If you’ve read any of my blogs over the past few months, you know that I recently had my third child. I was always jealous of the women who said they loved being pregnant and felt so great, because I never did. Food was not my friend (lots of random foods made my stomach turn) so I’d eat enough to stay healthy but not a lot more. I never felt like indulging in a hot fudge sundae or most of those other foods a lot of pregnant women crave. Flash forward to now, and it’s a totally different story. As soon as I give birth, the appetite switch seems to turn on in my body. I am hungry and want to eat ALL the time, which usually means that I gain some weight after having babies instead of losing like most people do. I’m nursing, which means I need to eat more than usual. But the number of calories I’m consuming is far more than I need. And many of those calories are coming from one food: peanut butter. Peanut butter seems to be my trigger food. If allowed, I can sit with a jar and eat it by the spoonful. Yes, peanut butter can be part of any healthy diet. But a little bit goes a long way, and too much of any one food is not such a good thing. I think part of my desire to eat and eat comes from a change in my routine. I’m up more at night, and I’m also home more since it’s hard to juggle three little ones on my own in a lot of public places. So with this new routine, I need to develop a new plan for getting my eating under control and relearning my hunger cues. That way I’m eating when I need to instead of just when I feel like it. My plan is to limit my consumption of peanut butter to one serving, once a day. If I’m hungry and it seems like I shouldn’t be, I’ll drink a glass of water and wait 20 minutes. If I’m still hungry, then I’ll have plenty of other healthy snacks on-hand (like fruit and veggies) to help satisfy my craving. Do you have trigger foods? Have you learned to eat them in moderation, or do you just avoid them completely? If you eat them in moderation, how have you learned to maintain self-control? |
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