This is not me, I swear. I know myself - 27 years later, I think I know that I don't like vegetables. Especially those raw icky ones. God, gross..
My guilty pleasure this week has been not packing my lunch. I take a few minutes and throw my breakfast and two snacks in a baggie, but not taking that extra time fiddling with lunch components has been my little break for the week. So I've been "forced" to buy my lunch.
Oh shit, right? I work downtown Minneapolis, within walking distance of bars, and pubs, and fast food, slow food, street food.... I used to take advantage of it, hit the pub or the bar & grill on my long lunch break, get a burger, some sweet potato fries, a few beers....
So this week I've been frequenting one of the "fast food" places. Alright, there isn't anything "fast" about this Subway, but I think it falls under that category rather than any other. And here's the kicker - not even for a sandwhich.
I go and I get a spinach salad with the oven roasted chicken breast - 130 calories. (It's also the only meat option with a relatively low sodium content, which when I tell you my toppings you'll see why that's an important place to cut...) Then I deck it out with cucumbers, tomatoes, onion and lots of pickles. I accidentally got a banana pepper in there today and OMG so good - those will be a regular on this salad now! Then I get it with the fat-free Sweet Onion sauce (and I make sure I account for all the calories because I get it in a cup on the side, I'm a "dipper".) I seriously look forward to this salad all morning.
I eat every bit of it. And I get full doing it. I look forward to the next bite. To the sweetness of the tomato, the crunch of the onion, the coolness of the cucumber, and everything - except maybe the rouge stem that hangs out my mouth from the spinach - I de-stem my spinach at home. It's so STRANGE. I don't like vegetables.
Or maybe I do. I think my taste buds are slowly changing. What damn near killed me to choke down a month ago is now something I can eat and enjoy.
And instead of that beer or two or three, I look forward to Propel Zero. Maybe not the best thing -- since it is sweetened with sucralose (Splenda), but it's better than sucking down 200+ calorie beers or Diet Coke with aspartame (it's been about 7 or 8 weeks, holy damn!) or even jolting myself with energy drinks all day long!
I'm getting my monthly visitor by this weekend, and I can tell - I'm seriously hungry and craving things (namely protein lately, give me a hunk o' chicken to gnaw on!) so I've eaten a little bit more than ususal, and when I stepped on the scale - yes, I cheated mid-week and stood on the damn beast - yesterday, it hadn't budged from the 222.2 on Sunday. I'm still within my calories, just not on the low end of things this week. And I'm bloated and stressed, and I'm not expecting to see a miracle loss this week, but we'll get 'em back next week! I swear I'm going to get up in the mornings and start wunning. Yeah, wunning. Walking running. It's ugly, you don't want to see me do it.
