Lessons learned: the mighty meal

1. take your basal metabolic rate (BMR) and add any exercise you did that day. Subtract the calories consumed. You should be showing a minus.
2. After a week or so, you should have "earned' enough calories to have a mighty meal - or a mighty day - of 1-2,000 calories.
3. Your mighty meal can be cake or ice cream or a pizza. Or it can be generous servings of salad, seafood, and water-based soup, a little meat, and small portions of a dessert. Now, which do you think is going to keep your energy up?
4. You can plan your mighty meal for a special event, like a wedding, or your ex-husband's funeral.
5. If you miss your mighty meal, no worries. But remember that you need it, and it needs you. Find a reason to eat well.
6. Don't rob yourself of a mighty meal with self sabotage. Pizza, meatballs, alcohol, cappucino, steak (face it, nobody eats a 3-oz steak) pretzels and chocolate cake are very expensive caloriewise. These are major danger foods because they are very high calorie on their own, and because one tends to consume a lot of them at a sitting. Wouldn't you rather have lobster? Coffee with a spoonful of cocoa? Frozen yogourt? Strawberries dipped in chocolate? Think about it.
7. If your mighty meal is at a pot luck, many dangers lurk ahead, starting with that hollowed out pumpernickel thing filled with spinach and water chestnuts. You can't eat just one bite. So bring a favorite recipe that you can glom onto as a fallback. Chances are there's someone else who will appreciate it.