New Rules

I'm just coming off of my birthday weekend, and it is now time to begin my year-long quest.  I realize that, to hit my goal by this time next year, I am going to need to adjust both what I consume and how much I exert myself.  For this first little while, I am focusing on the former.  Exercise is, and will be, a very important part of this, but I want to get myself adjusted to new eating habits first. 

For way too long, I have leaned on the convenience, both in terms of proximity and cost, of fast food.  It's everywhere, it's cheap, and most of it tastes pretty good.  The result is that I have been hemorrhaging money because it is simply easier to get food at these places than it is to cook for myself (the dinky size of my apartment's kitchen doesn't help).  Not only was this habit unsustainable financially, but it also resulted in rampant overeating (after all, if it costs less than $5, it's not really that much, right?).  So, the major transition here is from primarily eating out to primarily eating in.  Not a huge change, but one with big ramifications.

The first part of this is limiting the extent to which I eat out.  Of the 21 meals I eat a week, it wasn't uncommon for 14 or more of them to be eaten out.  I would also supplement these meals with snacks (milkshakes, candy bars, etc.), just making things worse.  As such, I am limiting myself to three meals out per week and one snack.  The hope is that I can ultimately scale this back to two or one meals per week.  This should drastically cut back on my tendency towards overeating, and save me a good chunk of change.

The second part is controlling what I eat while I'm at home.  I worked my food supply down to pretty much nothing, and now I can build it back up as it should be.  After grocery shopping the other day, my food supply now consists of a fridge full of yogurt (store brand, different flavors, all 100 calories or under), a tub of bulk granola (mixed with yogurt, a delicious and low impact breakfast), a loaf of honey whole wheat bread (I would have preferred honey whole grain, but they were out of it), some peanut butter and jelly (lunch), some light italian dressing, two bags of salad, and a bag of frozen chicken (this is a hold-over, and once it is gone, it will be fresh chicken from here on out).  A daily routine of granola and yogurt in the morning, brown bagging a PB&J for lunch, and a salad with chicken and light italian dressing for dinner leaves some room for improvement, but it is a big step forward in terms of nutritional value, calorie content, and cost.

These are my new food rules.  Even two days in, I can already feel my body transitioning to the new set-up (mostly by saying "Gimme a damn burrito!"), which bodes well.  After a few weeks of this, I can mix in a new exercise regimen, and then things are off to the races.  A small beginning so far, but this feels like the beginning of something big.