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.