Jet lag sucks. I’ve been home since Sunday night but I think my brain is still a time zone or two behind. I read somewhere that it takes a day for each time zone. By that reckoning, I have another couple of days. Maybe three. I can’t count. The part of my brain that computes numbers is one of the areas still lagging.
I’ve been able to be productive at work but in the middle of the afternoon I want a nap more than I want to win the lottery. (Disclaimer: I don’t really care about winning the lottery at all. If I did I might buy a ticket more than once a year.) I came home at 5 and it would have been oh so easy to sack out in the recliner for a nap. My sense of duty to Nat and Pyxi propelled me to take them for a walk instead. I ate a light dinner, sat down and actually dozed for about 10 minutes, but I rallied in time to go to an evening Zumba class.
This all sounds reasonable and good, right? Do not be deceived by the seeming reasonableness and logic. My eating has actually been awful since I got home. I start out okay but for some reason my body appears to think that I should feed it compulsively when I’m tired. I’ve eaten food just because it was in my vicinity, even though the first bite revealed that it was tasteless with the texture of sticky cotton. (Cheap store bought angel food cake someone left out at work.) I’ve eaten when not hungry and without honestly savoring what I shoved into my mouth. Then I wonder why I did it. It’s like my mind can’t click on fast enough to block me from picking up food and eating it.
This is very, very weird. I didn’t eat like this on the cruise when loads of actually delicious food was as close as an elevator ride away to the always-open buffet!
Hey, in all my cruise posts, I never mentioned that we actually took the stairs up and down more than half of the time!
But I digress. Remember when I once talked about the concept of H.A.L.T. and not letting ourselves get too hungry, angry, lonely, or tired? It seems that I’m fighting the last letter of that acronym. The sleepiness is overcoming my guard and common sense.
This has to stop. I’m carrying around about five pounds of water weight that I blame on eating too many carbs. That messes with my head.
So, tonight I’m going to bed when I finish this post. I’m hoping that this will help straighten out my sleep cycle. Tomorrow, whether my energy and balance are restored or not, I’m sticking to my plan. The choice is easy at the bottom line. I will wake up and write down my food choices for the entire day — breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks. Then, throughout the day, even if the red, green and yellow M&Ms personally wander into my office followed by an entire conga line of dancing raisins, and cavorting cupcakes, I will not eat anything that is not on that written down list. Tough love and determination time, baby. I got it.
If I can turn away from buffets of rich, calorie-laden food on a cruise because I wanted to zip line, I can stick to my plan for one day when on my home turf because I still have weight to lose and want to lose it.
I will not be defeated by my own tiredness.
One day tomorrow. One day Friday. One day at a time.
Weighty Matters 
Sleep deprivation often makes you think that you’re hungrier than you actually are. It can also kill your metabolism. Nice 1-2 punch, huh?
For me, personally, I often have to stop and ask myself, “am I really hungry?” Sometimes I am, but a lot of the time I’m actually just tired. Or thirsty.
I travel a fair amount for work and often have the same problem. For some reason, my body craves heavy carb-rich foods when I am jet lagged. To be honest, I would eat that way every day if I could. But when I am jet lag, somehow I just can’t manage to make the smart choices. It’s strange.
Well, it looks like you caught yourself and realized the problem. Being tired makes it difficult to make any good choices, so realizing what you were doing and writing your food plan are big deals. I hope you get caught up on your rest this weekend. And I, too, am looking forward to seeing you pictures!
Making choices and in particular choosing to not do something that in the past has made you feel better takes energy and so when your energy is depleted that choice is much, much harder. So, step one, forgive yourself your lapses. They happen. And step two, decide ahead of time what you are going to eat so that those choices are already made. And three, a little extra sleep may help.
I’m patiently waiting for pictures, by the way. No pressure or anything, just I’ll enjoy seeing them when you get a chance to put some up.
Thanks for reinforcing my thoughts, Karen! I just wrote out today’s food plan.
I’ve started going through the photos and choosing the best to resize so I can post. That was one of the tasks I was just too tired to do. I’ll post some from the first days tonight.