Trouble in Weightloss Paradise

I found a pitfall in my weightloss plan today.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m THRILLED with how things are going – I’m not hungry, I eat something small at least every 2 hours or so, and I eat decent sized meals.  Obviously I have no complaints. 

Still, I found something that is not helping me.  I usually try to go home with 20 points left (well, 25 if you count the 5 I steal from myself in the morning by putting in “points removed – 5 in the tracker).  That means I eat 15 points (14 now, after my loss last night) between breakfast, lunch, and snacks.  I started this because I knew I would want to snack in the evening – here’s the downfall  . . . having that many points left over encourages me to eat poorly at night.

Here’s an example – last night I actually went into the evening with some ridiculous number of points – I believe I had 28 points left (Including my 5 stolen points).  I had a 10 point slice of pizza (well, I ate half of a slice, which came to 10 points), I still had 18 left!  I didn’t get home until about 8 p.m., at which point I ate a breadstick (2), a skinny cow ice cream bar (3) and a piece of candy (1) Top Raman (5), and Mashed potatoes (2) – I STILL ended with 5 points left over.  I should add, after the skinnycow, I REALLY wasn’t even hungry anymore.

The night before I had a bunch of points left over so I ate a SECOND skinny Cow bar for the day (3),  reeses peanutbutter cup (3) a piece of chocolate candy (1), a breadstick (2), and STILL had 7 points leftover at the end of all of that and that’s just my evening eating.

I NEED to eat more during the day unless I have something planned for the evening that is going to use my points.  I neither need nor, honestly, WANT to eat that much junk in the evenings.  I would rather stay on track and eat healthy.  I actually felt “obligated” to eat more last night, because my points were SO low.  I’d rather not feel that way.  Another option would be having lots of fruit in the house, and eating that instead – I realize that’s a better choice.  I also know I stayed in my points and still had some to spare, but do I really want to be in the habit of snacking on crap and junk that’s full of fat and sugar, or would I rather eat more reasonably during the day, and retrain myself not to eat so much junk at night?  I know you’ll say “what the hell are you doing with Reeses Peanutbutter cups and chocolate candy in your freezer!!!” but I want those things there.  I crave them less if I have them in the house, AND occasionally it’s fine – I can have EITHER a skinny cow, OR a peanutbutter cup, but not both.

It just seems to me that in the future, this little habit I’m developing will come back to bite me in the ass, so I’m gonna try to stop it now!  Wish me luck!