Date: 2009-08-17 17:47 Subject: Diet and Nutrition Security: Public Mood: appalled Music: 'It Sucks To Be Me' from Avenue Q

I did great with my first try at Weight Watchers, but wasn't able to keep the weight off. For the past two weeks, I've tried something different. Instead of eating two big meals (I don't typically have breakfast) I'm having a bunch of small ones. This is something Weight Watchers advised too, but I never gave it much thought. I've noticed that having about half what I normally eat, then waiting about two hours before I eat anything more, has been working out. I don't go hungry and I seem to be losing weight, though it's still too soon to really tell.

Today, though, I had to go to the dentist, so anticipating not being able to eat for a while, I had a large Lean Cuisine meal. It's not meant for more than one person, it's just bigger than most. Cooking at home, I've been preparing meals of about 200 grams (thanks to Woot for the kitchen scale). This meal, however, weighs 435 grams, and it left me feeling uncomfortably stuffed... like, post-Thanksgiving stuffed. I used to easily eat one of these in the past, but now I can't handle one. This is promising, though it does make me worry about Thanksgiving. ^^; It also makes it harder to eat out, since I am often in no position to bring home leftovers and I hate to waste food I have paid a lot of money for. Luckily I am in no position to pay a lot of money for food right now, so I'm mainly eating at home courtesy of Trader Joe's.

I also learned about High Fructose Corn Syrup today and was pretty appalled. I knew it was bad for you because it has more calories than cane sugar, but courtesy of How Stuff Works I've also found out that it can only be metabolized by the liver, which means more of it gets turned into fat, and more insidiously, it does not trigger the chemical process in your body that signals to you that you're full. Artificial sweeteners also supposedly encourage the body to keep on eating, but I'm not sure about that one. Still, it would explain why it's so hard to stop eating Oreos. Trader Joe's is helping me out here as well, as they seem to be pro-organic, and the stuff I regularly get from them is free of the HFCS. For that matter, so are the frozen meals I usually buy. The tasty new Strawberry Hostess Cupcakes, though, are trouble. Still, everything in moderation, even moderation.