Sometimes, I don't even know...

I was doing so well....I haven't eaten out in 9 days (big deal for me!)
but today, I finally crashed. WHY?

Organic Campus.
They sell the most delicious sweet potato bread/cinnamon roll ever.
It was either the vegetable fritata or the sweet potato cinnamon roll. Me, in an effort to be "healthy", decided to buy the sweet potato roll because vegetable fritatas are fried. Why am I such a tool.

I'm not even going to go into details on what happened the rest of the day. You know, same old binging. I think I'm going to stop counting calories. My sister says I'm clearly being too ambitious what with my weak, weak will.

But anyways, on a GOOD note, today my cooking-challenged friend and I (who is also cooking-challenged) decided to make oyako don, essentially a Japanese style dish with eggs, chicken, onions, and rice.

Seems simple enough. We followed the recipe which stated that the dish should be ready in 40 minutes.
The whole ordeal took us about 2 hours. We also used a bajillion dishes throughout the cooking process (luckily, my other friend volunteered to do the dishes).
The final product turned out pretty good!

Lately I've also been a fan of pan searing fishes. It's easy and delish! So what is this? Emily is finally entering the cooking world?
Hope this keeps up, and doesn't fail terribly (like my diet).

Phail with a "P"

Today I went grocery shopping and bought myself a salmon steak. I have been craving fish for a while, and in my new effort of cooking for myself, I decided to make it for dinner tonight. I also purchased 3 bags of spinach (love my veggies), but I really wanted to buy kale (my roomie makes amazing kale). Unfortunately, IGA decided to fail, and refused to have any in stock. I looked around and found this spinach-broccoli-like vegetable.

This is what went through my mind: I liked broccoli and I liked spinach.

Therefore,
 +  
=

So I bought 2 bags of this mysterious vegetable (which turned out to be broccoli rabe, or rapini)

Little did I know that this veggie would be my demise.

I got home and, excited to make my salmon, missed a club banquet and rejected a friend's invitation to eat at their place (my friend is an amazing cook--which makes this even more sad).
I cooked my salmon on the pan, cut up some rapini and cooked that as well. Unfortunately, when I ate the the rapini, it was bitter. Very bitter. I added various seasonings in an effort to make it taste better, but alas my low (very low) level of cooking skills could only allow me to do so much.
Afterwards, when I ate my salmon, all I could taste was the godforsaken rapini.

After this, I craved sweets to counteract the bitterness. This led me to eat 2 bowls of oatmeal, 1 PB&J sandwich, and granola bars. In conclusion, I pigged out. big time. (I haven't eaten like this in while - hence the lack of blog updates) Now I feel terribly full.

Are there such things as troll vegetables? I honestly believe rapini is one.

Motivation for a phat kid.

After a trip to the library, I had a talk with my friend. In an effort to help me with my diet, she and I made a deal. She has agreed to treat me to Juliette et Chocolat in January if I do not eat out/order in/buy any sort of pastry (my arch nemesis) and go to the gym at least 4 times a week until December 15th (after my last final).
This is a very appealing and motivational deal, since I love the ice cream sundae at Juliette et Chocolat.
However, I can tell already that this will be a very difficult task, what with finals coming up, but...

FOR ICE CREAM SUNDAES!!!!!

(fear not, this photo was taken over the summer)

Wish me luck! (I'll need it).

On another note, with the lack of groceries at the house, I have been very keen on ordering in lately. What can I say? It's super convenient, albeit calorie high. Today, I ordered Tomato and Beef from Spicy Noodles due to my insane craving for Chinese food (and I was still not full from the large portion. Sigh). Last week, the roomie and I ordered frozen yogurt delivery to the apartment.

Frozen yogurt delivers. 

It's like the world is against me.

WHY YOU TEMPT ME SO!?!?

Clearly, this will have to end if I want a free sundae.

Slow and Steady Wins the Race

So I haven't updated for a month. And this post is going to be semi-serious/rambling.
Sorry (but not really) for the lack of binge-eating failure lately.
I really need to work on consistency.
Lately, I've been restraining myself and following my diet for 4 days, and then splurging the rest of the week. If I were to be consistent, and eat slightly more for all days of the week, I could obtain an even better outcome.
I realized (however obvious it is) that eating is strictly psychological. I continue buying pastries and sweets because I believe that I enjoy them. In an economical sense, I believe I obtain a higher utility by eating pastries than actual food (wow, look at me and my school application).
Really, what I need to do is manipulate myself into liking savory foods again (like I used to).
The question is, how do I do that?

hmmmmmmmmm....

The Day After Tomorrow

So, I've been really slacking on my diet.............





SUNDAY. I WILL BEGIN AGAIN.

Stay tuned. (for success!)

P.S. I need to go to the gym.

Turkey Day!

What can I say? Thanksgiving is a very dangerous time for a dieter.

Today, I should definitely be thankful for all the food I ate. This year is actually the first time I'm eating turkey for thanksgiving! (it's an Asian thing)

Now as I have said before, I am a university student with a decent social life. Therefore, due to various reasons, I ended up going to two thanksgiving dinners tonight.

