At our house, we NEVER think of it as cheating, reward, etc., but as PLANNED. We plan for occasional indulgence. We prepay for it-- we put in the time exercising knowing that it will result in the need for recovery calories that can, fairly, occasionally, be somewhat concentrated. (Did you know that McDonald's has a snack-size McFlurry two people can split? No one ever seems to ask for the snack size, but they have it....)

Recovery calories (normally half a banana and a glass of milk, or a small bowl of cereal added to the day's plan) are the ones that replenish muscle energy stores expended in the exercise. If we eat THEM within an hour of the exercise, it goes to muscle and prevents that "so hungry I could eat a small city" feeling many exercisers are mortified to encounter. Recovery calories head off not only sluggishness and hunger, caused by depleted muskles, but binging later.


We focus on mini-meals. So our tummies have shrunk naturally without surgery to shrink them, and that ALSO means that when we DO have something of a higher caloric concentration-- which means either more fat or more sugar-- we only have ROOM for a very small portion.

Thus, we have solved "it tastes too good to stop," by cultivating instead: "I'm too full to spoil this taste by eating another bite of it."

Very often that one-more-bite urge is our bodies' way of asking for fruit or veg we missed that day, and we misinterpret it to take another bite of eclair, or burger. Ooops! :~) Live and learn! Carry Ziplocs and take half of that eclair home for the freezer. Then enjoy the heck out of it on a hot summer day when you've worked up a good sweat. It will be just the right size bite.

~Susan