Cravings I hate you

So this weekend I declared it was a healthy weekend. I beat my Friday naughty thoughts and decided to try My Fit Foods. I finally just gave in to the fact that I am not going to cook on Friday and looked for a healthy option.  The woman walked me through everything and I decided to try a breakfast, lunch, and dinner item. It was extremely convenient, low calorie, but the only drawback is that the meals are high in sodium. So not sure how people do their 21 day challenge and just eat their meals, but hey, to each their own. I had the lemon turkey for dinner with some truffles for dessert. Then Saturday I had the chili with some truffles. The truffles are an amazing little dessert for 180 cal! I checked the scale out of curiosity and you can see the sodium effect. Ahh well, I'll flush it out this week, but just a reminder that I do not need to eat these meals often. 

This brings us to Sunday. I had breakfast at Panera and splurged on a cinnamon crunch bagel with honey walnut cream cheese. It was like dessert and I enjoyed every bite :) 

The afternoon is when it all went downhill. I started craving a greasy burger. I'm laying on the couch just thinking about this burger and a commercial comes on for Wendy's bacon cheeseburger on a pretzel bun. I'm obsessed with pretzel bread, so my mind is immediately like I have to try this! Seriously.

Then I start looking at the calories I have left for the day and realize I could have this 650 cal burger and still end up at 1900 cal for the day. (I try to stay in the 1600-1900 range) So I did it. I had this burger and it satisfied my cravings. Guess who wasn't happy? My stomach. My insides hurt. And then the guilt came crashing down. So I started pondering about cravings. It's hard enough to eat right and exercise, but dealing with cravings? Bullshit! 

So in researching cravings, I learned a few things. Number one is that there is no one source responsible for why cravings occur. So there is NOTHING for me to blame. But thinking through my own life, I know I start craving things when I'm stressed out ( bad coping mechanism) and because it's what I've always done in certain situations. (Pizza on Friday nights, happy hours, birthdays, etc) I came across a third and it's that your body will have cravings because it's lacking something that it needs. Like how hungry and thirsty feel the same. So I found this cool little graphic:

Today, I was craving oily fatty food and what I really needed was calcium. Really? I thought about today and ehh maybe I didn't have a good calcium source. Does cream cheese count? I also had some eggs lol. I've been trying to have a mentally check myself when cravings hit to make sure I am not stress eating and I think I'll try some of these things out too. I can't say at this point that it doesn't work. 

But in going further, when you do indulge in a craving, what is an acceptable amount? It is a cheat item, cheat meal, or cheat day? I know people that do any of these three. I just hate the guilty feeling and I guess I need to think about what I find acceptable and stick with that. I can't do cheat weekends, that obviously didn't work for the first 6 months of this year. I read another article that talked about the 80/20 rule; meaning 80% of the time you are on point and then 20% you can relax. It also had a caveat that if you were trying to hit a goal, maybe consider the 90/10 rule. 

So because my goal is large, I'm thinking the 90/10. So in a week, I eat 21 meals (not counting snacks), so 10% is 2 meals. Ok so two meals a week, I can cheat. But how big is that cheat? If I go ahead and eat like 2000 calories, I've just erased all my progress. And I am not ok with that!!! Should it be 500 extra calories? 1000? I also read an article that talked about the benefits of cheat meals. One being that it prevents your body from thinking its in starvation mode and conserving every calorie you eat. The other is purely psychological so that you can feel human and enjoy life. 

If you take what I did today, between the bagel and burger, I had 1200 cal in food normally not a part of the plan. So I'm going to be on point the rest of the week and see what happens on Friday's weigh-in. 

Dear friends, what do you do? I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on this one because I don't have it solved.....yet.