Thursday, also known as the new bagel day! We woke up way too early (or TFE, as John likes to say…). Downed some protein drink and biked away. I was maybe a squidge tired from the monster workout yesterday, but not too bad. The heat broke and it was a beautiful, nonhumid morning! Yay! I also got to have breakfast with my favorite person…
Sunflower seed bagel and cream cheese.
Somebody please stop me from thinking about opening a bagel/cupcake/muffin/coffee shop… please…
It was nice to sit and relax since we were up early. Funny, but now our 2 bagel days coincide with the start and end of my workweek. We go Sunday, which is the start of the week for me, and then Thursday, which is my Friday (and my mind gets all sorts of mixed up when I start thinking like that).
Good ride home. 13 miles round trip at exactly 13 miles per hour. Convenient!
Steady work right away with good dictators. That made for a nice end to the week at job #1.
Lunch time!
Finally opened a bag of Food Should Taste Good Lime chips to have with tuna salad. This bag has been unopened for 2 weeks! It’s funny how long things last when I don’t snack on them… Whodda thunk that?? 🙄
One of the terms that I really liked in the Savor book was “habit energy.” There is also a sanskrit work for it – Vasana. Habit energy can be good or bad. What happens is that when there is a little seed of something and it gets watered, it grows in strength. You can see how this is good or bad. The thing about habit energy is that it can be (and usually is) totally unconscious. I had a lot of habit energy towards snacking while preparing meals. First it was a little nibble of what I was making, then it was snacking on cereal or crackers while cooking. It became really easy to add an extra 150 calories before I even sat down to eat. I noticed that this habit energy was very powerful and occurred at all 3 meals! I would get back from the gym and have some nuts while my oats were cooking, or if I was putting chocolate chips on my oats, then I would have a few. (Easy to eat 70 calories of those without noticing – 1 tbsp).
When I decided to nip this in the bud, I didn’t realize how hard it was going to be. I had fed that habit energy so much that it was unconscious and like a snowball. Do you ever have an epiphany like that where realize you did something, but now *how much*? Breakfast was easier than the other meals, because I just would make my coffee earlier and start drinking it while cooking. The other 2 meals were more of a challenge. I started popping the Altoid ginger mints to prevent my nibbling. There were some times where I would have 2 or 3 mints just to get through the cooking without nibbling and I still found myself going to the pantry out of habit, but didn’t eat anything. The first week was really rough. I chose to not even let myself nibble on something like carrots or part of the fruit for my dinner because it was the habit I wanted to break, not the food. If I were to allow myself only something I deemed ‘healthier’ would put food into good and bad categories, which I don’t like to do. It was hard because I am hungry when I am cooking (to which the intuitive would say eat, right?). Of course, there really isn’t anything wrong with being hungry and waiting a little bit for your meal to cook before eating.
I have to say that it is much easier now. The habit energy is there still, but dwindling. I need fewer mints and don’t unconsciously start to grab for things as much. I started this habit breaking on the 11th, so that is what, about 2-1/2 weeks? Not saying I am going to never nibble again, but I do feel like I am getting this habit under control. Wonder where that energy went?
The interesting thing about habit energy is that it really affects so many aspects of our lives, including how we react to other people or situations. Being mindful can really make you stop for a second and notice that habit energy. Once you acknowledge it, the power starts to go away.
Snack time included a latte and another couple squares of Lake Champlain chocolates:
I do much better with chocolate when it is in bar form rather than chip form. Again, I have some strange food things going on.
Finished up job #1 for the week. Yippee! Tomorrow will just be some of job #2. And blueberry picking 😀
I had an omelet hankering for dinner. This has some sauteed broccoli, caramelized onions, and a laughing cow wedge inside. With a plum on the side.
The drink on the side is a POM cocktail (of sorts). I mixed some POM juice into lime seltzer water. Very good. POM Wonderful sent me a case of juice! Gotta celebrate Friday Thursday.
And in even more celebration, John and I hit the mall just for fun. Kind of like high school where you go to the mall on weekends, right? I found some wrinkle cream at TJMaxx.
Score! Hopefully it isn’t expired or something and burns my face off….
Then it was Starbies for some real vitamin C:
That’s the stuff…. It’s decaf, though. Can’t live it up too much, now.
That’s where I am blogging this post from! Starbies now has free WiFi to everyone, not just card owners. ’bout time!
Question: Can you think of habit energy you have that you would like to change?