Day 7 Jif 'n Jel

Do you have a food that you have to know you can eat, anytime, if you want? A food that makes you feel totally indulged and completely satisfied, like a whack of Entemann's Ultimate Crumb Cake? A food, that once you eat it, you really don't care about what you eat the rest of the day or if you even eat the rest of the day? For me, it's a no frills, old school peanut butter and jelly. Always has been. That's my thing.
Ever since the second grade, when I opened my dinged up, metal Mary Poppins lunch box and discovered, right next to the Hostess King Don, the ooiest, gooiest grape jelly-stained-Wonder Bread sandwiching the creamiest Jif ('cuz my mom was choosy) peanut butter, I was hooked for life.
I still eat PB&Js (as you know from my food journals) and I am still loving 'em, in all their empty nutrition spongy white bread wonder. But, I'm compromising. I still have the white bread (the kind that when squeezed, like Silly Putty, mushes flat), but I've switched out the "jel".
Calorie Pop Quiz? When you prepare a PB&J how many tablespoons of peanut butter do you spread on it? 2? 3? 5? If you're honest, it's probably close to 4 or 5 and believe me, that isn't extreme. Now the jelly. 2 Tablespoons? More? If you took your average Wonder Bread PB&J, where do you think your sandwich would come in at on the calorie chart? 300 calories? 400 calories? Try 640 and that doesn't include the Vitamin D milk and Cheetos that usually accompany it.
I've 20/90'd my favorite lunch staple. I still have it, almost everyday on low cal bread (60 calories per slice) but I use Smucker's Low Sugar Preserves (10 calories per T.) with 1 T. peanut butter. I've looked high and low for a peanut butter that has less calories then Jif, but I guess no matter how hard those peanut butter producers crunch 'em, a low calorie peanut butter can't be made. Every jar of lowered sugar/less fat peanut butter I've picked up still has 190 calories per 2 T. Go figure. I could keep searching but I am satisfied and that's the key.
If you have a food that you absolutely love, keep eating it, otherwise you'll begin to feel deprived. Deprivation morphs into pity, pity leads to despair and the next thing you're thinking is, "this sucks, I'll never be able to make it 90 days" and you won't. You are doing this day by day. How do you eat Haagen Dazs' world's largest cinnamon dulce de leche hot fudge sundae? One bite at a time.

Breakfast: Coffee w/4 T. Half 'n Half (80)
Lunch: PB&J (230), Diet Coke (0)
Dinner: McDonald's Double Cheeseburger (450), Diet Coke (0)....
I know. McDonald's two nights in a row? Let me tell you, sometimes we've had McDonald's two meals in a day. And yes, I watched Morgan Spurlock's documentary and yes, I even read the book, but today was
about "getting through it" and that's exactly what I did. I got through it. I deserved a break today and I happily gobbled down what I had coming to me. I won't bore you with the harried, mundane details but suffice it to say, that, after I forked over $4.89 (no sodas) to fill the bellies of three people, everyone felt better.
Today I didn't walk. I honestly didn't even think about walking. I plopped down on the couch after the kids went to bed (when I could've been walking) and savored 3 Chips A Hoy White Fudge Chunky cookies (240) and 1 cup low fat milk (100). I made a pact with the devil, right then, that I would exercise a full sixty minutes for the next three days straight to make up for this lost day.
Day 7 Calorie Total: 1100