Fun story for you today:
Today at lunch time (around 2 pm) I was thinking out-load about what I was going to have for lunch.
…truthfully I was whining about my inability to make a decision 😉
When I realized that I was taking the family out for dinner at 5, I decided to just grab a coffee.
To which a friend responded “Well, you should at least get a muffin to tide you over”
Here’s the interesting thing:
My ‘usual’ at Tim Horton’s (Coffee shop in Canada) is their Turkey Bacon Sandwich, listed on their website as having 37o Calories. For sake of argument we’ll round up to 400.
Now, here’s a list of some of their muffins:
Low-Fat Double Berry: 300
Banana Nut Muffin: 400
Blueberry Muffin: 350
Chocolate Chip Muffin: 400
Whole Grain Raspberry: 400
Caramel Chocolate Muffin: 500
So you see, a muffin is not a ‘tide you over’ kind of thing..it’s a meal. The coffee is the ‘tide you over thing’ (obviously a better choice would have been an apple or banana).
I could have easily grabbed a coffee and a muffin and assumed it was a nice light snack and in reality have had between 500 and 700 Calories (coffee plus muffin)…Then not realizing how much I ate, maybe had a bit of a bigger dinner at the restaurant (since I ‘skipped’ lunch)…and just like that..I could easily be 1,000 calories over where I wanted to be today, without even realizing it.
Moral of the story – You don’t ‘need’ anything to tide you over (most of us go 24 hours without eating)…and if you do feel like a quick snack between planned meals…always do your best to opt for fuits and veggies.
In essence this post illustrates the whole reason we fast – The point of Eat Stop Eat isn’t to give you permission to NOT eat..it’s actually to give you FREEDOM to EAT…that’s how balance works 😉
So by NOT ‘tiding myself over’ I can go to dinner and enjoy the food I eat. Not gorge, not stuff myself, but simply ENJOY. Stress free.
This is why in a weird sort of way, Eat Stop Eat is about eating, more than it is fasting.
BP
