New lifestyle choices; or No more morning tea for me!

I have mentioned in the past (several times in my last blog) that there is a staff morning tea every Friday morning at work in our office. During my first stint of Cohen's I managed to avoid it by eating my crackers right before it and sitting there sipping on a herbal tea or a coffee, but was quite excited at the prospect of being able to 'join in' again when Cohen's was over. I planned to build it into one of my treat times. My consultant kept saying, 'don't plan on eating at those morning teas!' but did I listen? Clearly not.

I went straight to France for 5 weeks after Cohen's and there wasn't a morning tea before I left. Had there been time for one I assume I would have treated it with caution, however by the time I got back from France (all nice and plumped up again) I did not treat them with caution at all. I went straight back into sampling bits of everything!

Here is what was at morning tea today:

1) Lamingtons with cream in the middle;
2) A sliced nectarine and some strawberries (unusual to have any healthy stuff there!);
3) Spinach/feta/spring onion muffins;
4) Banana and date muffins;
5) Sugar-coated jam donuts from some famous place (everyone was raving about them);
6) Pumkin, cashew and basil dip;
7) Bagel chips;
8) Normal smoky flavoured chips;
9) Little pretzel shaped pastry biscuits covered in sugar; and

10) Little hazelnut/chocolate wafer squares.

Let me just add at this point that most of the stuff was still on the table for most of the day. Morning tea is at 10:30 am and the photo attached was taken at 2 pm! So it's not just a case of not eating it when everyone else does, I have to avoid it all day.

Today I basically sat there not feeling like eating much of anything. I ate a piece of nectarine but other than that didn't want anything (except for the strawberries which I'm not allowed). It got me thinking, why can I sit here easily now and not eat this stuff when I sat through 7 morning teas after France last year, each time having promised myself I'd 'be good', and yet was unable to stop myself from eating a bit of everything. Ok, maybe it was less than I might have eaten before (or was it?), but I couldn't control myself. So how did I do it today???

I think the biggest reason is that I know Cohen's works and I don't want to stuff up my diet by eating something I shouldn't. So then I thought - what would I eat normally? I'd probably eat the dip with the bagel chips (god i love them), a couple of chips and some of the spinach/feta muffin.

That's when I realised... it's not about avoiding morning tea when i'm on the diet, it's about avoiding morning tea FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE! I'm normally not hungry, I just eat it because it's there and everybody else is eating it and I want to taste it. Not to mention it's usually all abolute junk (todays quality was much higher than normal). If I went and chose a dip to buy from the shops it would be a different flavour and the muffins always smell better than they taste - so why waste a treat time? I'm far better off having my favourite chocolate bar after dinner than eating random bits of stuff at a morning tea. Or chocolate I don't really like.

So that is my learning for today. Don't deprive yourself of treats, but don't just eat random crap because it is put in front of you. Choose a fabulous treat and have it at a more appropriate time (see below).

Hope you are all having a fabulous day!

M. x

P.S - Anyone who has done Cohen's (and I know a lot of you who read this are doing it now or have done it before) knows the maintenance guidelines encourage you to eat treats just after a meal that contains specific things (I won't write it here because I can't give away Dr Cohen's secrets). This makes it almost impossible to indulge at a morning or afternoon tea anyway unless you have breakfast at 10 am or lunch at 3 pm. So I've decided that in the future if somebody bakes something particularly irresistible that I want to eat, I will take home a little slice and have it for dessert. No more morning teas for me!

P.P.S - The sexy beef salad at the top is just steak (marinated in lemon juice, garlic, chili and celtic salt) with cucumber, tomato, thai basil and coriander. Uber yummy.