Friday

Day 12: 100 days challenge - Fuel or Filler

I'm very late getting here.  Today is my birthday and I've had people over most of the day.  I did my workout this morning. Food was in its place for the first half of the day.  After Mass this morning, the church staff took me out to brunch.  Since I had to eat breakfast early, this worked out really well.  I had a chef salad.  I came home, did some cleaning, and then the family arrived.  I didn't really plan ahead so I didn't do very well with the food.  But the first half of the day was right on track.  Baby steps. 
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Today's Focus from the 100 Days of Weight Loss is "Fuel or Filler."
Today we think about the kinds of foods we eat.  Fuel foods are those that supply our bodies with nutrients while filler foods are basically those that fall in the junk food category.   "Filler drains energy. "  "Plan your fuel.  To avoid getting trapped without fuel, pack your own meal."   Again, common sense advice, but we need to be prepared.  When caught without "fuel" we are sometimes left with no choice but to eat whatever is there.  We need to make sure that the "whatever" is good stuff, and that only happens if we plan ahead.
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Today's lesson from The Beck Diet Solution is about arranging your environment.
This chapter spent a lot of time giving advice on how to keep food out of your line of sight while getting used to your food plan. Given the right frame of mind, I can resist anything.  But just the word itself almost seems to have failure built into it.  Think about what resist means.  It seems to have a time frame.  You resist until you can't. Does that make sense?  Avoid is another tricky word.  You can avoid something until it catches you off guard.  For me, it's more productive to begin thinking about "filler" foods in another way.  I can rearrange my kitchen, I can put tempting foods out of sight, but at some point I will be confronted with a choice.  Remember, all action is preceded by thought.  I think I would be better served to learn to think of these foods, not as tempting, but as destructive to my body.  This kind of goes hand in hand with the 100 Days fuel or filler.  When I think of filler, I think of those packing peanuts.  Not very appetizing.  I bet if I worked on linking every filler food in my life with the prospect of eating packing peanuts, maybe after a while those foods wouldn't be so tempting.  Maybe I could go one step further.  Maybe I could make the link in my mind to a time when I was at a good weight.  When I see fuel foods, maybe that picture should be in my mind.  And maybe when I look at filler foods, I can think about the picture someone took of me at a wedding and how upset I was at the way I looked.  If these mental images were to pop into my mind each time I see a food, what kind of difference would that make in my choices?



1 comment:

  1. First off- HAPPY BIRTHDAY !!! What is that saying- calories on birthdays and holidays don't count ??

    Food in general - I think there is another way of looking at food that would fall in line with what the 100 Day book is saying. We, as human animals, must ingest food to fuel our bodies ( only plants produce their own food) However, we are also given 5 senses to perceive the world around us, and these come into play with food . We have been conditioned to find things like baked goods, bright colors and packaging appealing in this sense. We need to learn to have the same responses to the spectrum of colors and textures in the fruit and veggie kingdom to get the proper fuel our bodies need, which was why they were created this way in the first place.( God fully understood what we needed and equipped us with sensory tools to perceive this. We mucked up the works because we thought we could do it better). Other cultures understand this connection with eating, fuel and our senses better. Just google Bento Lunch Box and you will see the amazing ways the Japanese work with this !

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