Is ham really from the devil?

Who is it that can't eat pork pursuant to their religious beliefs; muslims?  I think it's muslims.  Maybe they know something we don't.  Maybe they know that ham is.... evil.  Cute little porking evil. 

As you may have guessed, I ate a lot of ham for dinner last night.  Much too much ham.  I was afraid to weigh exactly how much ham I had last night, but going by the palm of hand/deck of cards = a 3 oz serving guideline, it was a lot of ham.  I'm guessing 15 oz of ham was had.  I am ashamed as only a person full of pig can be. 

The ham is so evil, it corrupted the mashed potatos and gravy and baked beans.  Bastard ham!  When all was said and done, I had the ham, an entire box of mashed potatos (I believe that counts as eight servings), a half-cup of gravy (that was okay, only maybe 50 calories), and a cup of baked beans (big bastard calorie-full baked beans).  My food diary and I figure it was 1,690 calories worth. 

What the hell was I thinking?

Because, I will own to it, I was thinking.  I was thinking when I dished up the first plate that I had too much ham on it.  I could live with the mash and gravy and beans, but less ham was needed.  Yet I didn't put any back.  And then, after all of that was gone, well.   You know how one magnet will dance and jerk and shake as it is pulled towards another magnet?  That would be me, looking at my empty plate and thinking about more ham in the fridge and the rest of the mashed potatos on the stove.  And like a pig-addicted moron, I filled my plate again.  And ate it all.  Dumb dumb dumb!!!

I wish I could have phoned somebody.  In those minutes -- and it took a good ten minutes before I was sucked back towards the magnetic pig -- I needed to call someone and have them talk me down off the pig.  Unfortunately, I can't call my mom at the moment, and my friend S had a concert so I knew she couldn't answer her phone.  That was it for peoples I could have called who could have gotten me to leave the swine alone.  I'm not saying all this to whine (or oink) and be all, poor me, nobody to call; I have another reason for telling you all of this.  I'm actually not into the group weight loss thing on a concrete basis.  I'm content to do it on my own.  It's just those moments that are few and far between when I do need somebody else's help and last night that happened to coincide with no one available to call. 

Anyhow, it was just one night.  I'm thinking about that pig right now.  And I'm a little bit hungry.  I'm also thinking about a conversation I had recently with my friend S about how convenience food is engineered to be eaten in mass quantities.  I'm paraphrasing, but that's the gist.  The example she gave me was Panda Express.  First the factory breads and deep fries these meat nuggets.  Then they're shipped to the franchises where they are rebreaded and refried and then glopped into a sugary sauce.  There's millions of dollars of research going into the designing of this food so that we will eat it.  Willpower has nothing to do with it.  No wonder we as a country can't help ourselves. 

Since my work crazyness started in force, I've been eating a lot of convenience foods.  During the same period of time, my appetite has started to go haywire.  I know that the amount of sodium I've consumed in the past two weeks alone is more than twice the recommended daily allowance.  Know what I've been eating for lunch those past two weeks?  Frozen lunches.  (I defrosted and cooked them first, in case you were wondering.  Thank you, please tip your waitress!)  My fat consumption is a little higher than it has been too.  I may not be the brightest bulb on the tree right now, but I'm starting to think there's a pattern here.

I've decided to put away the pig.  I'm going to freeze the pig.  I may even break the pig down into smaller batches (it's in a gallon ziploc right now) so that when I defrost the pig at a later date I won't be tempted to eat like, well, a pig.  I will be making split pea soup, probably in January, with the ham bone (which actually has lots of meat left on it just for that purpose) but otherwise if I am true to my usual self, I will probably end up tossing out most of the pig in about six months when I'm going through the freezer and realize it just doesn't look all that appetizing in its pigscle form.  I'll have a last pig hurrah tonight for dinner and put some aside for scrambled eggs this weekend, but then the pig will make like Walt Disney to wait for another day.  Hopefully when they cure this pig addiction of mine. 

Cheers,
the CilleyPigGirl