Day 24: Oh for the Love of Cheat Day

What a weird day for eating.

My day started with this:

A big bowl of oatmeal with cinnamon, almond butter and bananas. I had planned to have one of my crusty rolls with butter and a cup of tea but oddly, my usual oatmeal just sounded better somehow. So I went with it.

Afterwards, I went for a run with my dad. And on the way home we stopped at a new coffee place and I got an unpictured non-fat decaf almond latte. It was good, if not maybe a bit too sweet. I also had a sample of a white chocolate and raspberry scone and a teeny bite of pumpkin cheesecake. Yum!

For my daughter's lunch, I whipped up some Annie's Organic White Cheddar Mac & Cheese and thought I'd follow suit for my own lunch. So we decided to share the box. While it was cooking, I had this for an appetizer:

A gorgeous toasted flax bun with butter. Drool.

To make lunch a little healthier, I added some green peas, some wild pink tuna and a dash of black pepper.Then I did something that most people will think is crazy. But in my family, we ALWAYS put ketchup on our mac & cheese! Yeah baby! This was a total "comfort food" kind of meal. And because I've been craving bread with butter, I paired lunch with this warm buttered roll.The mac & cheese was pretty tasty but the roll was disappointing. I wanted something crusty and this was more powdery. Eh.

Holy carbs, right?!

After Baby Girl woke up from her nap, I took her to the park where we met some friends. My girlfriend and I shared a few bites of chocolate together - some individually wrapped dark chocolate squares, smaller than the size of a matchbook. I had two. But they weren't that great, kind of waxy actually, and I didn't really care for them. And I forgot to take pictures!

Husband met us at the park and walked us home. I guess all my talk about my big Blizzard plans started to get to him because he decided that he wanted a milkshake. I had a few sips of that. Soooooo good.

Dinner got all screwed up. Because Husband had a late lunch meeting today, AND a HUGE milkshake on the way home from the park, he proclaimed that he would not be wanting dinner. He said, "If I get hungry, I'll just have a piece of fruit or something." Now normally, I'd be very supportive of the idea of not having to cook. But, since we were going to order Indian food tonight, I kinda had my heart set on it. And since our preferred Indian place has a $25 delivery minimum (and is just a few too many blocks to walk to) I had a conundrum on my hands. Certainly, I could not eat $25 worth of Indian food on my own. And I really didn't think I could deal with having leftovers in the house. So, after a lot of back and forth, and a solemn promise from Husband to make it up to me next Cheat Day, I decided to just go downstairs and grab some sushi instead.

California roll, yam roll, agedashi tofu and miso soup.

It was good, not exactly what I wanted, but good nonetheless.

I devoured it.

And for the big finale, the much anticipated, long awaited PUMPKIN PIE BLIZZARD:

And guess what? IT TOTALLY SUCKED. It was pretty gross and tasted so fake and yucky. I couldn't even finish half of it. Never EVER again. After all that waiting, I was so very disappointed.

So it was a Cheat Day that had it's ups and downs and sadly, for the most part, did not live up to my high expectations. Ah well, there's always next week. I am now sitting here at my computer at 10:30pm feeling full but still wanting something.... But I'm really scared of what the scale will say tomorrow. Especially after all that salt and soy sauce! Yikes. If you hear a loud shriek early tomorrow morning, rest assured, it's just me. Screaming from Canada.

And I must admit, after all the indulging I am REALLY looking forward to three healthy, light meals tomorrow. And a nice long run and a very hot yoga class. That is all sounding so good right now. And that's the thing about Cheat Day - Makes the dieting sounds like fun all over again.

Lesson learned from THIS Cheat Day: Going overboard isn't the answer. Feeling stuffed and knowing it's from eating all the wrong stuff just doesn't feel very good. It's not that I'm feeling guilty at all, I just feel like, 'what was the point of all that?'

This is only my 3rd ever Cheat Day, so it's still quite a novelty and I'm definitely still learning. But I think from now on, I'm going to try to keep this lesson in the forefront of my mind. I will still have absolute and full permission to eat whatever I want, but if I'm honest with myself, eating crap just isn't as satisfying as I think it will be. It never really is, is it? I think just larger portions of good, wholesome, healthy foods - plus a little taste of something sinful - that's the recipe for a really awesome Cheat Day.