Why do we cheat…

on diets, of course. What else would I be talking about?

by brianna.lehman on Flickr

As I mentioned earlier, I’m pregnant. A month or so ago, I also learned that I have gestational diabetes. Since the diagnosis, I have noticed that when I follow the eating plan, certain stomach issues are virtually non-existent. Then, when I realized I could “cheat” and my blood sugar was okay (most of the time), well, I started cheating more. Then certain stomach issues returned and I would feel… blah (dizzy, unfocused, sleepy, etc.) after eating whatever it was I wasn’t “supposed to” eat. So why do I cheat? If eating “the right foods” makes me feel better physically and mentally (and is better for my baby!!), then why would I even want to eat “the wrong foods”?

I’ve been on and off of diets most of my life and there are two important lessons that it took me far too long to learn:

1) It took a lifetime to put this weight on, it’s not coming off over night (translation: quit looking at the pills and gimmicks that promise rapid weight loss, dammit!)

2) A diet is simply the food you eat. Nothing more. Nothing less. You can have a diet filled with healthy foods, a diet filled with unhealthy foods, or a mix of the two.

I believe I have to be careful with that first one, though. There is the potential to use that as an excuse to maintain the status quo and continue with unhealthy habits.

If I truly believe that second one, though, then why do I have such a problem making healthier choices and feeling so guilty when I splurge? Why am I craving chocolate right now? I was discussing this with a friend of mine and she said, “Here’s my theory – because you (and I’ll put myself right in this category because I know this is how I think) label it a ‘diet’, and with a ‘diet’ comes restrictions, and dammit, you just don’t want to live your life by restrictions. Any ‘diet’ I’ve ever tried I always get the mentality of ‘Of course I CAN have whatever I want, you can’t tell me I CAN’T’ – and then I blow the diet.” I have wise friends.

To try to get a little more insight on why we cheat, I also turned to Google and I was shocked! The first page is chock full of “Go ahead! Cheat!” type findings. What?! Apparently, yes. Go ahead. Indulge. But here are some recurring themes I saw: moderation, control, no guilt, indulge then return to healthy habits.

One article I liked gave 5 rules to cheating on your diet and suggested “indulge and still lose weight” by following those 5 “simple rules”.

1.  Get over the guilt.

“Nothing is forbidden”. For the biblically-minded, read 1 Corinthians 10:23: “’Everything is permissible’ – but not everything is beneficial. ‘Everything is permissible’ – but not everything is constructive.”  Paul says it a little differently in 1 Corinthians 6:12-13: “’Everything is permissible for me’ – but not everything is beneficial. ‘Everything is permissible for me’ – but I will not be mastered by anything. ‘Food for the stomach and the stomach for food’…”

Supposedly, once I accept that nothing is forbidden, guilt is banned. But I say, “Guilt, in the words of Chicago, you’re a hard habit to break.” Thinking about that, though, I know I can do it. I’ve done it before. See the disclaimer section at the bottom of this post. That was primarily in music performance for me, but perhaps I can apply that to food as well. Interesting.

2.  If you cheat, make sure to do it in a public place.

I laughed out loud at that one. I am SO guilty (oops) of this! Confession: I sneak food (and now, doggoneit, my husband knows! Never mind that he probably already knew). Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hoard it or hide it in my room or around the house. I simply indulge when others aren’t around. I would say it’s because I have kids and don’t want them to see me and my bad habit. Or that I don’t want to get “food police” going by cheating, I mean indulging, in front of other adults. But considering I’ve been sneaking food for a long time, it’s no one’s fault but my own and will be a habit I believe I’ll need to break in order to move past the “cheating” mentality and the feelings of guilt that go along with that mentality.

3.  Break the chain that links cheating with a lack of willpower.

There is the stigma of “failure” that comes with perceived cheating, but I believe if you can “get over the guilt” and not hide or sneak indulging, this will come. I also believe that if I could truly view “diet” as simply the food I eat – whatever that food may be – it would be huge step in breaking this chain.

