Taco Tuesday and solutions for overeating

United States food custom

Taco Tuesday is a custom in many United States cities of going out to eat tacos or in some cases select Mexican dishes, typically served in a tortilla, on Tuesday nights. Restaurants will often offer special prices, for example, "$1 fish taco every Tuesday night".

It is popular in many big cities across the nation, and especially popular in the beach cities of Southern California. Taco Tuesday is similar to Happy Hour in that restaurants vary in their participation, hours, and specials offered.

Taco Tuesday is celebrated in other countries, such as in Canada, the UK and Australia. Similar customs are observed outside of the US. In Norway, the terms Fredagstaco and Tacofredag are used to refer to eating tacos on Friday night. In Sweden, serving tacos on Fridays is common for Fredagsmys.

Wikipedia

 

What about when you eat too many tacos?

The problem for me sometimes is wanting MORE.  Sometimes I overeat even though I had made a plan. If you don’t have a plan, your chances are worse. But what about when you made a plan and didn’t follow it because you wanted more?

Do you really NEED more, or just WANT more?

You have to find your own unique solutions.

Think out of the box. Do things without worrying about what other people think. Own it! They don’t have to live in your life with YOUR body. You know why you want to lose weight. You know what your life is without having the healthy body you really want. You know your reasons are perfectly healthy and reasonable even if they don’t understand or get it. Most of society doesn’t get it and are perfectly happy to embrace whatever “new norm” they dictate because it makes their life easier.

You have to think about the situation and why you didn’t follow your plan. Then you have to think of solutions. The solutions are hard to implement. Only YOU can do this. No one can do it for you. No one has any magic answers. You have to really think about the situation and what caused you to not follow your plan.

If you are very hungry, it’s easy to not connect the extra eating with the goal of losing weight you want to achieve. The feeling of comfort from the food will overpower the goal, unless you take some drastic action that is VERY HARD to do in order to overcome it. That means taking some action or making some decisions ahead of time that are not fun.

I do know one thing and that is that if the extra food simply wasn’t available and all you had was what was in your plan, you would succeed. Not only that, you would find that you got along just fine without it.  Only you can make the decisions that will set yourself up for success. You might need to explain this to the people in your life, and request their help with changing the situation so that you can make that happen. Let them know how important this is to you, even if they don’t agree with you. Ask them to please respect your wishes. For me, this meant asking Randy to help me be accountable with my calories, not eating more after my meal is finished, and also respecting that some evenings I’m done in the kitchen and won’t be preparing him tacos! At least late in the evening as he stays up late and often eats very late.

The other night after a long bike ride, I was really hungry. But I was not so hungry that it was a bad thing. Logically I knew I’d eaten just enough calories for the day that if I just took a shower and went to bed and read, I’d wake up just fine. But instead, Randy wanted tacos. It was too hard for me to not eat and I made one for myself. Then it was like it opened the flood gates and I also had a couple small homemade cookies (which were hidden in the basement at the bottom of the chest freezer!) I could not rely on my willpower. My only solution is that the kitchen is closed for me once I’ve finished my calories for the day.

 

What about hunger?

Also, I know that losing weight requires feeling hunger. Feeling hunger isn’t always a bad thing. Every time I’ve lost weight it was due to my embracing the hunger feelings even though they are uncomfortable.

Sure, there might be a few people who say they can do it without feeling hunger. Good for them. It’s not the case for me. I’ve found that when I stay the same and not lose any weight, it goes along with not feeling any hunger.

At the same time, eating too low isn’t good. That is why knowing your TDEE is so important. If you don’t want to rely on a calculator, or the highly accurate charts I created in nutrition college, you can get a DEXA scan to find out your metabolism based on your current body composition. Once you do, I’d be happy to go over it with you. The technician who performs the scan should also go over it with you.

I’ve gotten several DEXA scans over the years and it’s helped me to see the trend in my life. It’s hard to accept that my LBM has gone down a little with age, my body fat percentage has gone up, and my TDEE has gone down slightly. It’s not fair that my body needs even less calories by just a little, and it makes it even harder to stick to a plan. But it is what it is. I have to roll up my sleeves and deal. I could just say it’s not worth it and lower my standards. At the same time, I’m still working as a deputy part time, which most people would not do. It’s hard. I have to allow time for my body to recover. I have to take care of myself. And if I want to look sharp in that bulky uniform, it means I have to maintain a higher standard with my fitness. I either do it or I don’t. I choose to do it. I still have some work to do and always will. It is continuous, as is all the perishable skills. Maintaining fitness is a perishable skill. You have to keep at it.

There will be times when you have too much stress to be able to handle the feeling of hunger. Getting enough sleep is key to reducing stress.

How many calories do we eat to gain one pound?

I found some articles today that were interesting about what happens when we overeat. I especially like the first one, which briefly touches on a Thanksgiving meal, because he is some who I've met and talked to in person several times. He is genuine. There is a scientific number of calories for 1 pound in theory. And I think just like our TDEE it is accurate if you take it as a trend over time.

 

A visit with John in Colorado back in the day when I was a Venus Factor Coach.

 

Other articles are "How many calories are in a pound of fat?" and "What makes you gain weight fast?"

It all just reminds me that no matter where we are at, we have to keep going. Even when we get to a specific goal, it requires work and awareness of what we put into our body. Certain foods and additives can make us tend to gain fat easier, others are used for productive energy in our body. It's a complex symphony of chemical reactions in our body, and high individual, as well as being determined by everything we put in our body or what is lacking in the input.

The best way to lose body fat is just a few hundred calories per day. Walking 9 hours a day isn't reasonable, nor is starving all day.

That's why knowing your TDEE is very important! It's close to the same all of your adult life, but it can vary slightly as your metabolism is the sum of a variety of organic chemistry processes in your body, which changes SLIGHTLTY due to your diet and stress and many other factors. Just like my metabolism that has gone down as I age (shown in DEXA), it's slight, and just adjusting my diet slightly down in calories fixes the problem. Exercise helps, but only slightly as well, and too much exercise causes too much stress.

John and I eating a treat meal!

Eat as healthy as you can.

Know your TDEE. Ask me in the 1^st Phorm App if you don’t know. I’m always there to help.

Know if you over eat one day, like John said in his post, you'll have to under eat another day to avoid gaining weight.

If you want to lose weight, you have to under eat more days.

It’s hard for me to eat 3500 calories for me because I’m very petite. But it’s easy for me to over eat what my true needs are. That is why I gain weight so easily. That is why so many people are overweight.

Even if you can easily eat over 3500 calories, you can find a solution to eat the correct amount for your goal.  You can make a plan, and find a way to stick to your plan. When you fail your plan, it’s up to you to find out why and find your own solutions. You will likely have to ask others in your life to help if you continue to fail.

Be aware of what you are consuming. Make it a guessing game to determine the calories of a meal then enter it to see what is reality.

Just keep going!

I learned so much from John. He came to visit California once and I took him to Alcatraz. 

He took this picture of me there. It will always be a precious memory for me.

I wanted to show and write about our hummingbirds, kittens, and a SweetiePea update but this post has gotten long already, so it will have to be another post.

-Roberta