Baby Steps

Over the past couple weeks my weight has been slowly dropping even though I haven't been closely counting calories - it seems that I'm starting to learn to eat according to my stomach and stop when I'm full.  Last night I had a craving for some comfort food and instead of fighting it I decided to try an experiment with some of my favorite foods.  I picked up a pint of Ben & Jerry's and an Amy's frozen pizza.  Dangerous stuff, I know...you may even want to cover your eyes, because this is horror-movie-suspenseful...

I had an episode of Biggest Loser and the premiere of Lost cued up and ready to go - and while the pizza was baking I opened the carton of ice cream, grabbed a spoon, and headed for my favorite pig-out post, the big blue chair.  I told myself to eat until I didn't want any more, and dug in.  I put the ice cream away when the timer for the pizza went off.  Told myself I could return to the ice cream after pizza, and that I could have as much pizza as I wanted.

The results?  In total, I ate just under two servings of ice cream and only two slices of pizza.  And after the pizza, I just didn't want any more ice cream!  Yes, I ate almost 1200 calories for dinner, which is about twice as much as I would normally eat.  But 1200 calories is much much less than I could have eaten, believe me.  I didn't eat the entire carton of ice cream and I didn't eat the whole pizza!  AND - and this is the best part - I didn't spend the rest of the evening trolling through the kitchen trying to figure out what else I could eat.  I ate until I was not quite full, until I was no longer savoring the taste of either food, and then stopped.  In the past I would have finished both, even if I wasn't really enjoying either and I would have eaten until I felt too full.


The pizza wasn't my normal irresistible pepperoni pizza from Michael's down the street (the best pizza in Philly as far as I'm concerned).  It was a 3-cheese cornmeal crust pizza which didn't taste bad, but didn't have that 'oh my god I can't stop eating this' quality that Michael's pizza has.  Pizza is a definite trigger food for me, so I think choosing one that isn't on my list of absolute favorites helped set me up for success in this experiment.  I'm not quite ready to try this with a large, oily, pepperoni pizza because I don't yet feel like I could stop at just a couple pieces - and that might set off some guilt and a few days of backlash binging.  But I did control myself with the ice cream which is a huge step forward.  And I didn't eat just for the sake of eating. 

Baby steps!