Yesterday I was laying out our last few days before summer’s end and realized that we had one school night with early school night bedtime, ice cream for dinner night (a once a year tradition right before school starts) and one regular night with no big plans (that was last night). Sheesh! We haven’t let ourselves really go this summer so I decided to make a cake I’ve wanted to make for months for our last real summer meal of 2013!
I made it using coconut milk whenever liquid was required and it is the most moist, delicious cake I think I have ever eaten. Or perhaps it has just been that long since I’ve enjoyed cake. Cake is not my thing, but it is Bradley’s thing. After we cut into her, licked the frosting, swallowed the coconut, finally made it upstairs to watch the new Barbie: Mariposa movie (which I snored through, sadly, I love the Barbie movies…) and got the babies in bed Bradley commented to me that he was highly concerned about the quantity of cake we had in the house, he feared there was an imbalance and had to go cut off just a little to make right with the world again. So he went down and nibbled a few crumbs. Then the balance was thrown off again, more cake needed to be sacrificed… You get the idea. It was so funny, watching him go through the same thing I do when something calls to me from the kitchen. Fortunately, cake is not my thing so I was able to leave it mostly alone.
Because of the cake, though, yesterday we ran, went for a walk AND some of us did our strength training. Hopefully that will balance out the big cheat!
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12 Hour Fast
I was reading online from some trainers, dietitians and nutritionists and one of them suggested making the evening fast – the break between dinner and breakfast- a real 12 hour fast. That it is entirely reasonable to expect yourself to fast for about 12 hours every night. One of my goals forever is to cut out night snacking. I can do a lot of damage to myself between the hours of 9:PM and 11:PM. About the time we are an hour into whatever we decide to do – movie, snuggles, chatting, reading- whatever- I want a snack to go along with it! If I make the goal of the 12 hour fast, that means I can eat the last of my food for the day by 8:00 on weekends and 7:30 on weekdays. So far so good and I am seeing the scale reflect the results again after using this strategy for only a couple of weeks!
I know it’s just a trick, but sometimes those little rules and games that I make for myself in this scenario are the differences between successful weightloss and gaining or staying the same weight.