Not eating out

Remember that one of my goals for the Perfect 10 challenge is to eat out a lot less. I am doing actually really well on this goal! I have eaten out twice in the last week -- both times at Subway -- and since Christmas break started I think I have eaten out a total of five times. By the way, only two of these times were really "worth it": once when a friend who has moved away was here from out of town, and secondly when I had to work, exercise, and get to a show at the Walton Arts Center by 7. The other times could have been avoided with better planning and/or more desire to eat at home -- and the food probably would have been better.

There are a couple of things striking me on this whole eating at home phenomenon. First of all, I am drinking so much less soda. I used to order pop (I'm originally from Ohio; yes, I call it pop) with almost every meal I ate out. And since I ate out once a day -- sometimes twice -- most days, that adds up to a lot of pop! Let's *VERY CONSERVATIVELY* say that I ate out 5 times a week. Pop costs usually about $2 at a restaurant. This adds up to $520 a year! Think how many 2 liters you could buy with that money. Also, it's really not good for my health -- water is so much better -- so think about that aspect too. Now that I am eating at home and the holidays are over, I am only letting myself buy pop for very special occasions and very rarely.

The second thing that is striking me is how much I have developed as a cook. I am to the point where I'm not really afraid to try to make most things myself. Lots of times, they turn out really well! I really like my own shrimp fajitas, I can cook a really tasty honeybaked ham (the magic is in the glaze), and I took breakfast to a whole new level over break. I'm experimenting with soups and liking many of the results. I make onion and cheese stuffed burgers that are to die for. In short - I am really starting to get pretty darn good as a cook. Given that this is the case, why would I want to eat something made with (usually) inferior ingredients that I'm able to prepare myself, and be sure of the ingredients/point values? A lot of the times, it is better anyway. I am getting confident enough that I can alter recipes with reasonable confidence. For example, yesterday I made egg salad and it turned out really well. As I was making it, I played around with the Recipe Builder on the Weight Watchers website. This is a really slick tool that helps you to calculate how many points are in your recipe so that you can easily track what you're eating. I ended up fiddling around with the recipe until I ended up with something that was only 4 points for a generous about 1 cup serving! I was pretty happy/proud/excited! It was really really tasty too. I think one of the keys was spicy mustard and the other key to low points was not using all of the yolks. 3 egg whites = 1 point!

Over the break I made my signature tasty burgers. They're based on this recipe. Sunny Anderson swore you should use the fatty 80/20% beef and, although I was unwilling to do that, I did half the leaner 95%/5% and half the more fatty 80%/20% beef. I ate two of the burgers over the break, but I froze the other two to enjoy later. I nearly choked as I put the recipe into the recipe builder on the WW website. The hamburger patty alone was 12 points! It was delicious though and I did not want to waste the food so I was determined to enjoy it. Plus, I have about 40 activity points I've earned this week so I was in good shape point wise. I ended up having the burger on a bun (and not a WW bun either) with half an avacado spread on top. Here is the part that floored me. It made me realize how much I am changing, and how much my attitude toward food is changing. I wanted to enjoy this burger with some pop and Doritos. Instead of buying a normal grocery-store-sized bag of Doritos, I bought a smaller gas-station-sized bag (2 1/8 oz) and a 20 oz Diet Coke so that I would not have the rest sitting around. Was the price per unit of food/beverage higher? Yes, absolutely. But I am just glad not to have that crap sitting around my house tempting me and begging me to eat the rest. I think that, fundamentally, I am changing how I think about food. I am changing what it represents to me. And I am changing my value system around it. In the past I would have bought the huge bag of Doritos and I would definitely have bought a 2L of Diet Coke. Not anymore, baby! Times, they are a changin'.

Am I there yet? Um, no. I still have to focus on making healthy choices a lot. It still occupies a lot of my mental capacity, and is very emotional for me. However, when I do things like buying smaller bags and THEN think about how it is actually a big step, I get excited. I also feel hope that, in fact, I can change my life and sustain these changes. That is probably half the battle right there.

So overall? I am loving eating at home more and eating out less. It is more work. It takes more planning. I view it as an investment -- an investment in my health and well-being.