The Hollando Diet

Like Matthew, I had a less than fully successful time of it last week, bouncing back up to between 177 and 180 for a while before settling back to 175 this morning. However, I feel somewhat justified in attributing this to one-time events. For example: last Sunday we had Thanksgiving Dinner.

Now, this isn’t quite as outlandish as it sounds. I’m well aware that Thanksgiving doesn’t arrive until November. However, my younger sister was in town this last week, but she won’t be around again until next year. So my mother decided to have the whole family over for Thanksgiving a bit on the early side, since it’s my sister’s favorite meal of the year anyway. So we had the turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing and pumpkin pie. Apple pie, sadly, wasn’t quite in season. And actually I acquitted myself quite well on the portions front, even if skipping pie wasn’t an option. No diet regime should ever force one to refuse his mother’s pumpkin pie.

Coupled with another dinner with my sister, and a few miscellaneous events, I’m glad I didn’t do much worse than end up even for the last week and a half (and I expect I’m poised to do better during the upcoming week). I’ve been keeping up with the aerobic exercise, and have, rather gingerly, started the strength training rounds at the gym again, although I’m not sure if I’ll be able keep that up with sufficient frequency for any dramatic effect. I’ve only been able to keep up the aerobic workout because of the machine physically located in my house.

I also noticed another interesting psychological effect over the last week. Socially, it was a light week; other than one dinner out with family I didn’t actually do anything with anyone after work for most of the week, primarily since I ended up working late a bit. I would have expected that this would lead to my eating less, since by not eating out I’d have more control over diet. In fact, the inverse seems to be true. The week before, when I did something almost every night, I had no problem constraining myself to salads and other light fare for dinner. But when it’s just me after a long day, the food becomes the focus and I seem to eat a lot more–and without a conversational partner, much faster, which leads to a higher quantity consumed. Clearly, the solution is to never allow myself to be alone at meal time.