The longer I follow the Weight Watchers plan, the more aware I become of my eating habits and the effects food has on me. I know it’s been over three years… what can I say, I’m a slow learner. One thing that has really come to my attention lately (perhaps I’ve noticed this in the past, but clearly I never did anything about it) is the immediate effect my food choices at dinner have on my evening. When I eat a reasonable portion of healthy food I feel great. Bath and bedtime go well. Everyone is happy. However, when I don’t… ugh!

Today I ate well until afternoon snack when I prepared a plate of cheese and crackers and veggies for the kids. We all sat down at the picnic table to eat and I ate the cheese and crackers and veggies! Oops. I ate a piece of cheese sort of mindlessly, then it was all down hill from there. The kids wanted nothing to do with the veggies (buggers!) so I ate most of those, but I also ate 8pts worth of cheese and crackers. At dinner time I had 6pts left for the day, which isn’t a lot, but it is do-able. I had a healthy meal planned in my head, but we got caught up in outdoor afternoon chores and the kids dug in the garden. When we came in at 5pm I scrapped dinner plans in favor of getting the grubby children cleaned up before our house looked like our garden. Shortly after 5:30 they were both clean and we were in the kitchen talking about dinner. I was mildly annoyed at having a PYO dinner instead of cooking something healthy. Eve wanted PB&J on toast with mandarin oranges and Lex wanted grilled cheese and yogurt. In the process of preparing their dinners I ate a handful of peanuts (while opening the cabinet to get the peanut butter), half a slice of PB&J toast (Eve wouldn’t eat two whole slices anyway), a piece of bread/butter/cheese (while preparing Lex’s grilled cheese) and then half of his grilled cheese sandwiches. He’d asked for two and I made them, but it seemed like a lot when I put them on his plate so I somewhat mindlessly ate one half. I love grilled cheese! By this point I had more than blown through my six remaining points for the day, but I hadn’t actually sat down and had dinner. I was tempted to say to hell with it and make a huge bowl of cereal (NOT point friendly!), but instead I went for yogurt and granola. That was about six points. Had I just had the yogurt and granola for dinner I would have been full and felt great, but instead I ended up headachy, nauseas, and sluggish. And of course angry with myself and therefore short and crabby with the kids. Poor kids.

When will I learn? Awareness is the first step, right? Someday I’ll be able to stop myself before I blow it, instead of realizing it a little too late. Someday. Sigh.