A friend shared this article with me.  Evidently cereal does equal poison, as Mike has been saying.

I had a dream the other night that I ate a bowl of cereal for breakfast, and I didn’t know how I was going to tell Mike.  Luckily I didn’t actually eat cereal, but instead just ate a whole bunch of other crap that set him off on a tangent.  He detests emotional eating, doesn’t think that food equals love and also thinks that people shouldn’t be bothered by other people’s diets.  For instance, if someone offers you food and you say, no thanks, that should be acceptable, but it so rarely is.  I agree with him, but I do occasionally treat myself…even though I’m aware that I’m not a dog and don’t need to be treated.

That said, our discussion about food led to a big, important question.  Would you rather eat a gallon of ice cream or a box of Cap’n Crunch with Crunchberries?  (Mike came up with that one.  That is not a cereal that tempts me. But no cereal beats ice cream.)  I told him, no contest, ice cream, but if you added a bag of Doritos into the equation I would let that entire tub of ice cream melt on the counter.  We had a pretty heated argument about this—evidently he really likes his Cap’n Crunch.  You can argue it’s disordered eating if you are craving entire boxes of stuff, but isn’t it better to crave it than to actually eat it?

Anyway, the other thing Mike said that stuck in my head the rest of the day was that he can’t make me want to eat better, I have to do that myself.  He feels like I talk about it, and then I don’t do it.  That’s true.  You readers are well aware.  Then I went home and realized that none of my shorts from last summer quite fit…so it’s really, truly time to do something about it.  Yesterday was a great food day.  I ate exactly what I planned to (other than a small fiasco involving a batch of hard boiled eggs that were not quite hard boiled) and felt good at the end of the day.  I had my oatmeal in the morning, a piece of cheese post-workout (not ideal, but delicious), salad with two cans of tuna for lunch, almonds for a snack, and sauerkraut with bratwurst, side salad, for dinner.  No grains after my morning oatmeal, which Mike would be pretty proud of.  I’m going to try a similar plan today.  We’re going with salad with grilled chicken for lunch and dinner is pork with broccoli.  I’d love to fit into the shorts I own…and I realize though I love bread and can easily tear up an entire basket of it, I can also go without grains at meals and feel really good as long as I get enough protein.

So that’s the lead in into the real meat of this blog post.  Oatmeal.  I started posting my oatmeal as a spoof of other oatmeal posting blogs, but some of my actual friends have told me they are inspired by my oatmeal.  One told me her boyfriend was trying to figure out how to eat oatmeal with more protein…um…add protein powder!  Poof, problem solved.  (I’m a genius.  You’re welcome.)  I’m also working on a logo for this blog feature. (By that I mean I have been bugging a friend about making me a logo.  I’m sure she’s just busy.)

Steel cut oatmeal with blackberries.  I go through steel cut phases.  It is a totally different experience, but I feel even more virtuous eating it—it is even less processed than rolled oats so your body has to work really hard to digest it and you stay full for hours…even days?

Look at that strawberry juice.  I love that stuff.  I like to freeze and then thaw the strawberries just for that alone…

You can tell this is too watery.  I like the overnight oats best with yogurt, but sometimes I try to go lower calorie and use water.  It rarely turns out as well, particularly when I add too much water. Oh well.

This is the opposite of watery—so thick and creamy looking!  I would eat the crap out of this bowl.

Look!  This is COOKED oatmeal, readers.  Sometimes on the weekends I have the patience to make hot oatmeal.  It was a nice change.

And this was with flavored yogurt, as evidenced by the pink color.  The blackberries were on sale awhile back, 10 containers for $10 so I stocked up.  They were delicious, though they are all now gone.

And another bowl of cooked oatmeal.  With perhaps too much strawberry juice…this was like oatmeal soup.  Oh well.  Live and learn.

There you have it!  I want to try peaches soon—that was a great suggestion from my earlier post, and I do love peaches.  Peaches are one of the best parts of the living in the south, actually.

So…ice cream, cereal, or chips?  What’s your guilty pleasure?