The Villainous Hard Crust and the Binge

Well, I bit into a really hard bit of roti crust a couple days ago, and it hurt. Then I bit into a crunchy plantain chip yesterday, and it REALLY hurt. Something felt "not right." I got this bad throbbing pain. Took a ginormous strength Motrin, which helped loads. Put in an emergency message to the dentist. (I've got an appt today.)

Like a fool, I went into comfort, creamy, don't have to chew food binge. Boston Market mashed potatoes, creamed spinach, gravy overload, mac'n'cheese. Yeesh.

So, while the scale said down 2 pounds Saturday, today it says one. All that salt didn't help, either. Egads.

But, the correct approach when one screws up is...?

Yes, you got it. You pick yourself, dust yourself off, and get BACK ON A SANE PLAN. (I hadn't immediately cut back to "dieting" calorie counts last week. I just began scaling back from my usual feasts. I'd say, according to my diet/food journal calculations, I brought my consumption down from about 3500 calories to 2600 calories Wed-Sat. Yesterday, It was higher. Hey, it's progress of some sort.)

So, today, after my scrambled eggs, apple juice--I prefer fresh-squeezed grapefruit and orange, but those give me a little itchy in the throat feeling, at times, and I can't have that at the dentists's. Especially since my allergies are already icky. Spring pollens!--and ginger peach tea with Splenda, I calculated how many calories I need given my height, weight, age. I came up with 2397. Huh. I thought it would be more, given I'm barn-sized. I remember seeing a chart a couple years ago, and it had the "maintenance" calories over 3K. Surprise me!

I used an automatic online calorie needs calculator, and that gave me 2391. So, really, pretty close to the one I did by hand with pen and calculator.

Note that your needs go down as your weight goes down. And your need goes up as your exercise level goes up. I put in the "sedentary" level, cause I'm still not gung-ho on the exercise. So, if you're a movement enthusiast, you get more calories. If you're sedentary and slim, you get fewer. Makes sense.

My goal for this week is to stay at 2000 or fewer, as I work my way to a daily quota of 1600 dieting calories. Let's see, that would be about 40 points max for this week (using WW system). (Note: WW wouldn't approve of 40 points, that's way over what my weight category would permit on the Flex system. I'm just using it as a quick mental way to calculate my allowance in a 2000 calorie limit.)

Okay, so, the Princess Dieter needs to get her dental thing sorted out. Meantime, I'm going to keep to healthier non-chewing options: organic unsweetened applesauce and cottage cheese for lunch, protein drink and yogurt for snacks, maybe a nice soup for supper and some carrot juice.

I hope you calculate your caloric needs today, and subtract from it so you're on your way to less of excess and more of the real, healthy Queen that you truly are.

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