A couple days ago, after being on Trim Healthy Mama (THM) for 10 days I had a very discouraging day. Since I’d only been doing THM for a few days, obviously I was still learning and because I’d been trying to use up the non-THM contents of my pantry I was not completely on plan. However, I began to have a few concerns on how well THM will work for me, despite thinking I had dealt with all my issues before jumping in.

The previous night I was finally able to get my food diary put into my google spreadsheet and going back and seeing what I had been eating just burst my bubble. I thought I had been doing fairly well and then realized that almost none of my meals had really been on-plan. Granted, I was eating better than before THM, even with my fast food and eating out selections, but I still had a long way to go. It was like I had run a 100 yards and then realized that I still had 10 miles to go.

Looking over the food log a pattern showed up that I was already really aware of but seeing it on paper made it hit home. I tend to eat a lot of dairy. To the point of if I don’t have cheese with a meal I’m not satisfied no matter how good the meal or how much I eat. Some people are this way with bread, for me it’s cheese. It seems a lot of people come to THM with candy and sugar addictions, and that is so not me. I’m not a dessert eater, not a candy eater, not a snacker. My food addictions would be dairy and mixing carbs like potatoes/pasta with high fat foods like cheese and sour cream. This brought me to the realization that I’m going to have to give up some cheese/dairy. Working in E meals a few times a week should help that, but basically there is no way I’m going to shed the 100 pounds I need to lose if I don’t cut dairy to the point of feeling denied. Yes, I want to be healthy, but I just don’t see myself ever not wanting cheese/dairy and fast food. I have loved those things all my life (though I was denied fast food growing up, so it’s not a case of it being what I know but what I was denied). This sent me into a temper tantrum. Like all humans, I don’t want to be denied anything, even if it’s not good for me.

Then there is fast food. Even having made a conscious effort not to eat out much in the past week, I had eaten out a lot. Days 1-3 of my food log could largely be ignored because I was traveling, so it was kind of a given I was going to eat out. However, I do think I made wise or the wisest possible choices for those meals. But, I still seems counter-intuitive that I can eat out more than once a week and lose weight, and there are two meals a week that I won’t even consider brown bagging it or cooking at home. One is lunch after church and the other is lunch after my kids get done with homeschool co-op on day a week.

Also, I have a hard time with snacks. I generally don’t do snacks. Compared to my husband and kids who really do need to eat every 3 hours I am a metabolism slug. My metabolism crawls along and I just never feel snacky. Well, not never. At about 9:30 at night I get a little hungry but to eat every 3 or 4 hours during the day just isn’t something I even want to do. The space between my breakfast and lunch isn’t long enough to have a snack, so I’m okay there. The problem comes when I try to get one between lunch and dinner. I often nap in the afternoon and snack time falls during nap time. If I have a snack when I get up from my nap at 4:00/4:30 it’s too close to dinner but has been too long since lunch. Maybe after being on THM for a while I’ll lose that need to nap and need a snack instead.

That all said, I’m committed to THM for a year at least. I just had a very hopeless feeling day that my non snacking nature, no sweet tooth to overcome, and tendency toward S THM recipes with cheese and dairy is going to sabotage me. I was not in a good place and wanted to scream, “JUST TAKE ME TO MCDONALD’S!” so bad. But I didn’t. I had a non-scale victory (NSV) instead. I reheated some on-plan chicken enchilada casserole, had some 1% cottage cheese and 2 pumpkin pie cookies (also on-plan), and went to the grocery store instead.