{"id":26468,"date":"2012-02-13T08:41:17","date_gmt":"2012-02-13T16:41:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/?p=26468"},"modified":"2012-02-13T08:40:25","modified_gmt":"2012-02-13T16:40:25","slug":"n-is-for-nemesis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/?p=26468","title":{"rendered":"N is for Nemesis"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

N is for Nemesis<\/span><\/strong><\/h4>\n

I have one Nemesis in my life. It’s a simple one. It’s a vice that I wish I could beat. My nemesis is sometimes tricky–it can lay dormant for awhile and I think I have it under control. Then my Nemesis pays me a visit.<\/p>\n

What is my nemesis?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nDESSERT.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Recently I wrote about Happy Weight<\/a> and making peace with my body image, peace with the number on the scale. I know that I could lose those “last few pounds” if I didn’t battle so much with my nemesis.<\/p>\n

I really wish that I was a stronger person and could resist having dessert every day, but I just can’t. While I stay within my calorie range for the day, I do eat dessert most nights. Sometimes it’s a hot cocoa. Sometimes it’s cookies or ice cream. I try to choose low calorie options.<\/p>\n

See, I love dessert. I always have. Dessert was my trigger food. Dessert was one of the main reasons I was obese. I loved<\/em>\u00a0ice cream and ate cartons by myself. Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food. Peppermint ice cream during Christmas time…I loved it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Since I can’t completely kill my nemesis, I try to resist it as much as I can. I trick my brain by eating alternatives. \u00a0While I talk on and on about eating whole, real foods, I do believe that eating lower calorie alternatives of dessert is a-okay. \u00a0Sometimes I just need a TASTE to satisfy that craving.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nI’m working on not feeling bad about myself<\/strong>\u00a0when I eat treats. I’m eating them in moderation, within my calories for the day, so why am I beating myself up about it? Why do I feel like a failure for the day if I indulge in dessert? I don’t understand it myself. I do know that after years of restricting in order to lose weight, certain foods because trigger foods that I just avoided. So maybe it just takes some rewiring of my brain.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Recently I \u00a0wrote about how I was trying to break the habit of mindlessly snacking<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0on candy at work<\/a>. It was a habit that I wanted to break because I was WASTING so many calories each day eating candy that I didn’t even really LIKE. It wasn’t worth it. And I always felt bad about myself when I gave in to the temptation. I felt like I had failed for the day. For no particular reason, I decided that I would avoid snacking on candy from The Candy Room. A week went by and I was successful. Then another week went by and I realized I didn’t miss it.<\/p>\n

This is not the first time I’d tried to avoid The Candy Room<\/a>. I did it once before a year ago. But it only lasted about a week. I avoided eating candy and chocolate of any kind for a week. But once the week was up, I was eating candy and dessert again.\u00a0I had a light bulb moment. I realized this time around that the dessert wasn’t the issue: the candy at WORK was the issue. If I just resisted the mindless munching during work hours, I made it through the day. Having a treat at night for dessert was enough sugar to satisfy the craving keep me from eating it at work.<\/strong>\u00a0I realized once again that moderation is key: completely eliminating something from my life just made me want it more. But allowing myself to eat it in a certain scenario worked. I saved hundreds of calories a day by not eating candy at work. And was happier for it. AND I still got to enjoy a small dessert at home.<\/p>\n

How I “Trick” My Brain<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/h4>\n

Some of my favorite desserts are low in calories. Here are some ideas I have to share that I frequently use myself:<\/p>\n

1. Pudding. Making some chocolate pudding is a good option for a treat. I like that it’s easy to make and there are lower calorie options. For less than 200 calories you can enjoy a chocolate dessert. Who doesn’t like pudding?<\/p>\n

2. Vanilla ice cream with fruit. In the summer time I add slices of strawberries to my vanilla ice cream. Sometimes I’ll drizzle a little light chocolate sauce on it too. Love the flavors!<\/p>\n

3. Fruit Crumble<\/a>. There are lots of quick recipes you can do to make a fruit crumble. One I used to do was cooking apple slices in a skillet with a little brown sugar, top with granola cereal and a scoop of ice cream–yum!<\/p>\n

4. Fruit and honey. I recently made a dessert for a dinner party that was a hit. It was slices of pears with goat cheese, toasted walnuts and drizzled with honey<\/a>. It was delicious and healthy.<\/p>\n

5. Dark Chocolate. A few years ago I made the switch to dark chocolate. It’s so much healthier and after getting used to the dark, rich flavor I started to prefer it over any other chocolate. It’s good because it’s hard to eat a LOT of dark chocolate!<\/p>\n

QUESTION: What is YOUR nemesis? What’s your battle plan?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A-Abstinence<\/a>\u00a0*\u00a0B-Balance<\/a>\u00a0*\u00a0C-Calories<\/a>\u00a0*\u00a0D-Vitamin D<\/a>\u00a0*\u00a0E-Emergency<\/a>\u00a0*\u00a0F-Fast Food and Fine Dining<\/a>\u00a0*\u00a0G-Gym Bag<\/a>\u00a0*\u00a0H-Happy Weight<\/a>\u00a0*\u00a0I-Intervals<\/a>\u00a0*\u00a0J-Jumping<\/a>\u00a0*\u00a0K-Keeping Sane<\/a>\u00a0*\u00a0L-Losing Weight<\/a>\u00a0* M-Measuring Mistakes<\/a> *<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

N is for Nemesis I have one Nemesis in my life. It’s a simple one. It’s a vice that I wish I could beat. My nemesis is sometimes tricky–it can lay dormant for awhile and I think I have it under control. Then my Nemesis pays me a visit. What is my nemesis? DESSERT.\u00a0 Recently […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26469,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4696,4918,55,5418,68,80,314,91,92,104,1816,105,106,107,3206,152,154,214,246,247,262,3180,1095,298],"tags":[4697,8872,445,5453,8609,516,1502,8675,5516,2459,8732,3171,5515,8802],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/3172_Dr_Evil.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26468"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26468"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28568,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26468\/revisions\/28568"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}