A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Food Tracker

I have to admit, the last couple of days have been a struggle for me. My body and I have taken on a tremendous amount of change over the past few weeks, and we’re both trying to adjust.

Tuesday (January 18), I started to write a post. Here it is, in its entirety:

Okay, so yesterday I went on this long rant about being addicted to sugar. Nothing has changed since then. Last time I checked, I still wanted a Founder’s Favorite from ColdStone. “Love it” size. In a waffle bowl.

I’ve also got an additional problem: I AM ALWAYS HUNGRY.

Well, maybe not ALWAYS. For example, I’m not hungry immediately following a meal. But it seems like just an hour or so later (sometimes less), my stomach starts to make noise.

WTF? Why is this happening? I eat good lean proteins for lunch (baked chicken sandwiches, salads with walnuts, etc.), yet for some reason I still get hungry shortly thereafter. I’m so frustrated! Why does eating healthy have to be so complicated?

Holy crap, I’m such a whiner! (Okay, well, I have a lot to whine about. Thirty eight years of eating whatever I wanted and now all the sudden I’m restricting caloric intake . . . AND alcohol! Geesh. No wonder I’m so grouchy.)

So anyway, here’s the deal.

Yesterday, after a day off of counting calories and just eating what I would normally eat lately, I discovered something quite astonishing:

I wasn’t as hungry as I had been over the past two weeks!

The only thing I did differently (besides giving myself a break from counting calories) was that I brought a sandwich in from home to eat. It wasn’t anything to write home about: Smoked turkey on Orowheat Buttermilk White, with Olive Oil mayo (instead of it’s fattier big brother “regular” mayo) and reduced fat provolone cheese. I ate the sandwich at 11:50am. Usually I get hungry again right round 1:30pm.

Here’s the thing, though – My hunger level stayed at bay until 3:00pm! I gained a whole 90 minutes of fullness! Was it the provolone? The turkey? The combination of both? Who knows.

So today (at least at the time I wrote this post, which was at 5:30am), I’ve decided to track the exact times that I ate, along with a hunger rating from 1-10 (1 being “not hungry at all”; 10 being “I’m dying over here!”). I think that tracking these elements will help me discover my hungriest times, allowing for me to make some adjustments on what I eat shortly beforehand. Does that make sense?

Anyone out there have different ideas?