Creative Thinking Exercise in a Hospital Cafeteria

Just close your eyes and imagine yourself, a carb-aholic, walking into a smorgasbord of carbohydrates.  What do you do?  How do you feel?  I look in front of me and see a deli counter with all sorts of freshly baked breads - ciabatta bread, swirling rye, and potato rolls as big as my head.  Walk past that counter and see the next one.  This one is full of entrees.  Not so bad except for the mountain of white potatoes, pasta, and loads of other foods with who knows what's in them!  Turn to the next wall and there is a WALL-O-SODA fountain...  geez.  In the center of it all are bunch of spinny racks with little buckets of every kind of sugary cereal you can possibly imagine.  Off to the side there is a deep freeze filled to the brim with every kind of frozen popsicle, fudge pop, and drumstick known to man!

By this time, I'm starving.  I had only had my omelet and here it was almost 6:30pm.  I NEEDED to eat!  What do I do?  Give in and just eat what I can?  I can't!!!!!!!  I've come so far!!!  I don't want to start all over!

 
Off to the side in a small refrigerated unit, through the single glass door, I see a glimmer of hope.  SALAD!!!!!  All they had was Caesar salad or chicken Caesar salad.  The chicken looked gross and processed.  At the top of the unit, they had some chicken salad and off to the side, I found one container of tuna salad.  YES!!!  I hit the jackpot!  I grabbed the regular Caesar salad and the tuna and ran for the checkout line.

Tossed the Caesar dressing.  Tossed the croutons.  Tossed the MOUNTAIN of shredded Parmesan cheese to reveal a nice bed of romaine lettuce.  I dumped the tuna on top and mixed it all in and I ate a little less than 1/2 of that before I was full.

Whew............

What a relief that was over. 

Being away from home and not having a planned and pre-prepared meal with me made things difficult when faced with a spontaneous trip out to get something to eat.  But it goes to show you, there is always a good option somewhere in there.  I literally had to put blinders on after I had seen what else was in there.

I have decided to adopt this image as my spokesman for bad carbs...  LOL!  Although the pentacle on his hat is wrong...  It should be a pentagram - which should be upside down. 

Even though the situation was tough; being at the hospital with my dying grandfather and drama-stricken family.  I managed to pull through and make a good choice in the end.  It was one I could be proud of.  Now I think about the repercussions of what it might have been like had I made a different choice and how that might have affected my ability to grieve.  The selfishly induced guilt clouding my ability to truly feel the emotions of the situation...  Not worth it.  Totally not worth it.

Today makes day 7.  So far so good!  Stress has always played a huge factor in my weight loss (or lack thereof).  But I can proudly say that I have lost 6 pounds over the course of this week - putting me right on track with my goal of 2 pounds a week for 52 weeks.

Day 7 weight: 302