjoy two tablespoons of a light dressing like Ken's sweet vidalia onion
The meat from one chicken drumstick. There are always leftovers in my house but you may substitute a hard boiled egg or beans. Sometimes I add a 1/4 cup of black beans even if I have the chicken. This element in again, PROTEIN.
Also, this sounds like a lot of food and it is. And I am happy after I have eaten it because I added the elements that would make it colorful and yummy. The combination of all these flavors is satisfying.

Dinner: usually chicken , pork or fish , a side like rice or baked potato and veggies. I like all kinds of veggies. I try to make sure that I have a bigger serving of veggies than the side. One of my "gateway" foods is spaghetti and meat sauce. I love spaghetti and it took me a long, long, long time to come to grips with one or one and a half cup serving size. One of my deal breakers is to have a big salad with it. I eat the whole salad first in the hope that it will trick my stomach into thinking it has eaten enough spaghetti. 98% ot the time this works.

Snacks: I actually eat fruit first for most of my snacks. Fruit has fiber in it and it takes your stomach all while to digest it. Another good snack is the fat free kettle korn. That like having someting naughty in abundance. And popcorn is a great filling snack.

These are my examples of both plan and research. I plan what I am going to eat so that I am not too tempted to make a bad decision and I research the amount of points that I am going to use on each item so that I can add more, like in the case of the salad.
   The last part of satisfaction is to analyze. If you find yourself unsatisfied after eating or you want to eat too much of an occasional food, try to figure out what is going on inside of you. Are you upset? Are you tired?Are you really hungry ? If you are not satisfied about something, try to resolve it. If resolving is impossible, do something that boosts your adreniline like walking or running, Wii boxing, BAM( bitching and moaning) with someone who listens.
          
             I had a surprising week. I lost 1.6lbs. Last week I lost a whopping 6.4lbs. Usually when I lose a large amount, I stabilize ( and sometimes gain) the next week. My current weight is 237.4lbs. My total loss so far is 40.2lbs. I am really excited about this because it is another 10lbs gone. Now my next goal is the 50lb loss goal. I was able to get back to my weekend warrior workout of jogging so on both Saturday and Sunday I jogged three and a half miles straight each day. I rode my bike three nights last week as well. This week I am going to keep walking my two plus miles to work in the morning and try to ride my bike a few nights for about four miles. I also plan to do my weekend warrior thing by jogging.