Two Weeks!

Last Week's Last Meal: Omlettry Pancakes.  I've been craving some good pancakes for weeks now and had the opportunity to indulge myself this past Sunday on some of the lightest, fluffiest, and most delicious pancakes in town.  I ordered the Eggonomical breakfast, but in hindsight I should have just gotten a short stack.  Unlike sandwiches, eggs are best when you prepare them yourself, and despite their name the Omlettry's eggs are meh.  Their pancakes though..oh man.  I went all out with butter and syrup, and gave it my best shot.  After I carved the soft, syrup soaked center out of a pancakes larger than most dinner plates I sat back and marveled in my indulgence.  Tummy full and sweet tooth sated I'm glad to say I chose wisely for my Last Meal Breakfast.

In two weeks I'm getting bariatric surgery.  It didn't really hit until this afternoon when I was considering how I'm going to approach the next two weeks on my pre-op diet.  Of all the difficult things I'm going to tackle over the coming months this virtual Atkin's diet is turning out to be the hardest.  I've grown accustom to using fruit as my go to snack food, and having to limit myself 1 medium piece of fruit a day is annoying.

What's really bothering me though is the realization that I still have powerful snack impulses when I'm at work.  Over the last year I've taken steps to reduce the amount of time I spend doing nothing at home.  So long as I stay busy with some task then I don't feel the need to snack.  Work is another matter though.  Eight hours of soul-crushing monotony can drive any person to find ways to alleviate the boredom.  Some people take hourly smoke breaks, some people snack, some chat constantly, and some just don't do any work.  Myself, I snack. 

In past years I might chow down on chips, crackers, cookies, donuts, or candy.  As I've talked about before, this usually leads to a nasty cycle of self-hatred and emotional eating that's only reinforced by being at a meaningless job.  This year I've tried to make sure to bring my snacks from home so that I have a healthy choice at arms length.  When I bring all my food from home I set myself up for success by making the healthy choice before I get in a situation where my instinct is to go for the unhealthy food. 

Without a big bowl of fruit I can snack at throughout the work-day I'm at a loss as to what to do.  Naturally the alternative is to bring carrots and/or celery to snack on, but without hummus I just don't have it in me.  I've done exceptionally well over the last few years in expanding the number of vegetables I eat, but I still haven't reached the point where I like them in and of themselves.  I've had the same bag of carrots prepared for the last week that I don't get around to eating with my lunch.

Of course all of my problems with snacking tie into larger issues as well.  There's nothing stressful about my job.  In fact it's anti-stressful.  It's so non-stressful it blows past boring and heads straight into mind numbing.  I'm not joking at all when I say that I like jobs with a moderate degree of stress - it makes the day fly by.  The job itself isn't so bad, but the fact that it's a filler job, a temporary way to make some money while working on my Master's, means that I'm constantly reminded of how much I'd rather be doing something else.  I know it's bad when the first thing I think on Monday morning is 39 hours and 59 minutes left to go.

Snacking was (and still is to some degree) my way of dealing with unhappiness.  Emotional health is directly tied to physical health, and developing ways to deal with unhappiness has been a large focus of the last year of my life.  I've largely succeeded, but being at work is like placing myself in temptation central.

I know I can do this, but the next two weeks are going to be hell.  On a more positive note, two weeks is nothing and after they're done I get a full week off from work!