4.  Don’t try to be an angel.  Aim for progress, not perfection.

Yeah, see #1 and the recovering perfectionist bit then wish me luck!  My aforementioned friend also told me about something a nutritionist said that’s possibly the best advice either of us has heard – and it was echoed in this section of the article: “No one can diet 100% of the time. No one can be good 100% of the time. It’s not realistic. Eat good 80-85% of the time. The other 15-20%? Whatever.” She went on to say, “It all comes down to moderation, and making it a lifestyle and not a diet.” In getting things back under control after a recent trip to Asia, she found a calorie tracking website she loves. “But even though I’m tracking calories, and making better overall food choices, I still eat sweets. Last night I had a brownie. I’ve been eating Hershey’s minis. I just portion control it. That seems to be the realistic way I need to eat in my life so that I stay in control because when you tell me I ‘CAN’T’ have something… you can bet I will. I had a Chick-Fil-A milkshake for lunch the other day, and darn it, it was good.”

I think I’ve said before that gluttony is my favorite sin. “Moderation” and “portion control” on things that I like to indulge in… well, that’s an oxymoron. BUT! Perhaps even that can change when I change the way I think about food, occasional indulging, and changing my view of “diet”.

5.  It’s absolutely OK, and even appropriate, to skip certain meals!

In other words, only eat when you’re hungry. Another article took this one a step further and suggests analyzing why you cheated and then coming up with an alternate plan for what to do next time. I’ve gotten better about this. If I know I’m going out to eat at a favorite restaurant in the evening, I do my best to make better choices during the day. I’ve even gotten better about eating when bored – finding something else to do rather than grabbing something sugary and/or fatty. I don’t do so hot when I’m wanting “comfort food”, though. Because sometimes you just want a Chick-Fil-A milkshake. Or a brownie. Or Hershey’s minis. And that’s okay because, darn it, they’re good!

What are reasons you find yourself “cheating” on diets? Any thoughts on “lifestyle” versus “diet”?

Starting Again – Part… well, who’s counting?

I’ve neglected the blog. Again. My apologies. Again. I’ve actually been neglecting my blog reading as well. I currently have 58 unread posts in my “Blogging” category and 98 unread in my “Inspiring” category.  I also have a sneaking suspicion that, at some point(s), I hit the “Mark All As Read” button. After perusing the titles some, I think I went and overwhelmed myself. The blogs in the Blogging category are mostly “how-to” type things. I’m wondering if I need to unsubscribe from those and just write rather than worry about if I’m doing it correctly or not.

I really need to catch up on the Inspiring category, though, because it’s typically those that get me thinking and give me ideas of things to post here.

So what’s new in my world?

Choosing 6 post – yeah, I didn’t follow that. My kitchen is better and I don’t believe it’s gotten *quite* as bad as that picture again. A recent visit from my brother and sis-in-law motivated me to clean it off again, though, and I will try to keep it as clear as possible. Again.

Shiny Sink post – I haven’t been keeping up with FlyLady either. I do make more of an effort to keep dirty dishes from piling up so at least ONE side of my sink is “shiny”. The side with the drainer it usually ends up filled with plastic dishware that have come from the dishwasher and that I’ve deemed as “too wet” to put away.

Twisted Story Tuesday – not sure if I’ll continue that or not because I’m not sure I really want to do gimmicky stuff and that felt gimmicky.

De-Cluttering one room per week – didn’t do it. Probably won’t. I think my time schedule may have been a bit too tight for all that we typically have going on. That said, I do believe I need a schedule. I don’t know about you, but if I wait to do something “when I have time”, it typically won’t get done until something forces me to MAKE the time. Case in point – my brother’s recent visit. The dining room is relatively clean. Neat aside on that: Our 7 year old daughter was tasked with the table since most of it was her art stuff. We told her to just work on things that were hers, don’t worry about the other stuff. WELL! She started getting glimpses of the table and liked it! She liked it so much in fact, that she decided to keep going even though she’d finished “her” stuff!

Once-a-month cooking (or in my case, twice-a- month) – that’s kind of fallen by the wayside as well. I do still plan a menu, though it’s only weekly most of the time.  Insert a myriad of excuses – legit or otherwise – as to why I took it easy and rested on the weekends instead of doing housework.

Oh yeah, I’M PREGNANT!!! Our baby boy is due at the end of September. His room is not ready, though it is cleaner than it was (see above mentioned family visit). At this point, I’m trying not to panic. I looked at the calendar and realized that the first open weekend we all have together is August 13. Considering our daughter was a month early, well, I’m trying not to panic.

