"It's easier to eat junk" and other feeble excuses

I always blamed my increasing chunk on my overgrown appetite. "I just love food" I'd say, thinking that it was something strangely divorced from my own actionable choices. I'd call at the supermarket in the morning and find it hard to resist the lure of freshly baked cookies, or go to a restaurant for a nice meal out with hubs and be so weak-willed that I'd have to have starter, main AND dessert even though it usually left me feeling less than romanced by the end thanks to uber-greedy eyes and an over-bloated gut.

I always thought it was far easier to eat junk food, or rather it was far more readily available and convenient than healthier options. It's shamefully easy to scoff down a pasty or a [bag of] cookies, or worse still a pasty AND a bag of cookies because they're easy to buy and easy to eat - handheld and portable food.

I admit now after these past three weeks that I'm talking cobblers. I eat rubbish and blame convenience, lack of time or price (2 courses for £10 or 3 for £12 anyone?) but those excuses don't wash any more. Over these past three weeks I've made a concerted effort to eat breakfast, make better choices at lunch time and stop snacking on empty calories. But you know what, it turns out that I didn't really have to put much effort into doing that. Eating properly is actually a piece of cake - anti-pun intended.

I've never been one for breakfast before work. I'm usually racing out of the door at 8:25am with half-dried hair and have less than any time at all to sit and have something to eat, but I had a bit of a breakfast revelation upon embarking on my anti-excuse regime. Following my personal promise to try and eat breakfast more often I dug out my stick blender & chopper attachment, broke up a banana, chucked in a shake of porridge oats, added a spoonful of honey and topped it all off with milk. 30 seconds of whizzing and 10 seconds of gulping later and I was on my way to work with 300 calories of superfood to fuel my morning.

Great.

Tell me, why haven't I done this before? A banana smoothie. Simple really.

So my banana smoothie fuels me brilliantly for the morning but what do I swap my pasty and cookies at lunch for? Well how about a jacket potato and salad? Or a quiche and salad? Or, big surprise, how about a sandwich? Good god I realise now how utterly absurd my old habits were. How pathetic that I managed to convince myself that good choices were a myth or that they were magically way more expensive than fattier convenient options.

It turns out too, that's it's really not hard at all to not eat when you're not hungry. Hey, who'd have thunk'd it - certainly not me. This serial-snacker has changed her ways just by actually paying attention to whatever hormone it is that tells you you're hungry. It's really not that difficult.

Since I made efforts to change my ways I've managed to resist:
Free muffins at work for a colleague's birthday.
Dessert when out for a meal for Gordie & I's anniversary.
ANY chocolate bar whatsoever - no, really I've not had one.
Multiple slices of garlic bread whenever we have pasta for tea.
Any kind of 'junk' food as a reward after exercise.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not expecting to drop weight at a rapid rate just because I've swapped chocolate bars for raspberries, and I'm not suddenly bursting with energy from eating healthy superfoods, but there's a certain psychological nutrition being garnered from improving my physical nutrition.

To coin an old cliche, I'm concentrating more on food, for the soul.

Today's motivational phrase: fat lasts longer than flavour.