Diet Relaxation

As I get more used to my diet, I'm noticing that certain things are more important to me than others, and certain things are getting to be reliably well-established.

So, I'm good about not snacking between meals, and about turning down food that isn't on my diet. That seems to be fairly reliable at this point.

At the same time, I think I do a fairly decent job guessing at the number of calories that are in a given meal.

And, I'm realizing that as long as I get the right nutrition overall, it doesn't much matter whether any given meal is particularly nutritionally balanced, so long as it doesn't include much forbidden foods (chiefly sugar, salt, and grease).

So for example, last night I had Indian food with my friend Alexandra. I haven't gone to an Indian restaurant in a long time, mainly because the food they serve is very iffy with respect to my diet.

But I went. First they brought us papadum, which is made of lentils. So I felt OK eating that.

Then I ordered a sort of minced vegetable appetizer, which turned out to be a bit more grain-like than I wanted, and probably a bit more salted than I wanted, and probably a bit greasier than I wanted. But really it didn't have a ton of those things, and it was a small dish of food.

Then I ordered a vegetables-in-cream-sauce dish, with no rice. It came in a small metal bowl, and wasn't a large meal at all.

As I cast my eye over the whole meal including everything, I guessed it was probably less than 1200 calories. I would have guessed lower, but restaurant food is always higher in calories.

So, what happened? Clearly this is food that normally I wouldn't consider part of my diet. I wouldn't eat like that every day. But the calorie count was right for a dinner entree, it didn't seem to have too much of the specific foods I avoid; and my lunch had been a very abbreviated vegetable dish.

In terms of nutrition, yesterday was probably a big bust. but not a total bust; I probably got a lot of what I needed. Nutritional "daily requirements" are mainly average requirements, so it made sense to consider the Indian food as part of an overall diversity of eating.

Then this morning my weight was lower than the day before, which is at least partly encouraging.

I think what's happening is that I'm gradually recognizing that as long as I make sure I get the nutrients I need in general, and avoid snacks and 'trigger' foods, and make sure my regular meals are appropriately sized, it may possibly be OK for me to eat a more normal-seeming diet than what I have been eating.

But I haven't made a decision about it yet, and for now I'm just going to continue focusing on the vegetable/fish regime. I want any changes to be introduced slowly, and tested out in terms of how I feel and what I weigh. I don't want to start acting like I can just eat any old thing. I'm just considering the possibility that a slightly less hard-line approach in certain areas might be OK.