Tuesday 12 January 2010

Holy Snackman, Batman!

Help! I have enough snack food in my flat for at least the next 2 months of appropriate snacks – or, more worryingly, one or two major binges.

Mini Reese's peanut butter cups. Mini Almond Joys. Shortbread left over from my British Airways upgrade to business class on Christmas Eve (can't believe I still haven't eaten it). Trader Joe's maple cream cookies and chocolate covered pretzels and peanut butter-filled pretzels.

This is more snack food than I have ever had in my house _ever_. Seriously. In my binge days I'd go from shop to shop eating, but I didn't usually buy boxes of snacks and consume the whole thing. (And if I did buy a box it was one box of something that I'd promptly finish in less than 24 hours – not multiple boxes).

I'm not quite sure why I felt like I had to buy all these things (or, in the case of the shortbread, take them from the executive lounge and bring them into my house!) They are delicious, of course, but part of me thinks I should have treated them as local cuisine – in other words, I can have them in the US, but when I'm back in London, they're not part of my routine. Maybe that's it – in general I feel safe in my house. When I come home from travelling, it's literally like touching home base – no surprise buttercream cake or macaroni and cheese or cornbread can hit me. I don't feel unsafe at the moment, but I do know that if I'm feeling at all vulnerable to a binge (and I expect over the coming weeks that will happen), I have all the ingredients here. I've decided that if I do binge on this stuff I'll have to throw all the rest of it out, except frankly, I expect post-binge there won't be much left.

I'm also slightly worried that having small, easily grabbable food around means I'm going to continue what has been a mini-trend lately of just a little bit extra. I have been absolutely starving lately – please tell me perhaps I'm burning extra calories trying to keep warm in this deep freeze. And so I've been having an extra little bit here – nothing huge (a small piece of chocolate, a few bites of a pear and custard tart my sister made), but nothing I did before. And something I want to keep an eye on and be honest about. (Remind me of this if the scale starts creeping up and I claim I have no idea how or why!)

I was amused packing my suitcase – it was like my mother used to do for summer camp, stuffing things in every shoe and cranny. I had the maple leaf cookies (in plastic bags) inside my sneakers (hmmm, maybe I should think of that image if I'm tempted to overeat them) and clothes layered with bags of chocolate covered pretzels (so as to keep the pretzels from breaking – sort of worked). I wondered what sort of closet eater/huge overeater airport security would think I was if they opened my suitcase, and then I realized that I really didn't care that much. I'd be a little embarrassed, sure, but not nearly as embarrassed as I would have been 90 pounds ago. Three plus years ago I'd have been the woman who had all that food in her suitcase and was probably in mid-binge (I always binged in airports) when dealing with security – this time I'd just be an American girl who wanted some home comforts in London. (Little do they know that the binger lurks just beneath).

***

Now on to some New Year's type stuff. Despite turning on my heat at full blast when I got home about 1:30 pm yesterday, I was still a bit too cold this morning to weigh myself in the buff. But with PJs and socks on I was 10 stone 1 ¾ (141 ¾), which I'm more than fine with. I ate out a lot last week, but was careful (and exercised every day) – and it seems it's paid off in most of the binge weight having disappeared.

I've joined Social Workout, and while I'm not sure I'll be posting there (I already have enough ways to procrastinate, thankyouverymuch!) I am going to try their New Year's Challenge. Among the ones I've chosen for myself: 1,000 pushups and crunches over the next 31 days, making my bed every day (yes, that's actually one of them, and for this slob it probably will be a challenge), doing 5 Sun salutations every morning (a challenge because of the size and clutter of my flat), and a DIY one that is going to be doing my knee exercises the physio gave me last year every day, lest one of these days I wake up and be unable to run (which I keep fearing will happen if I don't do the damn exercises). Also, I think, going to take a leaf from Peridot's book (was going to say a squirt of cream from the can, except that that sounds quite rude, doesn't it?)and say three things I'm grateful for per day.

More New Year's-type stuff coming, but attempt at New Year's discipline suggests I stop puttering around and go try to convince people to pay me for my words. Ha!

2 comments:

  1. Wow - peanut butter filled pretzels sound AMAZING!

    Fact: you have had shortbread since Christmas Eve and not eaten it, far less binged. Your willpower is stronger than you think.

    love
    Peridot x
    PS Hands off my cream
    PPS You're going Brit if you're seeing smutty humour in everything - you've gone native!

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  2. Hi Beth

    Your suitcase sounds a lot like mine when I'm flying back to Russia...a lot of odd snacky stuff that you can't get over here. I had a lot of flavoured coffee in my bag this time, too. Back in the fall, I filled an entire suitcase with Kellogg's cereal purchased at Sainsbury's in London. (The box of Flake chocolate bars I'd bought only made it as far as my hotel room and into my mouth...)

    My snacks from the executive lounge on this trip did not make it anywhere close to my home either, except in the form of poundage on my arse. Those damn Kit Kat bars got me, as well as the Walker's shortbread cookies and two large margaritas.

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