Stop the “What’s for dinner?” Insanity!

25th October 298/365 by fifikins on Flickr

I don’t know about you, but the constant question of “What’s for dinner?” drives me batty!! That’s why I try my best to cook ahead. That’s what I’m calling it, anyway. Lots of people know it as freezer meals or once-a-month cooking, though. Working full-time, I don’t really feel that I have time to do the once-a-month bit. That and, a month down the road, I may not want what I planned for that night’s meal.

How’d I get here?

My first job in Birmingham involved a 45 minute commute, which made for early mornings and, if I waited until I got home to start dinner, very late nights. With a toddler, that just wasn’t cutting it. I started deciding in the morning what to fix for dinner that night and would have it at least partially ready before we left for work, then would finish it when we got home. That helped. As our daughter got older, I did eventually start planning menus and doing my shopping list based on that. I also discovered “quick” meals and got to the point that, if it couldn’t  be on the table within 30 minutes, I didn’t cook it during the week. Considering how much I enjoy playing in the kitchen, that got old. So I started digging around the internet and happened upon once-a-month cooking.

It can be fairly time consuming at first and involves a good deal of planning and organizing. While I’ve gotten better at that over the years, I still stumble from time to time. The key is to get back up. If you ever start menu planning – even if it’s just weekly meals – KEEP THEM. I have mine in a folder. I know others who have binders. Once you have a few weeks’ meals planned, you just pull from those and maybe toss in a new recipe now and then for variety. I’m considering using a little spreadsheet I found over at Vertex42 for my meal planning (Yes, I’m an Excel geek). Entering the info will be tedious, but once it’s in – man, it looks handy! It not only has drop downs to select meals, but will also create a shopping list!

How do you get there?

Do a little internet research. There are a ton of sites out there that teach about freezer meals and once-a-month cooking. I actually do one to two weeks at a time instead of a whole month. Working Monday-Friday, weekends are really my only shot at shopping and cooking.

• Pick a night to plan your menu. Sales ads typically come out on Wednesdays.
• Once you have your menu, make your grocery list from that.
• Go shopping, preferably with no kids.
• The day before cooking day, get your kitchen ready. Have the recipes out and ready, have containers ready, have dishes and utensils ready, do the prep work – cutting, chopping, grating, etc.
• The day of cooking, work on one meat-type at a time.
• If  you don’t have a lot of time during the week to reheat a fully cooked item, just prepare it to the point of cooking. Casseroles, for example: you can mix the ingredients together and put it in a gallon freezer bag. To serve, just thaw it, pour it into a casserole dish, top it with whatever topping you like and bake – done in about 30 minutes!

Other tips

• Keep freezer bags and freezer containers on hand, as well as a good marker for labeling.
• Clean dishes and utensils as you go – it’s handy to have a sink of hot, soapy water standing by.
• Get a good pair of kitchen scissors – they’re AWESOME for cutting meat into chunks quickly.
• I also recommend one of these for quickly chopping or dicing practically anything (admittedly, ham was messy to clean, but it worked!).
• Still not keen on cutting and chopping? Lots of foods come already cut up. If you don’t mind the expense, it can be worth it.
• Got something soupy? Put your freezer bag in a large coffee can so that the top of the bag folds over the can’s edge. Pour in the soup with next to no mess. Smaller bags? A tall plastic cup works well.
• Rotisserie chickens – cut them up and serve with bone-in or take the meat off the bones and you have meat for whatever dish you need it for.
• Another way to get started on this is to cook extras. If you’re making a meatloaf one night, go ahead and make two. Eat one, freeze the other. Do this enough times, and your freezer will be stocked before you know it!

I’ve now gotten to where I can do this using my own menus and recipes. If you’re not sure how to get started, though, or how to combine all the steps from your different recipes, it may be a good idea to start off using some menus from books or sites specifically aimed at once-a-month cooking. The two books I have are Once-a-Month Cooking by Mimi Wilson & Mary Beth Langerborg and Frozen Assets by Deborah Taylor-Hough. They include monthly menus, two-week menus, and even some holiday menus. The recipes are easy and, so far, we’ve yet to find one we don’t like. Granted, if a recipe calls for something we don’t care for, we don’t cook it. My daughter won’t eat eggs, so I ditch the egg dishes. My husband’s allergic to shell-fish, so… you get the point. And just so you know, I get no proceeds whatsover from any of the products I’ve recommended in this post. These are items I have and use and love. Found something I’ve linked to for a better price somewhere else? Go for it! Found something else you love? Go for it and please share it.

