Less tired now.

I called off work yesterday, walked to the grocery store with pictures dancing in my head of a huge binge: frozen pizza, Ben & Jerry's, a bag of mini Snickers bars, a bag of Doritos, and donuts. I ended up coming home with a 2-liter of Diet Pepsi, a Lean Cuisine single-serve microwave pizza, pita bread, hummus, a bag of sugar snap peas, a pint of strawberries, and a pint of Healthy Choice ice cream. Granted, this is still a lot more than I ought to have eaten in one fell swoop, but it beats the hell out of my original intentions. Possibly this indicates that as long as I still hit all the food notes-- sweet, salty, crunchy, bready & cheezy & tomatoey (that last would be the pizza), the idiotic Inner Cartman will accept substitutions.

There's hope to be found in the fact that I turned up my nose at everything in the chips aisle, couldn't bear the thought of the nasty frozen pizzas, and was all "eh" over the Ben & Jerry's flavors. Also, the fact that produce made an appearance is a banner day in the binging saga; I don't think that's ever happened before.

I think the key to surviving an unavoidable binge may be variety, and small package sizes, and lower-cal versions. And expanding the produce portion.

I feel better today. I got a bunch of sleep, a lot of alone time, I rested up and didn't require anything of myself. I pondered.

I have a plan, and the plan is this: I'm going to pick up the Body For Life book. Not sure if I'm going to follow it yet, but a quick glance over my meals of late tells me that I've been low on protein, high on carbs. (I've gone overboard with the fruit and the popcorn, methinks.) Some balance would be good; hell, the imbalance may (MAY) be what's been throwing off my energy levels. What I've seen so far of BFL appears to indicate that the food choices are in line with everything I've come to believe in-- lean protein, whole grains, fruits & veggies, unsat fat in small doses-- so that's good. I've already trained myself to have two snacks a day, so I'm good to go there. I think I really do need to allow myself a free day once a week (I just need to learn to STOP after the free day, oy). Alternating days of cardio and weight lifting is good-- I will, however, need to figure out how the hell to fit in my yoga. This thing does seem to follow the basic guidelines that I'm already drifting along; more research, of course, is necessary.

One problem, though: it's really important to me to defuse my trigger foods (the "I can't just eat a small amount, I must eat a serving AS BIG AS MY HEAD" foods), so I can't see giving up my candy calendar yet. If BFL would make me do that, going fully operational on BFL would have to wait until I've got the chocolate thing defused. If I have to play the eating disorder card on this one, I will. Grr.

Mostly I think I'll need to have my Hub read the book, too, since he'd have to know what I was shooting for. (Also, his knowledge of nutrition and portion sizes, coming as it does for the most part as second-hand information from me, is a little shaky.) In the best of all possible worlds, he'd think, "Hrm, I could totally do this," and join in. Yeah, I don't see that happening, either, but a dream's a dream. In this the real world, however, I'm hoping to get an ally, if not a partner. He's been really good about handling Cooking For The Nutritionally Vigilant for the past year and a half, so I expect he could figure it out, given enough information and guidelines.

Well. Anyway. I'll get the book when I have money again, which is not today. In the meantime, I'm reading up online as much as I can. And I'm adding protein to my snacks, rather than just doing my usual fruit. This morning's snack was FF cottage cheese with Splenda and chopped strawberries. Not bad.

I have strongly negative memories of cottage cheese from childhood (although not as bad as my aversion to liver, eeeugh), so I can't say I actually like cottage cheese as of yet. I sense potential, though, and since I learned to like plain yogurt and olives and sweet potatoes and sushi and lord knows what all, I'm guessing I'll reach a state of acceptance within a few weeks.

Tonight I think I'll make mini-frittatas for me and my Hub. Or rather, one batch for me and one for him, since we'll have rather different ideas of what should go into them. At this point I'm just happy to have him eating breakfast at all, really, so the fact that he'll undoubtedly want bacon in his frittatas does not phase me. It's all good.

Now I'm off to lunch with a friend. I'm packing a pear and a bottle of water, not just because I'm health-conscious, but because I'm broke. Heh.

Oh, and on an incidental note, I've also noticed that Dove makes ice cream miniatures. Hrm. Wonder if my candy calendar would fit in the freezer...