WHY oh WHY did I do it! Do any of you have any good coping tricks for when you get home tired, hungry, stressed... to get over that hump while a healthy Zone meal is prepared? I was on track yesterday, breakfast and lunch were fine, then somehow I went NUTS and ate chocolate, and then ice cream, and if that weren't bad enough, crackers with butter on them!! I mean, its like at the time I just didnt care. I felt gross afterwards so I had several glasses of water, and went to bed without dinner.... Good grief...when do I supposedly lose these carb cravings? Or, is this too severe to qualify as a craving, a true BINGE it was. The danger zone for me is when i come in the door at night, too hungry, tired and stressed - then I give in to stupid choices instead of cooking a healthy zone meal. Of course, this was an EXTREMELY bad choice day, ha..... Any suggestions? At this rate I will never get this diet on track, and I really am working hard at it!! MOST days I am right on track... although progress is slow I am feeling it's working. Then this happens. :(

[quote:02141c5501="baZillionaire"]WHY oh WHY did I do it! Do any of you have any good coping tricks for when you get home tired, hungry, stressed... to get over that hump while a healthy Zone meal is prepared?[/quote:02141c5501] When you find yourself in that position --it's too late! In order to have a way out of the problem, you need to plan ahead for the inevitable times when it will happen: 1. Lack of opportunity is stronger than willpower. This means getting rid of everything in the house that you do not want to be tempted with in a weak moment. I only have zone favorable stuff in my house. 2. Have an escape plan. Have a bunch of Zone favorable snacks available all the time as a backup plan. I have non-fat cheese, apples and pecans in large quantities available for snacks, or emergency snacks. I also have some Dr. Sears Zone bars in the refrigerator just in case all else fails. 3. Replinish you energy. There is nothing wrong with having an extra Zone snack on occasion when you are feeling tired. I have found that this can be a real pick-me-up and give me the energy to move forward in the right direction. And if you are hungry because you waited too long between meals, you need to get a Zone snack into your system right away! Using these methods, I have only messed up once in 9 months. And I did it on purpose just too see what would happen if I ate that great Italian bread at the restaurant! :(

Hi Dennis, all good thoughts, thanks. Getting rid of EVERYTHING is challenging, as I have a hungry 16 yr. old boy who will balk terribly. He loves fruit, and is happy without sweets if I have plenty of fruit, but he tends to eat it all up on me:) I will invest in some bars to keep in the fridge, and maybe a secret stash somewhere for emergencies such as yesterday! Thanks again, I think I should have had a 2nd snack as you suggested, it may have averted the entire disaster. ~Donna

Hi Donna, I think you are too hard on yourself. It sounds like you only messed up one meal. When that happens, just make sure the next meal is in the zone and you are back on track. For you, a good zone snack before bed would have been just right. Also, don't forget your afternoon snack. I usually eat it when I come home, then I can concentrate on making my delicious zone meal. Also, just try to learn something from those out-of-zone times that will help you head them off next time. There is stuff in my house that I shouldn't eat because my husband is not interested in reforming. I don't want any of it when I'm in the zone. When you are in the zone, you are hunger free and craving free. It's a great feeling. I gather from your other posts that you are still trying to adjust to be hunger free. The FAQ section on that really helped me. I'm still noting changes and learning and adjusting, but for the most part, these 4 weeks back in the Zone have been great. Keep on trying, you can succeed. Lynda

I agree with Lynda about snacking in the afternoon. Many afternoons I come home, change clothes, then pour a small glass of wine and have an ounce of cheese while pondering dinner or making preparations. Obviously any snack would do, but I find the ritual relaxing, it breaks the day between "workday" and "home time" for me. Don't be too tough on yourself, we all have one of those Seven-Chips-A'Hoy-Cookies days once in a while. But know that snacking can help cut the urge. Take care, Kate

Thanks, Kate and Lynda, I appreciate your comments. I do think you may be right in that I am not really SURE I am "in the Zone" some of the time. I am going to look at the FAQs some more for guidance, as you suggest. Also, I am VERY sure that my eating is too based on my emotions rather than true hunger. I mean realistically, how HUNGRY can I be? I need to learn to stop and look inward for a moment and realize what I am feeling before I try to stuff it all back down with food. I don't think that has anything to do with Zoning tho'. I am BACK ON TRACK, yesterday went well, and today I have my lunch packed and plans laid out for my dinner. I live pretty far from home so my walking in the door time is 6:30-7:00, most days. Yesterday it was 7:45, so that is another issue... I have a snack packed for this afternoon, 1/4 c. low-fat cottage cheese and 2 Wasa rye-crisp crackers. I MIGHT think about having both my snacks before dinner though, one at work about 4 and then the 2nd the minute I get home, while I make dinner and such. I LIKE your idea about wine and cheese as a pre-dinner snack, I don't know tho', that one could backfire! LOL! Sometimes wine makes my good intentions go right out the window :wink: Well, thanks again for the words of support and guidance, I hope next time I post it is to say I have gotten a few pounds off and feel SUPER DUPER, or, to congratulate one of you all for the same!! :D