1 thanksgiving dinner = calories overload.
2 thanksgiving dinners =  (yes that is a very fat cat)

My first thanksgiving dinner was at 6pm. I arrived, helped mash the potatoes (woot), and had some delicious turkey with salad, asparagus, and of course the mashed potatoes with yummy dripping giblet gravy. Afterwards, I had one slice of cheesecake and apple pie. Delicious.

The 12kg turkey. It was devoured.

At 8, I went to my other dinner. I arrived feeling pretty full, but obviously I had to try this turkey. It was quite delicious as well, and I was also able to stuff down some pasta (who am I). After about half an hour, I had dessert #2. I had one slice of lime cheese cake, one slice of pumpkin pie, and one strawberry cheesecake truffle.
At around 10, I went to study with some friends at a local cafe. Feeling bad for not purchasing anything, we all got a drink. I got an iced cappuccino (woah there calories). Afterwards, I lapsed into a food coma and took a 5 minute nap.
It is now 1:30am, and I am still full.
WHY DO I EAT SO MUCH!?

On the way back home, I ran into one of my friend. I reccounted my eating excursions of the day, and he compared my stomach to a black hole (no surprise there). Then, he asked me if I ate this much last year.
Excluding this as a special occasion, I actually did not quite know how to answer that question. I'm not sure if I actually ate less last year (even with all that caf food and midnight snacks), or if it just seems like I'm eating more this year because I'm actually counting the calories. Hm.

My life in a nutshell. Hopefully this extravagant thanksgiving will be able to deter future binge eating!

P.S. Morning banana diet clearly doesn't work.

B-A-N-A-N-A-S

Short update today.
I've been told that maybe my 1300 calories count is too restricting (which is upsetting because it worked so well in the summer), but mainly I think it's my lack of self-restraint.
Anyways, while eating my banana during Info Systems, I found this: http://morningbanana.com/
The basis of this diet is to consume bananas and room-temp water for breakfast, eat whatever you want for lunch (with room-temp water), have a 3:00pm sweet snack, and eat dinner before 8:00pm. This sounds pretty simple, other than the fact that you can't eat anything else after dinner (this means no dessert! the horror.) Obviously, potato chips, fried foods, big portions, etc are still frowned upon.
One part of this diet that is definitely popular with the girls is that exercise is optional. I'm still going to go to the gym, but I guess this takes off some pressure of going everyday (not like I do so anyways). I'm probably still going to try to eat within calories, but hopefully this diet will be less restricting for me, and therefore lead to less binges.
We'll see how this goes.
Banana diet Day 1 tomorrow!

All You Can Eat Sushi > Emily

So, it's been 3 days since the last blog post, and silly Emily has already been destroyed by food (surprise).
GG, Sushi Palace.

In celebration of a successful event, the execs decided to try out the new AYCE sushi place in Chinatown called Sushi Palace. Knowing that this was going to be an extremely calorie heavy meal, I attempted to limit my calorie intake throughout the day. I ended up eating a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast (120 calories) and snacking on some mixed nuts (200 calories).
Anyways, come dinner, I was starving. The restaurant was nice, very high class, and there were plenty of selections (maybe too many selections). There were 5 of us, 4 girls and 1 guy (who was not helpful at all by the way), and we basically went crazy. In addition to ordering a ton of sushi and sashimi, we also ordered 2 bowls of udon, chicken teriyaki, soft-shell crab, sushi pizza x3 (worst decision ever), chicken yakitori, and baked salmon. After scarfing down all the sashimi, my friend decided to order another round to really get our money's worth. We ordered 30 more salmon sashimi and 10 more white tuna. This led to...
Waiter: Each order comes with 2 pieces...so 30 is 60.
Us: We know.
Which then led to...

And with that, we ordered some shrimp, ikura nigiri (x20), and oysters.
Which then led to...

If you can't tell, this is our attempt of covering leftover sushi, oysters, and shrimp with empty shells, bones, and lettuce. That object in the sauce is a piece of unfinished sushi pizza. Not shown in this photo are the sushi we hid in the udon soup.

In conclusion, we had way too much food.  As a seasoned AYCE Sushi diner, I honestly do not know how this keeps happening to me. My friends, knowing my love for sushi, expected me to take care of this. Not wanting to waste the delicious food, I tried my best. Needless to say, I stuffed myself.

For some possessed reason that I do not even recall, we decided to go to L2 for bubble tea after a short grocery break. I ordered a small, fresh taro smoothie with pearls (which was absolutely divine). Unfortunately, after two sips, my stomach surrendered. I excused myself, went to the washroom, and sat on the toilet lid for 20 minutes. Breathing was painful. Returning to my seat, I took two more sips of my bubble tea. At this point my stomach was basically screaming "WTF EMILY?" And I agreed with it. This led to washroom trip #2, where I sat on the toilet lid for another 20 minutes thinking about how I even got myself in this condition.

