Not beating-myself-up crap -- I was too harried and exhausted to even worry about that. But physically miserable; so incredibly tired that I was dragging myself everywhere, despite sleeping more than eight hours a night. Sick-to-my-stomach often. (Typically within half an hour of eating the white food / sugar / etc., but also more carsick on my commute than I have been in months.) It feels pretty clear that this food and my body do not agree with each other. So I'm now left with the question of how did it happen? I'd been pretty disciplined for a month and a half, so why did it just fall apart?
I think there were three aspects to it.
1) I was busy enough that I didn't plan well to have healthy food options around, so when I got hungry, I had few choices available, so I just ate what was there.
2) I was working hard enough on academic stuff that it used up a lot of discipline / willpower, leaving me almost nothing leftover for health discipline.
3) We had a bunch of yummy-looking food in the house leftover from the party, and I am a bit pathological about not wasting food. I should have frozen it (white bread), put it on a high shelf (chocolates), or just thrown it away (leftover cake). But I didn't do any of those things, and so I ate it all. ALL.
I'm back to discipline today, hopefully. I need to go buy some multigrain bread and others healthy stapes this weekend. I'm working 'til late on campus, so I'm going to have to get lunch and dinner out; I'll try to pick places where I can find healthy options. Mostly, I think having the right food in my house is key for making this work, though.
Laura, I owe you $25, as I have lost our bet spectacularly. Wanna go out for brown rice sushi and sashimi sometime? :-)
P.S. There was also something of a vicious cycle that kicked in. Eat junk, feel like crap, get exhausted, too tired to go shop for healthy food, open fridge, stare at what's there, take the easy / comforting food option, feel like crap, rinse and repeat. It got harder and harder to eat well as I went along.
I feel terrible, much as you dewscribed, whenever I eat any sort of grain at all except for a little popcorn. I eat about three of tablespoons of popcorn, popped in an air popper, about once a week. That is all the grain I can handle without getting exhausted and out of breath even climbing the stairs to my third floor office.
I think maybe the trick might be to figure out how much you can tolerate. I think you will never give up the white stuff entirely – there will always be parties and travel and eating at other people’s houses – but I’m guessing there is some amount that is ok for you.
Possibly you should get a bird feeding table, and put the leftover cake/bread out on it. For example, we put the gingerbread house out on it. It turns out squirrels love gingerbread but crows hate it. Everyone likes white bread. (Yes, we are the neighborhood animal feeders. Did you know feeding squirrels regularly turns their fur red? If I eat a lot of peanuts, will my hair turn red?)
There’s been a recent study which says we eat more when we’re tired. Even worse, we tend to eat a lot for evening snacks when we’re tired.
http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2013/03/11/less-sleep-leads-more-eating-and-more-weight-gain-according-new-cu-boulder
I think you’re doing great. You can’t expect a straightforward road. Life is twisty.
Oh, I’m not too worried — just trying to figure out what happened. 🙂 But great idea re: birds / squirrels. I hung up a birdfeeder last week and filled it with seed, but no birds seem to have found it yet, which is bumming me out. Maybe cake would have helped…