With all of the stress of grad school, and the fact that I love food, I had fallen into several bad habits. I was basically addicted to processed carbs - cereal, pop tarts, gummy bears, Hershey's kisses, toast with jam. All of these were my comfort foods whenever I was bored, upset, or tired. Now none of these are inherently bad in moderation, but I just wasn't really thinking, or even enjoying the food going into my mouth. I would crave carbs almost all day, and since all of these processed foods get digested quickly, I would feel hungry about an hour later.
When I weighed myself one day and weighed almost 10 pounds (4-5 lbs of this was probably water weight - but you get the idea) more than what is usual for me, I decided something needed to change. I decided that I not only needed to change how much I was eating, but what I was eating. We know so much about nutrition these days that there really isn't an excuse like "I just didn't know how bad the food was." With programs on tv such as The Biggest Loser, and movies like Supersize Me, there are plenty of motivational stories to tell you why the "normal" eating habits of the Western world are killing us slowly.
So I decided to start out with the basics, I set up a calorie-counting app on my phone and started entering everything I put past my lips - including water. What I quickly realized is that A) I wasn't drinking enough water on a regular basis, and B) I was eating way more than my fair share of processed carbohydrates. Keep in mind that despite this, my husband and I hardly ever eat fast food and we only go out to restaurants about once a month, so all of the processed foods I was eating were coming directly from the grocery store. Since I do all of the grocery shopping for us, I was the only one to blame.
I didn't think I would be able to only eat a little food throughout the day to keep my daily calories at what they needed to be, so I decided to switch my snacks to mostly vegetables. I bought tons of bell peppers, carrots, hummus, and salad fixings at the grocery store that week, and set about to prep all of them immediately. I knew that if I had to pull out a knife to chop up my snack, I would be much more likely to grab something that wasn't on the approved list. I also made HUGE salads for work, and found a sugar-free raspberry vinaigrette (that was only 5 calories/ 2Tbsp). I've read about volumetric eating before, and although I'm not sure I follow all of the criteria, my goal was essentially the same: allow myself to eat large volumes of vegetables, so that I could convince my head that I was very full, even though I was eating fewer calories.
The only remaining question was whether I would be able to stick with it. I still craved all sorts of simple carbohydrates, how well would I resist temptation?