Bottom Line

If you’re trying to come up with a way to do homecooked meals more often, whether it’s for budget reasons or health reasons, give this a try. Don’t give up on it if it doesn’t quite work. Figure out where it went wrong and see if you can re-vamp it for your situation. Enjoy!

Tags: freezer meals, Meal Planning, once-a-month cooking

De-Cluttering Update

Well, I have a shiny sink (most days). My counters are relatively clutter free and I’m loving actually having counter space to work on. I wasn’t able to part with the paint can turned Halloween can or the cool Russian wine bottle. The can is actually quite good at holding pencils and pens. I plan to incorporate the bottle into decorating. Somewhere. Somehow. It really is cool.

My next task was to be the dining room, but this week has been primarily working to maintain my kitchen cleanliness.

The table will be my biggest challenge in the dining room. One corner is filled with our daughter’s art projects and paraphernalia. Another corner is Halloween candy. Yes, Halloween candy. And my rice cooker. You see, I didn’t have room on the counters to put it in the kitchen, so I put it on the corner of the dining table near an outlet. I suppose I can put it back in the kitchen now. Novel idea, huh?  Then the other half is primarily mail and crap that needs to be shredded or tossed.

One question comes to mind as I work on these things: How does this tie into More 2 This Life? Is my de-cluttering and cleaning basically the same thing as just trying to make it through the day, same old same old? Perhaps on some level, yes. But I also believe that if my home is clean, tidy, peaceful, etc. then we’ll feel that way when we’re at home. How many sayings have you heard regarding one’s home? Here are a few I found:

Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home. (John Howard Payne)

He is the happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home. (van Goethe)

Home is the most popular, and will be the most enduring of all earthly establishments. (Channing Pollock)

I believe that being successful means having a balance of success stories across the many areas of your life. You can’t truly be considered successful in your business life if your home life is in shambles. (Zig Ziglar)

There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort. (Jane Austen)

I think the best thing I can do is to be a distraction. A husband lives and breathes his work all day long. If he comes home to more table thumping, how can the poor man ever relax? (Jackie Kennedy)

Now I realize that last quote will likely trigger some feelings about women being oppressed and all that not-so-good stuff, but that’s another post. I also believe that Ziglar’s quote refers to more than just the physical state of the home, but that’s maybe another post one day too. The bottom line is that all of these quotes describe the home as a place to get away, find peace, find comfort, find distraction from work, a place that you can go and just be yourself and not worry. Do you really believe you can find all that in the midst of clutter? I can’t. I may enjoy sitting and doing nothing for a bit, but the chaos will eventually get to me.

Having a place you can come into and be comfortable, be at peace, and just be yourself – THAT, to me, is an important part to an abundant life.

And that’s how all this de-cluttering fits into finding More 2 This Life.

The power of… the shiny sink.

Why would you want to shine your sink? Because it’s GORGEOUS! See?

Ooooo.... shiinnnyyy!

If you haven’t discovered FlyLady yet, feel free to hop over and visit. Who is FlyLady? She’s an extremely organized lady who is encouraging others to FLY! One of the ways we can fly is by keeping our house organized and out of CHAOS (can’t have anyone over syndrome, btw). The first step is to shine your sink. I agree, it sounds silly. She even told me it would sound silly. But I did it. And if you do it, I’m willing to bet you’ll love it too and here’s why:

Because you’ll want to keep it that way

My mom has shined mine for me. Multiple times. And it was gorgeous each time. But guess what? Within a few days it was back to normal. My theory is that it’s because I didn’t do it. We tend to be a little more possessive of something we’ve done ourselves. When someone else does it for us, we don’t have quite the same attachment.

