Losing weight in med school

I'm not due to weigh myself until 1 March, but from the way my clothes are fitting, it's possible I have dropped a kilo or two.

It's going well so far, but it's not easy.

School started last week. We were scheduled to attend a free lunch that included meats and various canape-style treats. I diligently spent the night before researching possible options, calculating the amount I should eat, and committing the calorie content to memory. I ate less at breakfast to compensate for a slight increase in intake at lunch,  and smugly rocked up to campus thinking about what a bloody winner I am at losing weight.  Imagine my surprise (and sudden increase in salivation) when fifty pizzas showed up instead of the promised cocktail snacks.

What do you do when the only food available is fattening?

I ate it. Duh. I couldn't possibly stand there watching everyone else eat while I was both hungry and incredibly self-conscious. If you're fat too, you may be familiar with this feeling. It's a lose-lose. If I eat the fattening food, people will look down at me for eating junk at my size. If I don't eat anything and stand there while everyone else scoffs down their glorious triangles of congealed fat, I will stick out like a sore thumb. May as well wear a sign around my neck that says "Fat Lady. Can't Eat Pizza and Feels Ashamed. And Very, Very Hungry".

Oh, and was I.

So I ate one darn piece of pizza and tried not to freak out about it. Not a great start to the semester, though. I feel as though I am treading a very fine line sometimes. I want my weight loss to be relatively slow and sustainable in the long term. There will be many times in my life where I will be offered pizza as the only option for lunch.  I want to be able to handle these situations with a good sense of perspective and social grace. But it's very difficult to maintain balance at the moment; I felt as though each bite was de-railing my progress, calorie by calorie. Anyway, I basically flew home trying to burn off some extra fat. 

Speaking of food at med school, I could have kissed the guy who brought in vegetables and dip for our first PBL group the following day. We have established a roster whereby one person brings in snacks for everybody each PBL session. So I will have to get used to having tasty, delicious food under my nose every week. Them's the breaks I guess. Stay tuned for the next instalment of Med School Temptation: Food Edition.