The balance between loving to go out to eat and trying to lose weight.

I think I’ve made it very clear that I love food. I love the smell, the taste, the ritual, the actual cooking, kitchens, gadgets, basically everything to do it with food. So how in god’s name is one supposed to eat all the glorious foods out in the world and lose or even maintain his weight? Do you just treat it like an addiction and avoid all tasty foods all together? There’s always moderation – eat the pork belly and cracklings only once a month and the rest of the month live off of celery?

Okay I’m totally exaggerating. But let’s take a simple example. Last night I was watching Lie to Me. And they were talking about poisoned muffins. That just triggered me to just want to eat a muffin all night last night. I tried to substitute it with something else – I had a piece of See’s Candy, some chips, and a mint. I ended up having to walk away and pre-cooked some breakfast burritos to take to work. I also just kept busy with packing my healthy breakfast and lunch to make sure that I have lots of healthy snacks and meals.

In fact let me tell you what I packed –

2 boiled eggs
Breakfast Burrito made with egg beaters and a low calorie tortilla
Broccoli
Carrots
Cucumbers
Hummus
Low Fat greek yogurt
Half a Turkey Sandwich
Apple
Rice
Shrimp Wanton Soup
Cooked Steel cut oats
Pudding Snack
Nalgene of hot tea

You would think with all this food I could resist the muffin. But no, I could resist the siren call of the deli near the metro and their freshly made muffins. I bought it, brought to my desk, closed my cube door, and scarfed the muffin down. I didn’t savor it. I didn’t enjoy it. It was all about getting it into my food as quickly as possible before someone took it away from me, or, more threatening, someone saw me eat it. I think that’s a sign that I may have a food problem. :\

Anyway, out of guilt, I think that I will scratch Restaurant Night tonight to make up for my muffin mishap and try to make it to the gym. Maybe that’s the balance act that needs to happen. If I screw up, then my consequence is I can’t go out to eat. And when I do go out to eat – I’m just going to eat with hedonistic abandonment and enjoy the meal.