Because you’ll want to shiny up more

You’ll want to shiny up the spaces around that shiny sink (notice that the picture does NOT include the counters around the sink… yet. It’ll come. Patience, grasshopper.). I had dishes on the left side that were from the dishwasher – mostly plastics that needed to dry a little more before being put away. There were other odds and ends from my daughter’s days of sippy cups (she’s about to turn 7. SEVEN!).  There are also sometimes pots or pans that I hand-washed and set over there to dry. No more! It made me want to continue de-cluttering, but I made myself stop. Some of you clean-freak types (and even some of you who know it’s rare that we get into a “cleaning mood”) are probably yelling, “Why?!”

Baby Steps

I stopped because I had told myself I would clean off and shine my sink. That was it. After that was quality time with my husband and the completion of a  much anticipated Dr. Who episode. Tonight, I’ll be doing another piece of the counter, shine my sink, then go have some more quality time with my husband.

I’ll be honest. I’m not looking forward to this. I enjoy organizing, but I’m also a bit of a pack rat. “But that wine bottle is so neat and it’s clay with a foreign language on it, so it must be valuable! So what if it was something the previous owners left when we moved in 5 years ago!” “Hey, I might find the cup this lid goes to…” “Awww… Taylor made that Halloween bucket out of a paint can when she was in K-4. Or was it K-3?” Any of those sound vaguely familiar?

Each night, I’ll be shining my sink. I hope you will too – it really is a neat feeling.

Choosing 6 for 2010

Why is there a picture of a cluttered countertop? (Trust me, it’s a countertop.)  I’m so glad you asked!

Over on my links page is a blog called Zen Habits. Leo Babauta, the guy who runs it, has created another blog called 6 Changes and says that this method is “the antidote to the failure of New Year’s Resolutions”. I’ve read through the method and have chosen my 6 that will be worked on through the course of this year. He says to make it as public as possible, so here goes!  The first one I’m going to work on is *drumroooollllll*  Clutter!  (the crowd goes wild!!). Or not. My friends and family will probably laugh. To be honest, part of me is also thinking, “Ha! Yeah… right.” and “Good luck with that…”  I have a dichotomy going on in my noggin, after all. Look at my countertops and other open spaces and it’s a mess. Open up a cabinet drawer and it’s (usually) organized and neat. So, for the sake of specificity, my goal is stated thusly: I will de-clutter one room of my house each week (and keep it de-cluttered)!

Each goal is to take two months and I have 8 rooms in my house (I’m considering our two bathrooms as “one”).  I decided to start with clutter because, honestly, it’s the one driving me the craziest right now. I want to eat healthier and lose weight and will be working on that some, but my primary focus during the first two months of the year will be de-cluttering.

I’ll be updating my progress here, obviously.

He also stresses the importance of enjoying the journey. If I don’t enjoy what I’m doing, it’s doubtful that it will stick. I suppose this is where I let my inner obsessive-compulsive out. When I have cleaned a room, I LOVE the way it looks. It’s so neat. Everything is in its proper spot. I can’t explain the aesthetic feeling I get when I look at a neat and well put together room. I love it! My chest feels like it could pop and I want to freeze that moment forever. But without fail, within a few weeks, I get lazy and just set something down instead of putting it away. Or, I see that someone else has put something down instead of putting it away and, for some insane reason, I see that as permission. That one innocent little item leads to the path of destruction. Okay, slight exaggeration, but it’s not long after that “one item” appears that the rest of the room is suddenly cluttered again.

In an attempt to thwart that, I also have come across a plan that allows one to do a quick “clean-up” for each room of a house. It involves having all the tools together, so that’ll be part of my journey to the goal – putting together the right tools.

In one of his posts on minimalism, Leo says to look at your possessions and determine if what you have is truly important. “Whittle it down until you’re left with the minimum for the life you want to lead.”  So, each day, I will go in whatever room I’m working on in a given week and look for things that are not needed and get rid of them. I’m planning to do one section of the room each day (another option is setting a time limit, but I know I won’t want to quit in the middle of a section if time is up). So, I’ll clear out a section and divide it into keep, trash, give away. He suggests another box for items I’m not sure about: box it up, label it, if I haven’t opened it in 6 months, give it away or trash it.

I also need to figure out a trigger – something I do every day – weekdays AND weekends. Why? Because if I plan to add that task, I’m likely to let it slide when things get busy. If the task is tied to something I already do, it’s more likely to stick.  That said, I’ve also recently discovered a little site called FlyLady. This lady is ÜBER organized and I can SO see myself going there.