Eat, drink, and eat some more.

I posted my weight loss graph a couple of days ago and noted that I'd been less careful about  my energy intake; the slope of the graph had changed.  I went back to measuring stuff for a couple of days and was pleased to begin seeing new numbers again.  

Mistakes teach you things.  I learned something very important:  Alcohol is not really my friend, at least when it comes to sticking to an eating plan.   It's not so much the calories from alcohol itself; it's that, if I have more than a couple of glasses of wine, I completely lose the ability to say "no thanks" to the entire tray of cheese or bowl of tortilla chips or the extra serving of dinner.  Inhibitions disappear and all the reasons I have to work on my moderation skills float off and seem completely unimportant compared to wow, this manchego cheese complements the Cab perfectly.   I wonder how the gouda compares?

Just from the random variation in my social life and dinner plans, there were three or four occasions over the past few weeks where I was in close proximity to an open bottle of wine and didn't need to drive anywhere.   I like wine.  I had two or three glasses and enjoyed myself on those occasions.  I also happened to eat a lot more than I needed at those meals. 

The correction here is obvious.  No, it's not quit drinking.  I don't have a drinking problem.  I have an eating problem, and drinking makes it worse.  The solution is portion control.  My eating problem and I can handle one beer or one glass of wine.  At least while I'm trying to drop pounds — now and during maintenance when the scale is on the high end of the range — it's simply a bad idea to put an open, full bottle of wine on the dinner table.  

I told Mark that from now on I'm sticking to beer (which comes in small containers — I usually keep 7-ouncers around for myself, and split 12-ouncers of better stuff with Mark) and (this is the hard part) wine that comes in itty-bitty bottles.  Now that you can get pretty good table wine in boxes ("casks" they call it now…), there's that too; I tend to keep box wine around for cooking and occasional drinking, but it's up high in the cabinet over my stove where the kids can't get it, and we don't tend to plop the box on the table where we can squirt it into our glasses without getting up from the table.