Habits, Rules and What To Do

Twice yesterday I found myself in this food situation: I was faced with an opportunity to eat and didn't want it.

The first time was when I stopped at Starbucks to purchase a gift card and decided I would treat myself to a tall non-fat white mocha with no whip cream, iced.

I wanted this drink, but at the same time I didn't. It was weird. It's like I really only wanted a little bit of it, but really I didn't want to spend the calories on it. I ended up sipping on it for the next hour and throwing out about the last quarter of it when I realized I was fine and really didn't want to finish it.

My second situation of not wanting food was after church in the evening. As I drove home I pondered what I would eat for the usual after-church snack and nothing sounded good. I thought to myself, "I'm not even hungry. Weird."

For the next almost two hours I battled with this, wondering around the house doing little things, meanwhile picking a bite of this, "Nope, don't want that." and even heated up a Weight Watchers snack, took one bite and threw that out as well.

Finally, I went and read in bed, realizing that we were home earlier than normal and maybe that was why I wasn't really hungry yet. Usually I eat a larger lunch on Sundays and by the time we get home I'm ready for a light snack before bed. Not last night. I was home and very much not in the mood for food.

There was birthday cake from my son's birthday, cupcakes from my friend's birthday on Saturday that I hosted, leftover pizza and Thai food from lunch, and the aforementioned Weight Watchers snacks, but nothing sounded good.

I didn't know what to do with myself. Not eating something is so out of the normal for me and it was strange.

I'd like to say that I stuck to that, but after reading a book I finally found myself getting a little hungry and decided to eat a slice of cheese pizza and a small 8 oz. cup of Pepsi. At the time I knew it wasn't the healthiest thing, and I knew it was too late - 11:15 pm to be exact - to be eating, but I was a smidge hungry and it sounded perfect.

I went to bed happy and not too upset about my choice. On the way home from church I had told myself that I didn't want pizza because the grease always leaves me feeling yucky, but I was feeling fine since I had just eaten cheese only pizza.

However, today I am thinking that I really need to learn how to handle these moments. I'm excited that I'm finding myself not wanting food, but I'm also still a little unsure of what to do when those situations arise.

Dr. Beck would say that I should've read my response cards and then obeyed my rules for myself. Well, as I was eating the pizza I wondered if I should make myself a rule to not eat after 10:00 pm, so that I'm not tempted to eat something "bad"? hhmm.... it has me thinking...

In the course of your weight loss journey did you/do you find yourself in a similar situation? Do you have certain rules for yourself? Or did you have certain rules that you followed more strickly during the weight loss portion of your journey and found later you were able to be a little more slack on them when you were in maintenance?

I'm looking for a little shared wisdom here and I thank you in advance to anyone who is willing to share.