Feast or Famine?

Well, the serious packing has commenced, the house-cleaning has begun so the dogsitter doesn't get too grossed out, stress has finally reached the point where it's too overwhelming to even stew over--add to the flying stress and the public speaking stress the newest kink: my elderly mom has fallen and suffered a lumbar fracture and is afraid to stay in Crime City Central alone, so I'll drive her six hours in her back brace and vicodin stupor to stay with a relative before catching my flight to Chicago.

Now, what does all this have to do with diet and weight loss? Uh, can you say "stress eating?" Not to mention "vacation diet?"

Actually, the stress is almost incidental. Always in the past, leaving my home routine for any length of time has meant I'm going from "famine" (diet) to "feast"--pigging out on anything not nailed down in a debauchery of cheesecake and Blue Bell ice cream and anything with caramel in it. In other words, uncontrolled abandon involving foods that I can't have again when I come home and go back to "famine."

I'm going to seriously try not to do that this time. For one thing, I've been trying to accept slower weight loss in exchange for not feeling like I'm in a famine. Now, I can hear it, the voice of my buddy Jimmy Moore in my head. Yes, low carb diets do let you eat more and lose weight faster, but for me personally, I cannot eat with abandon, even consuming no or very low carbs. Sad, sad, sad. But true. But I digress.

I'm trying to shed the "all or nothing" mentality that has sidetracked me so often in the past.

I'm hoping that will allow me to eat out at the dinners and luncheons in Chicago with some degree of self-control. Enough to keep me from feeling sorry for myself watching everyone else eat "normally"; not so much that when I get home I have three months' work wiped out only to have to lose all over again. It took me two months to lose the 10 pounds I gained over my seven-day Christmas trip. Ain't fair, is it?

I'll be posting during the week but will be spotty, so keep checking back!