I meant to eat two small meals yesterday: one to begin the day and one to end it. I stuck to eating two meals, but the latter one was not small. Before leaving work, I kept thinking that I needed something more than the yogurt and blueberries I’d planned to eat for dinner, so when I left work, I stopped at the grocery store on the way home. That was a mistake.

You shouldn’t go to the grocery store when you haven’t eaten in a while, and you shouldn’t go to the grocery store without knowing what you’re going to buy. When I went into HEB, I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and I didn’t have any idea what I wanted. So I wandered around for a bit, picked up some American cheese (I know it’s not “real” cheese, and I have no idea why I’ve taken a liking to it recently), and eventually found myself in the new BBQ section of the store.

The HEB near my house is being remodeled and expanded, and one of the new additions is an in-store BBQ restaurant. The place isn’t open yet, but I think the employees must be practicing because there are chilled rows of to-go packages of the items that will be available once the restaurant is open. I picked up a small package of chopped brisket…and then I saw the peach cobbler. I LOVE peach cobbler, and there was only one package left. My brain did some quick calculations (more like rationalizations), and soon enough the cobbler was in my basket.

The portions of both the brisket and the cobbler were too large, but this is typical since single-serve portions are not something Texas grocery stores seem to do. Of course, I tend to not be good about factoring in portion sizes when I’m eating unless I start to feel really full, so I plowed through all the brisket and cobbler in no time when I got home. I also sampled far too much of the American cheese. Anyway, when I stepped on the scale this morning, I was a pound heavier (and I’m probably lucky I wasn’t heavier).

What I found most interesting about my visit to HEB was the psychology at work when I stumbled about the BBQ items. Their availability was a novel thing, so I felt compelled to try them. And, regarding the peach cobbler, I felt a sense of urgency since there was only one package left. In the end, the choice to purchase those items was irrational although it felt calculated. My thought process was flawed: I didn’t need to buy those items right then and there just because they were new, and the peach cobbler would always be available at a later time.

I keep observing a lot of the same things about my behavior toward food, but, despite my recognizing those things, I seem to keep succumbing to the same behavior. I guess the challenge boils down to habit-breaking, which is hard but necessary. So, I need to have more specific and deliberate mechanisms for breaking those habits, and that requires sitting down, cataloging those behaviors, and coming up with plans to extinguish them. I’m not good at taking on that sort of deliberation (I think I get irrationally overwhelmed by the thought of taking on the task), so that needs to change.