Pizza!!!

I went out tonight....had a catch up with a group of people and realised that for dinner was going to be chicken, salad and pizza. Well, I tried to prepare myself. Before I went for dinner, I had two rice cakes so I would not overeat. I got there and for dinner was all of the above. I had 2 helpings of salad (which was more like one of my 'normal' helpings at home). I also had a little bit of chicken breast with skin off and 1 slice of cheese pizza (as the Americans call it). I tried to put in place everything that I had learnt and that I have been reading in a book called "If not dieting, then what?". It is actually a really good book. It talks about the emotional side of eating and also eating habits for example, eating too quickly or depriving yourself of a food you really enjoy and then overindulging,etc.

Well tonight I applied all of these tools. I chewed my food at least 20 times, I put my knife and fork down between mouthfuls, had water, observed how I was 'feeling' with my hunger / fullness scale and for the first time ever actually realised what cheese pizza really tasted like. All this time I realised that I would scoff pizza so quickly that I never got time to enjoy it at all. Tonight I enjoyed it. It was one slice. I could have eaten the whole pizza, but then I told myself that I would allow myself to have pizza again down the track and that pizza was a 'sometimes' food, not a 'healthy' food as the book refers to.

I think giving myself the power to say "Yes, I'll have pizza again!" and "I can have it if I really want it, but do I feel like it?" made me stop at the 1 piece of pizza. I realised I didn't feel like it. A part of me felt deprived that I had not jumped onto the old wagon and eaten as much as I could until I felt physically sick (this is the feeling I've grown up with....the only way I thought I could tell I was full!) but instead I realised I was 'comfortable' and did not need to have any more.

I got home and was so proud of myself. This may seem like a little step in the right direction, but it feels like a big milestone for me. I just have to keep working on these things. I have to re-train myself, because I'm now realising that I've adopted behaviours that have definitely contributed to me being overweight. I've got a thousand reasons why I've grown up exposed to these 'ways', but now I feel like I've got no excuses. It's time to start over and realise that I can do this.

I'm not always going to get it right, but hey, if I have better behavioural patterns than I did previously, well I'm getting there aren't I!