After leaving L2 (2 hours later), I painfully walked back to campus and to the library. Let's just say reading the COMS210 coursepack is extremely painful when your insides feel like this:

In conclusion, 

1) I clearly ate over my calorie limit today (by how much? I don't even want to know). 

2) Beware of AYCE sushi + bubble tea. It can be painful and most definitely unhealthy.

3) Never again.

Unstoppable

I think the main problem I have with counting calories is the danger of binge eating. For me, binge eating occurs on days when I eat over my 1300 calorie diet. Once I go over, I begin to adopt a "what-the-hell" mindset. My willpower automatically drops, and I am unable to resist any pastry in my pantry.

The scariest part of binge eating is that I can't stop eating. Even when my stomach is literally stuffed to the brim, I push myself to eat any sweets, or pastries available because this is the "last day" I will be able to eat them. Binge-eating days provide me with a free pass to eat all the sweets I try so hard to resist on a daily basis. This basically leads me to "eat all I can." Every time I binge-eat, I consume close to 3000 calories.

It's obvious that binge-eating is a terrible thing, and makes me feel extremely guilty after I finish.

Unfortunately, lately, binge-eating have become much more frequent. As an executive member of multiple clubs, and an individual with a decent social life, eating out has become a very prevalent activity. Just this week, I am going to eat All You Can Eat Sushi, All You Can Eat Korean Barbecue, Chinese food, and more sushi. Since this is the last week before midterms officially begin, clubs have decided to host celebratory dinners for the exec board during this time.

Needless to say, this is very, very, bad for my diet. Eating out makes it difficult to keep within my calories limit, and therefore leads me to binge-eat. My worst binge eat to date, was probably this Friday night.


WARNING: The sheer amount of food consumed in the following section is not for the weak-stomached. 

I began Friday morning knowing that I was going to go over calories today (worst mindset ever). I went to a morning tutorial after buying a French Toast and Maple Cinnamon bagel. After the tutorial, I bought a Apple and Cinnamon muffin. Then, on the way to my next class, I stopped by a cafe and bought a Cinnamon Scone (I like cinnamon). THEN, I went home and made myself 3 bowls of yogurt and bran flakes and a bowl of cabbage cooked with soy sauce (something healthy?). After 2 hours of down time, I went to my club's welcome dinner at Yu Shang Restaurant extremely full. Clearly, this did not stop me from eating. I ate my fill of the 11 plates (standard Chinese food -- mostly cooked chicken, fish, and lobster in various sauces). Deciding I wanted someting sweet, I went to the Chinese bakery afterwards. Bought a mango foam cake (ate  that), and a huge bag of blueberry buttered cookies (ate that too while feeling disgustingly full). Thinking I wouldn't eat anymore, I decided to finish the night with karaoke with my friends. Of course, after karaoke, we went to Harvey's and I ordered a veggie burger (in an effort to be healthy, ha).

So let's count this:

Maple Cinnamon Bagel 270 calories
Apple and Cinnamon Muffin 350 calories
Cinnamon Scone 500 calories
Yogurt + Bran Flakes x3 300 calories
Bowl of Cabbage + Soy Sauce 100 calories
Chinese Dinner ~600 calories
Mango Foam Cake 350 calories
Butter Cookies 1000 calories
Veggie Burger 400 calories
Total  3870 calories

I think I have an eating problem.

Phat with a "F"

Disclaimer: English has never been my best subject.

As if being a university student isn’t hard enough—with clubs, a paying job, awkward social situations, and tons of work—add on the freshman 15 (or in my case, freshman 18). Even though I am now a second year student, I continue my endless struggle with the evils that are pastries, chocolate, and in my opinion, cereal (this will be elaborated further later on).

After having my mom (my own mother!) tell me my face has become extremely round over our reunion in the summer, I realized that I clearly do not have the same body shape as I did before. This was actually not a drastic change though, since I have always been a bit on the heavier side (I’ll admit, I’m not obese, but I’m not skinny either). It wasn’t till my sister devised a fantastic diet plan for me that I actually decided to take action on this constant dilemma in my life. My goal: 1300 calories a day (this was calculated on the basis of my weight at the time, my activities, and other lifestyle factors). Sound easy? Surprisingly, given that I am obviously obsessed with food, it actually wasn’t bad in the beginning. With a specific, measurable goal, it was easier for me to commit. I began this in mid-June and stuck with it for the duration of the month. 

Unfortunately, come end of July, I began to struggle. Sweet cravings gnawed at me as I begged for one more bag of cookies (strictly denied by my sister). In general, through good days and bad days (some very bad days), I was able to moderately keep up with this diet till I returned to Montreal. I actually did lose quite a few pounds (that I probably gained back now).

This brings me to the real subject of my blog: continuing this diet while juggling the aforementioned tasks of an university student. This diet was easy over the summer. Living in the rural town of Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, I essentially bummed around the house all day, except for my daily YMCA workouts with friends. I was able to keep my binging and eating under control (and under calories) with the constant belief that this will be much easier once I’m back at McGill since I won’t have time to eat.

Clearly, I was wrong.