Hi Holly!! GOOD GOING on that exercise! The more I get to know you the more I see that we are sisters from other mothers, or however that saying goes!
Kindred spirits!
I have discovered that my best friend when it comes to SWEET stuff, or FATTY stuff, is TIME. With enough time away from processed sweets and/or high fat foods (in combination with sugar, or on it's own i.e. nuts/nut butters), I stop craving them. It's like there is a monster (The Cookie Monster!) living inside of me, and it only takes "one" to wake up the beast! Then I will be craving sugary fatty foods like I never stopped eating them. I'm dealing with that feeling right now after the almond butter escapade.
I eat a lot of fruit, and that doesn't seem to wake up the monster. But high fat food and processed sugary food is just a RAPID slippery slope. TIME will get me out of this hole, and for me, it seems to take some will power to get that time under my belt. Plenty of starch seems to help - making sure I am NOT hungry right now so I can get back on track. At least that's what I think is going on with me!!
There is a thread in the MWL section that you have probably already read. The title is something like "Can you really eat as much as you want." I LOVE that thread - lot's of wisdom from Jeff about calorie density, how the program recommendations can get misinterpreted and taken out of context, and how the "margin for error" gets narrower in terms of our energy balance as we lose more weight. I don't know if any of this is relevant for you right now, but I have been dealing with some mental barriers and that thread is really speaking to me right now. When my perception (even subconsciously) is that things are working right, I LIVE for the "effit" moment where I throw in the towel and eat whatever. Now that my BMI is getting close to a good spot, I have less margin for error. So the scale doesn't always seem to be moving. (at least not down, LOL!) And my pea brain LOVES to say "effit" when I am in this place. So I have to continually remind myself that this program IS working for me. In fact, it's working REALLY WELL for me. Just because the scale doesn't go down every time I step on it doesn't mean the sky is falling!
Sorry to ramble on in a stream of consciousness in your journal! I should be doing this in my own journal! Anyway, can you see how my head is really quite a dangerous place? There is an entire committee in there discussing this stuff, and I don't think they are well qualified!
Anyway, I just had steamed cabbage, split pea soup loaded with potatoes, and fruit salad (banana, strawberries, grapes) for lunch. The committe is still thinking about that almond butter. But they are not getting any. Not today.