More of the 18

As predicted I thought of more weightless things after I hit publish. Since Chili professes to want to know them I figured I'd post them before I forgot them again.

*Get up and walk around after you eat something. I am having trouble doing this at lunch lately and find myself overeating. Walking around distracts your mouth from thinking about food and can potentially take you physically further from the food, so win-win.

*The walking around thing is part and parcel of another huge lesson about identifying your hunger. This is by far the hardest thing to stick to for me. You can be physically hungry and you can be mentally or emotionally hungry. Personally I think that the fact that losing weight means that you have to go hungry on one of those levels most of the time sucks huge donkey balls. I've worked really hard to learn the difference between the 2, though. You'd think it'd be pretty simple but when you really crave something or you feel really crappy about something that you usually soothe with food it's hard to tell. Now that I'm pretty good at telling the difference it's hard not to just give in. "Hey, look, you know! Reward yourself with a cupcake."

*I'm not a food snob. This is an excuse I hear from people a lot. They can't stand low fat foods or butter substitutes or store bought bread or whatever. I know the difference between gourmet foods and the processed crap and I do love butter and homemade bread and a really good cream sauce but I can get by with substitutes when I've got a purpose. Sure, I prefer cook n serve pudding made with whole milk but there's room in my life for pudding cups because it'd be harder to live entirely without dessert. The exception here is cheese. It's apparently a long term debate on Weight Watchers and there really is no substitute. So when you can budget real cheese you want to make sure it's the good stuff. Don't waste your points on a shitty cheese slice.

*Portion control. A healthy portion of something is so much less than you think it is. The amount of tuna a sandwich shop puts on your tuna on whole wheat is at least twice as much as you need for a meal. A half a chicken breast is perfectly workable for a meal when you put the right veggies with it. A cup of cereal is pretty small. The difference between whole, part and totally skim milk is a lot smaller than you think. I think part skim chocolate milk tastes like the wash water off a cow's udder so I have half a cup of whole milk chocolate before I leave the house every morning. It costs 2 points out of my 20 and it tastes good and it has enough protein to keep me going for a bit. Now stop reading and go see what half a cup of milk looks like. If you're an avid milk drinker you will be horrified.

*I only get 20 points a day (plus activity points so if I'm good I can top out at 24 points a day since you can only swap a maximum of 4 APs per day) and I am petrified of being hungry so I am extremely leery of eating more than 3 points at a time. I can convince myself of 4 but it's got to be a main meal. If I could work it out I'd eat 2 points at a time every hour or so all day long. 2 points isn't much. You can blow 2 points on a piece of chocolate. You can, though, get a fat free hot dog and a piece of double fiber bread for 2 points so it's possible. Lots of people recommend yummy meals that are 6-9 points. I can't do that. Perhaps those people have more points per day or perhaps they like eating more points at fewer times through the day. Mileage variance at its best.

OK, have to go now but I'll keep you posted if I think of more. (Is it cutting off the circulation to your legs the way you're sitting on the edge of your seat like that?)