Of course I want the Cheesy Potato.....Who wouldn't?

I brought my lunch to work today. I made a oven roasted turkey sandwich on a Italian herb pita pocket, with a slice of cheese and 1 T. of olive oil mayo. 1 serving of baked Cheetos, 1 cup of carrots and celery and some grapes. (10 pts.) My cafeteria at work always offers daily soup specials too, so I was excited to go upstairs (I always avoid the elevator- to be discussed in another blog) and see the selections. Well of course I get up there and the smell of "Mexican" day is overwhelming. They have soft tacos, hard tacos, taco salad, rice bowls, etc. I bypass those yummy smelling items and make my way over to the soups. Daily choices: 1. Chili (too much fat from the full fat ground beef) 2. Cheesy Potato (Um 1. Cheese 2. Carbs- so no) 3. Chicken Rice and 4. Minestrone. So I made the call - Minestrone (3 pts.). It's a broth based soup loaded with veggies. There's cabbage, tomatoes, celery, carrots, kidney beans, a small amount of red potatoes, and some round pasta noodles (easy to eat around to avoid carbs).

This lifestyle change has again brought about a variety of challenges. Every day it's about making the right choices. I work for the newspaper, in a fast paced media environment. We have deadlines to meet, advertising numbers to hit, and overall stress all the time. In fact, my co-worker put a not on my desk yesterday that read, "If stress burned calories, I'd be a supermodel." Lol! Anyhoo, the reason I mention this is because people are on the go all the time. Which means, they bring in donuts. They bring in bagels. They have sandwiches catered in, sometimes pizza too. So it's not always easy to follow a plan, per se.  Just this week, I have had to walk by a box of Dunkin Donuts 12 times and 2 boxes of Einstein bagels 10 times. It's not easy.

It's just making the right choices. Of course, I would have loved to eat a donut or a bagel. It would have tasted delicious. For a second....then I would have wanted another. Or even worse, I would have felt guilty and it could have ruined my entire "eating" day (you know what I mean, "well I already ate bad, so why don't I just continue"). It's not to say I won't ever eat another donut or I won't eat another bagel, but right now this journey is too important to me. So I chose to be happy with fruit from home. I chose the minestrone soup from the cafeteria and not the cheesy potato soup. I choose to eat fresh fruit as my side with my chicken sandwich when I go out to lunch (instead of french fries- which I did yesterday). If I do order french fries at a restaurant, I share them. It's just not worth it to me anymore. My life needs to be my own and that means getting my weight under control. I don't want to be "big" anymore. 

So, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. One choice at a time. One meal at a time. One minute at a time. This didn't happen overnight and it's not going to fix itself overnight. Til tomorrow.