Cut it Out

So I started this little habit several years ago of "treating" myself to breakfast every Saturday morning after I finished grocery shopping. (I get up super early to beat the crowds.)  Back then I didn't have a lot of money to eat out. So I never ate out--fast food, restaurants--nothing.  Like, never. Never EVER. (Okay, so if my parents/siblings were treating but...hardly ever.) However, fast food breakfast, I learned, was a lot less expensive and was a nice way to treat myself on the weekends. Being poor, you hafta take your treats where ya can.

Fast forward a few raises and a couple of promotions and, well, I eat out all the time. Too much, if I'm being honest. Since it's harder to cut out the occasional lunches/girls' nights out with my friends, I figured if I really want to start cutting somewhere the place to cut it was--you guessed it--Saturday morning breakfast. *sniffle*

I love my Saturday morning breakfasts. The past couple of years or so (since I bought a house and moved closer to a smaller town) I've been hung up on Sonic. More specifically Sonic's Ulimate Meat and Cheese Breakfast Burrito. *le sigh* It's the perfect combination of cheese, egg and breakfast meat. And the Sonic coffee? Awesome.

However, when my ever increasing excess poundage began to bother me and I began paying attention to what I was eating I decided to look up the nutrition on those things. I was flabbergasted when I read how many calories are in those things. Flabbergasted and mildly horrified.

Nine hundred calories. As in Nine-Zero-Zero. 900. And that's JUST the burrito. That's not including the tator tots it comes with or all the sugar/half and half I put in my coffee. That's a 900 calorie burrito.

What. The. HECK!

Gah.

Once I saw the calorie count on my beloved breakfast burrito I just couldn't justify it to myself. As treats go, that's a little excessive. I mean, if I'm shooting for 1300 calories a day, that one item was BOOM! more than half my day's calorie allotment.

But, ya'll. To be honest, to keep my food feelings in check (so I don't go on any benders and so that it is actually a treat) I'm allowing myself one a month. I even made myself a chart of when I can treat myself to a breakfast. It gives me something to look forward to and once they are not so commonplace they'll feel more special.

Don't get me wrong...I'm not using the burrito/breakfast as a reward at the end of the month. No. It's a treat.

The rewards will come in a non-food related way. Because I'm not BANNING myself from any specific food. I'm just limiting myself on how MUCH I eat of any particular food. Cutting back to one breakfast a month is the limit.

The rewards...I'm still not sure about. Maybe that's a topic for another day.