Bad Food Habits

Cheeseburgar with bacon mixed in, topped with rib meat! BBQ time. Urgh.

My Ten Sins of Eating

Here are some bad eating habits I have had to do away with.  Some are embarassing, but I figure defeating them involves talking about them.

1. Pre-dinner dinner.  I would stop on the way home from work once in a while and get drive-through food, or hit a store and get something and eat it before Dawn got home. Then we'd have dinner, also.  Mostly this happened if I had spare money in my pocket in the form of cash.

2. Late night eating.  Dawn often goes to sleep by 10 or 10:30.  I often am up until 12 or 1. Lifelong short-sleep span.  That means I have had dinner about 3 hours earlier.. and eating due to nagging hunger would happen.  Usually stuff like toast+peanut butter, or I'd grab chips and salsa, etc.

3. Poor choice of snacks.  We have fruit around all the time.  But I snack on stuff like.. peanut butter.. cheese.. occasionally, sour cream + chips, etc.

4. Skipping breakfast.  Bad for the metabolism, no morning energy.. makes me too hungry at lunchtime.  Eating mostly carbs also left me hungry way too often - proteins fill you up and keep you feeling full. It's really rather amazing the difference.

5. Sweet tooth ninja.  I'd go to the store, and in addition to stuff I needed, I'd also get a candy bar and munch it.  Worse, sometimes I'd get a little bag of candy bars and squirrel it away somewhere and munch them.  I could go through a whole bag in 1-2 days. 

6. Office food vulture.  People bring food to work a lot, usually not healthy food.  When it got put out - say, for example, donuts.. I'd take one. Then wrap another in a paper towel and stick it in my drawer.  If I went back and more were in the kitchen, I might get another. Junk food addiction at its finest.  Also I'd buy a box of sort-of healthy granola bars.. should last me 1-2 weeks. I'd eat them all in a couple of days.  They were there, so I'd eat them. Habit, habit, habit.

7. Portion excess.  I used to eat about 2-3 times as big a portion as I really needed. I'd eat because it was there, and tasted good.  Why not have a third piece of garlic bread?  I mean I only ate a giant plate of spaghetti with tons of cheese already, and a salad covered in fatty dressing.

8. Weekend binging.  Oh hello, weekend. It's time for me to hang out with friends... and drink beer and alcohol, eat 4 slices of pizza, hit the store to get hostess stuff, candy, chips.. and then later, hit up a drive-through somewhere for late-night sourdough jacks.

9. French fries.  Grease, salt, starch - and usually with a dipping side of fatty ranch, or tartar sauce.  The best junk food and such a common side.  I have a love affair with french fries (and to a lesser extent, onion rings) and they are deadly, especially deep fried.

10. Automatic Eating.  We live in a culture obsessed with food, it is on billboards, on television shows, in your face at every checkout line, even at gas stations, etc.  I (and many other people) was definitely in the habit of eating despite not being hungry.  Watching televisino or playing a game? Better have something to snack on.  Using the computer? Better grab a snack.  At the theater? Better eat something. After all I might waste away in the 2 hours it takes to get through a movie!

Regardless of which of these ten 'food sins' I committed, it was almost always with a feeling of guilt.  I knew they were awful habits, but did them anyway. Usually afterwards, I would berate myself a bit.  Really, I had a food addiction, and I believe it is no different than any other addiction. You can know it is wrong and keep doing it, and feel bad about it.

I'm puttin' this on here because if you read this post and do any of these - I feel for you.  I really did desire NOT to do these things but would find myself helpless to the urges regardless.  It took a lot of determination to begin a planned diet and stick to it.  I have half-assed dieting before and fooled myself into thinking a couple days a week at the gym would make up for my transgressions into greasy food.

It just doesn't work like that. :P

I am happy to say that as of the start of my new diet on 8/29/11 all ten of these things are completely done with.  I managed to cold-turkey all of them at once and three weeks not on a healthy diet, I feel pretty fantastic!  I've not been to a scale yet - but I will soon. Saving it up to see a net result after a few weeks of effort.