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.