Dining Out

I have lots of my usual philosophical ramblings in my head today, but am going to try to keep this short and sweet (I do go on in some of my posts, don't I?).

Had a fantastic dinner out with friends last night. Lots of great French/West African food, a few glasses of South African wine (delish!) and a successful avoidance of the bread basket, too much couscous and dessert.

All in all, a fairly balanced night out -- I ate all sorts of good things, but was able to steer myself away from totally unneeded good things. Except for maybe the wine -- I guess to some people that's an indulgence, not a necessity.

I walked to work yesterday as my exercise - it's an easy 3 miles. I would have biked but obviously then would have had to struggle home with it at 11:30 pm, slightly intoxicated, and I don't know what I would have done with the 6'2 boyfriend. Balanced him on the handlebars, I suppose.

To my chagrin, I forgot to take pics of all the gorgeous eats to share with you all. I think you'd have enjoyed it, and I wanted to comment on the portion size of what we were served -- it was the perfect amount! Just enough, not too much. I love it when that happens.

I promise that next time I'll remember that I'm eating for more than just myself!

Anyway, my big thought for yesterday was that I'm liking my weight loss efforts more when I don't stress about it all the time. This revelation came to me over the past few weeks, when I've been too busy to get compulsive -- or compulsively worry -- over every little thing I've put in my mouth.

Without a conscious decision from me, I went on an autopilot of sorts, eating on plan, not thinking much about food in between, but also not thinking about how much weight I *should* lose by next week, or calculating how much I want to lose by the end of the year. I made room for some exercise in my life (not as much as I would have liked) but didn't kill myself if it didn't happen.

Now, it's easy to take this attitude too far. So I'm on guard against getting really laissez-faire here. BUT...I still lost weight (a decent amount), and I really enjoyed my life a lot more!

I sometimes find myself grinding my teeth when I think about how much weight I want to lose and by what time frame. You just can't hurry these things -- they happen as they happen.

So in my continuing quest to make it to Onederland, I'm going to lighten up on the mental machinations and reeeeelllaaaxxxx. That means relax my mind, not my behaviors.

Maintenance is a long way away for me still, but I like this kinder, gentler pace, and I swear to the goddesses that I seem to lose more weight on the weeks that I'm least worried about how much I'm going to lose. Bizarre pattern that, but it's popped up several times over the past year --- enough that I should have heeded it before now!