Day Forty-Six - Bonfire, Pips, and Jumbo Dogs

It's later than I wanted to be writing my entry tonight, so I'm going to make this brief.  We had a bonfire tonight with our church care group.  We did it last year also, so it has now become an annual event.  Nothing huge as far as the fire goes, but there is roasting marshmallows and a hay ride.  It's a pretty great event!  The problem for me is how to regulate calories when eating food cooked on a stick over the fire.  Also, it's all hot dogs, chili (who knows how to count calories for that), chips, and s'mores.  Here's how I handled it.

I decided ahead of time to avoid the chips for the most part.  I figured it'd be easier just to eat two hot dogs (Farmland Jumbo Hot Dogs are delicious) and let that be the majority of my calories.  I might have had 3-5 chips (total) and then also a couple pips from a Hershey bar (now who else knew that those awesome little pieces are called pips?).  After looking at the calories on the marshmallows, I decided to pass on the s'mores.  It went well (other than some saltine toffee bark that was way too many calories).  Having a plan ahead of time avoids emotional eating.  If you avoid emotional eating, then you will feel better later on.  Could I have had those other things tonight and stayed within my calories?  Yes, I could have.  But I am honestly trying to make my life different.  I am, as they say, "eating to live, rather than living to eat."  So even cooking around a fire tonight, I am still losing my butter half.

For having hot dogs and other unhealthy foods cooked over a fire, I am pretty pleased with my calorie intake.  I ended up about 180 over what I shoot for (that is because I had no clue how many calories the saltine deserts were), but I'm still ok with it.  I was able to work out again, so I am very thankful for that.