- Did you manage to bring your number of daily 'sometimes carbs' serves down by one… or maybe more?
- Did you manage to say NO to that serve of cake, biscuit or sweet pastry?
- Have you become a little more familiar with portion control?
- Are you starting to make good choices about the quality of the 'sometimes carbs' you are choosing? (or at least thinking about it).
Each week should see you becoming more familiar with portion sizes, and more aware of your eating habits and weaknesses. With that familiarity your good choices can begin to become almost automatic … to become 'good habits'.
Completing the 'sometimes carb' weekly challengeAt this point, if using the chart to track your 'sometimes carbs' and reduce their dominance in your daily eating plan has been successful for you, I suggest you continue the challenge while you are benefiting from the encouragement.
How you complete the challenge is up to you. You can continue to challenge yourself weekly to reduce your daily 'sometimes carb' serves by one more each week till you have brought your 'sometime serves' back into balance.
Alternately, you might just decide to work towards 4 serves per day immediately (or three like I did). Or you might choose to reduce your serves from 12 to 7 per day. Feel free to take charge of the challenge as it works for you.
If you do wish to continue keeping a tally of your 'sometimes carbs' you might be ready for this simpler version of our chart that covers two weeks at a time and includes ...
- the three main 'sometimes carbs', bread, rice and pasta
- a blank spot for a 'sometimes carb' that might be a regular for you
- 'other' for other incidental carbs that you may consume infrequently
- 'occasional' for cakes, biscuits and sweet pastries
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| If printing this chart is not an option for you pencil, paper and ruler is a quick fix |
Things to think about this week
It is worth mentioning that although, by my measure, three servings of 'sometimes carbs' per day is the ideal, as you settle in to a better balance with your food intake you may find four or five works for you. Remember I am pre diabetic which make 'sometimes carbs' more of an issue for me.
It's also worth remembering that reducing your daily 'sometimes carb' intake is designed to take pressure of your pancreas (hopefully before your pancreas starts to suffer and before you have to worry about diabetes) but should also help you lose any unhealthy weight around your middle should you need to.
To do this successfully an excellent aim is to eliminate cake, biscuit and sweet pastry from your general 'sometimes carb' consumption. This doesn't mean elimination altogether, but elimination from your general eating plan. Like chocolate, consuming these items 'on occasion' will be better for your overall health.
An appropriate measure of your 'sometimes carb' challenge success
If the 'sometimes carb' challenge helps you to conquer (or largely conquer) your over dependence on 'sometimes carbs' whether it takes you days, weeks or months then I will be so very pleased for you. So very pleased indeed.
But, we are all different, so it's entirely possible that this exercise hasn't been a magic formulae to solve all your overeating problems. Please don't be discouraged. Just by participating in the challenge you will have learned some valuable lessons.
If you only got to stage one recording a weeks 'serves of sometimes carbs' you will have gained a better understanding of just how this 'sometimes carb' group is dominating your food intake. You will also have become more familiar with the foods included in this group and have some idea what your weaknesses in this area actually are.
If you only got to stage two and actually recorded a weeks worth of reduced or portion controlled serves from the 'sometimes carbs' groups then you will have gained an excellent introductory understanding of portion control along with a fuller understanding of your weaknesses in this area.
But if all you achieved from taking the 'sometimes carb' challenge is that better understanding of how this 'sometimes carbohydrate' group is dominating your food intake then that is a very important milestone in transitioning to a healthy balanced eating plan.
So you can see that the success of this exercise is not only in the completion of its ultimate aim, but can be measured in lots of important milestones along the way. And you can always come back to our 'sometimes carb' challenge at a later point when you feel the time is right.
In the mean time if you take nothing else away from this challenge…. remember the 'sometimes carbs' … and remember that they are just that … sometimes carbs.
