Triggers

Do you know what your triggers are for eating?  I'm not talking about the growl in your tummy.  I'm talking about external or even internal things that send signals to your brain to get you to eat. 

I'm an on again off again coffee drinker.  For a long time a few years ago, I'd stop a the local Starbucks, Caribou or Dun Bros for that large cup of coffee each morning.  My usual was a caramel macchiato or s a variation thereof at the other stores.  The largest size of course, with soy.  280 calories, 6 grams of fat, 48!grams of carbs.  Then I'd figure that if I was getting coffee, I needed breakfast, right?  Banana loaf was my regular or something similar at the other places.  490 calories! 19 grams of fat, 75!grams of carbs.  So there was my breakfast - 770 calories, 25 grams of fat, 123 grams of carbs.  One meal. 

One meal was half of what I should be eating every day.  When I started working out and logging all my food I realized that the morning coffee was sabotaging me.  So I went back to drinking tea.  The process of steeping my loose leaf tea was calming and I enjoyed the tea with a teaspoon of honey or agave every morning.  I was sure to choose ones with caffeine and ones without and that's what I drank all day.

Then I got away from tea and it was water all the time.  But summer starts up, motorcycle trips start and coffee is present at ALL of them.  So then I decided that I'd skip the fru-fru coffee places and drink gas station coffee.  Not bad, right?  Just the coffee and a shot of cream from the stand.  Oh, wait...they have donuts.  I need breakfast.  330 calories, 17 grams of fat, 40 grams of carbs in one small plain donut.  They're small, I'll take 2.

See a pattern here?  I do and I did. 

If I stop in the morning at a store for any reason, I end up buying fru-fru calorie high coffee and a totally bad for me breakfast of pastries.  It's my trigger, these morning stops.  I know NOT to do them.

See what I had to do this morning?  It was either this, or park my vehicle and walk the 10 miles from the station to work and then back again this afternoon.  I ended up with gas, 2 bottles of SoBe 0 Calorie LifeWater, Twix Peanutbutter and small apple fritter.

*sigh*

This is definitely something I need to work on.  But I'm glad that I recognize this trigger.  It's like piece number 46 in the huge jigsaw puzzle that is my life and I'm glad that it's in place.