health challenge: portion size

So as a challenge to myself, I am trying to get healthy.  This was spurred on by several things - being at my highest ever weight, looking gross in my clothes, overall feeling yucky, seeing pictures of myself and being horrified!!

To get started, I went back to the same food plan that has always worked for me.  It is easy to do, I don't feel deprived, there are plenty of food choices, and I'm not starving or thinking about food all the time.  Works for me.  So far I have dropped 15 pounds over the past month.

Detoxing off of sugar is the first thing I go through.  It only takes a couple of days before I don't have a taste for it any more.  I swear, sugar addiction is a real and powerful thing.  Look at anyone addicted to soda.  Try to deprive them of it for one day and see what happens.  Artificial sweeteners are almost worse - how about the Diet Coke people?  You could pry their sweet nectar from their cold dead hands......

After that, for me it is learning to control my portion size.  This is where my weight is truly controlled.  Somehow in my life I trained myself to eat and eat and eat to the point of near explosion!  Feeling sad?  Feed it.  Happy?  Stuff it!  Angry?  Eat eat eat and eat some more!  I've always wished I was more of an angry cleaner or exerciser instead of an angry eater.  But alas.... it is not to be.

Today I made chili.  Totally on my plan.  I hadn't really eaten anything else today (mistake) so I didn't really think about it too much when I heaped my bowl with the yummy cold weather comfort food.

And then it was way too late when I realized I had overeaten.

WHY DO I DO THIS TO MYSELF?!?!?!?!?!

The rule I have followed in the past is to stop eating when no longer hungry.  This is a completely different feeling than eating until full or stuffed.  I think this is going to be the key for me this time around.  I mindlessly eat until my plate is empty, so I have to be conscious of what it is I am putting on my plate.  I have to think about the food, and realize when the hunger has been satiated.  And then I have to STOP EATING.

I don't feel good right now.  My belly wants to pop.  I am a little bit nauseated.  I am uncomfortable.  All things I do not aspire to be.  And definitely NOT what I need to be feeling to be successful.

So starting this week, my health challenge to myself is to control my portions.  I'll check back and let you know how it goes!