If nothing else, I can always serve as a bad example :( I've been having "one of those days" for almost 2 weeks now! I'm pretty sure I haven't been zoning well, and sometimes I'm just ravenous, even though I ate a 6-block meal not 2 hours earlier. So I figure I'd been eating either incorrectly, or not enough. What it really felt like is not enough. So I ended up eating a LOT more than normal, and for several days! So. My advice(take my advice, I won't be using it!:)) is don't beat yourself up over it. You've got years and years ahead, 1 slip isn't gonna hurt much in this arena. What I also did, seeing as how my eating was out of control, was spend more time exercising or doing manual labor around the house to make up for it. That I still had good control over. So I got some yucky chores done in the process! I ended up not gaining any weight for the whole 10 days. Not bad, eh? I still don't know quite why I suddenly needed all those carbs and stuff. I even had chocolate! And I can go a l-o-n-g time w/o that! And I still don't feel I'm over it. I'm in control again, but edgy. But I am NOT gonna take a guilt trip. I do enough traveling the way it is. I know it'll settle down, and all will be good again. Bob

You brought something up that most posts (and the doctor as well) seem to sidestep. The Zone addresses the physical basis for food cravings. For me it has erased the physical cravings, but it leaves the emotional ones behind. My Chips A'Hoy days have nothing to do with how well I've been Zoning, because I've been doing it for so long that I don't screw it up. If I have a cookie day (and for me it's cookies, never anything else) it's emotionally based. Very annoying--- most of the time I don't give in but I get really grouchy while I'm "not" having cookies. And the grouchiness has nothing to do with insulin levels or being out of the Zone. When you Zone successfully for a while, you are able to separate out the physical cravings from emotional ones. So at least you can recognize them for what they are, and then give in to them or not. I think it's important to realize that the Zone is a great tool to use but it is not the cure for "all" food cravings. Just my 0.02 worth. Kate

[quote:847f744ead="baZillionaire"]I felt gross afterwards so I had several glasses of water, and went to bed without dinner.... [/quote:847f744ead] Donna, I see you are getting a lot of posts about not beating yourself up. They are right. Your body will do that job for you, you don't need to add insult to injury! :( I treat every mistake I make as an opportunity to learn about the consequences of my actions, and if I don't like the results (sometimes my mistakes turn out better than my plans), then motivation to find a way to avoid making the same mistake again. For the most part my life has been a continuous series of first time mistakes! :wink: You are doing the right thing by immediately moving forward with a plan to succeed the next day. :D I have a variation on the cottage cheese snack that I like a lot: 1/4 cup low fat cottage cheese with 1/2 Granny Smith apple cut up and mixed in. Throw in a toasted almond or a raw pecan half for a crunchy surprise. Wrap the other fruit half with a piece of plastic wrap to keep it fresh for a day for your next snack. If you use non-fat cottage cheese, you get to add more nuts (3). It takes me about 1-2 minutes to prepare. Also with non-fat cottage cheese, there is no oil, so a quick rinse with water and the container is sparkling clean (I am very pragmatic). I also like to make a breakfast from this, but I use plain (unsweetened) apple sauce and frozen blueberries. One thing to watch out for with cottage cheese (that I found out the hard way). It really has 1/2 carb for each protein, so go a little light with the other carbs. When I first started the Zone I was using the block method. 3 block breakfast was 3/4 cup non-fat cottage cheese and 3 fresh peaches with nuts. I could not figure out why I did not feel right after eating it. Then I read the labels and weighed the fruit. 250g peaches! That made 3 proteins and 9 carbs! That is when I went to the gram method. I weigh all my fruits now to get a feel for how many carbs are in each. Most favorable fruits are about 100g per carb. I find it is much easier to prepare food by weight than any other method (as long as you invest in an electronic kitchen scale). Put a bowel or plate on the scale, zero it, add an ingredient, zero it, add the next item... Next I am going to make a new Zone Block favorables sheet with weights listed for every item for a block. Good eating! :D

Thanks, everyone, for the kind words of encouragement. I truly appreciate it. I guess I tend to be my very best friend or my own worst enemy, depending on the day. :? I feel good today, and did well all day. I know it will get easier and plus every day I eat well, as closely as I can to within the Zone, I will be improving my health. If it takes me another MONTH or so to really get the plan down well, well so be it, at least in the meantime I am not eating BAD at all. Cheers to all, and thanks again.