Manic Monday

I'm so glad I survived the weekend and awoke this morning not feeling bloated and hungover from too much food. I can start off the week not trying to make up for the damage I did Saturday and/or Sunday.

However, I have noticed some bad food habits the past two days. My hubby, bless his heart, got busy in the kitchen while I was at church, and when I came home he had a raspberry and bluberry crisp baking in the oven. I started to grumble at him until he told me the ingredients: sugar-free (with Splenda), nearly fat free (he used my trans-fat free spread), reduced calorie (he used plain gelatin instead of a higher calorie and starchier binder) and the topping was mostly my Fiber One cereal with a little bit graham crackers mixed in. And he did this from scratch, his own invention!

The problem is, I've been driven to eat it. Granted, it's been in carefully measured portions (1/2 cup crisp with 2 Tbsp. Cool Whip Free on top), but over the past two days it's been a lot of portions. Last night it was basically my supper, so it wasn't like I ate it on top of a lot of other food, but still, I could tell it was bordering on compulsive.

Thank goodness my mother and I finished the thing off this afternoon, and when my hubby came home from work I told him that while I liked the crisp a lot, he has to quit making huge desserts like that for just me. Because I cannot stop eating them!

The crisp wouldn't have been so bad if he'd made a smaller version, maybe a two-portion deal, or in individual pans, where the extras could have been frozen right away. But this is a man who has a very difficult time cooking in small portions. Everything is super family-sized, and there have been many evenings when he's prepared a meal that could easily feed six to eight people when there's just the three of us here. The worst part -- he detests leftovers! So a lot of the time the extras he makes sit in the refrigerator untouched, especially when I'm watching what I'm eating. A lot of food often goes to waste or becomes dinner for my mother's critters.

I don't think I did a lot of caloric damage with the fruit crisp, but it was more the manner in which I ate it. Oh, I definitely savored it and waited hours inbetween portions. But still, I ate way too many portions of it. Yes, I can rationalize that it was full of antioxidants and fiber, but still, it was dessert. And I wasn't satisified until it was gone.

And a lot of it has to do with stress, my age old enemy. Thanksgiving's next week, I've got to juggle packing up stuff with getting my house presentable for the holiday meal with my family. Hard to have a dinner for 25 when your dining room's full of boxes. Plus this is a hectic week, with lots of appointments and errands to run. I don't think I'll have a single free afternoon that doesn't involve driving to our county seat 10 miles away to accomplish these things. On top of that, today the kids were home from school for a county in-service day, and my mother watched my daughter and my two nieces here in my house. If the house wasn't a disaster when I left for work this morning, it sure is now!

So when I came home this afternoon, I felt the urge, strong and sure: I WANT TO EAT. I wanted to sit down and chow until I stuffed myself. I managed to limit myself and measure my portions, but I still ate more than I usually do. I'll have to nip this trend in the bud and quickly.

Hopefully things will take a turn for the better this evening. Now that the bloody buggery crisp is a thing of the past, maybe I can get my mind on something other than food and get some real work done around here. Because there's no time to waste right now.