Initially, the yogurt seemed to help. It’s even possible that it did help, I suppose, but I can’t be sure about that (and it certainly didn’t solve the problem like chugging glasses of water did). As I mentioned at the end of my leftovers post, the idea to drink more water didn’t just help the problem, it solved the problem, so whatever little bit of help the yogurt did doesn’t seem very relevant to me in hindsight.
Of course, the yogurt experiment was hardly a waste of time. Again, its easy implementation made it a winning idea from the start. I think it’s always a good idea to try new things if they are easy to implement because it gives me a low cost way to have fresh experiences and positions me to learn from the unexpected things that occur in the process.
The big result of the yogurt experiment was the way it changed my end of the day meal. In the past, I’d almost always eaten a meal resembling a proper dinner when I returned home for the night. This sometimes meant my bedtime got pushed back due to the associated admin of dinner – cooking, cleaning, and so on. It also meant I ate more in general because dinner tended to be my largest meal of the day. When I started eating yogurt at the end of the day, there were occasional nights when I would return home and realize I wasn’t particularly hungry and on these nights I would eat only a cup of yogurt. I guess these occasions introduced the idea of eating just a cup of yogurt into my mind because I soon found myself seeing how I would do if I ate yogurt for dinner instead of preparing a larger meal. To my surprise, this wasn’t a problem at all, so I made the switch sometime in the late summer and to this day I continue eating just a cup of yogurt for dinner on those nights when I used to eat a full dinner.
This change has necessitated some associated adjustments, of course, and these are important – it’s not about actions but interactions, right? One adjustment was to increase my lunch by a small degree, maybe twenty percent or so, to help make up for some of what I’d stopped eating at night. I also started eating lunch later in the day because it’s easier for me to avoid eating until mid afternoon than it is for me to ignore being hungry when I get home. It seems like I’m eating less in general, which I think is good (though I admit I’m not keeping close track). The biggest change is something I’ve highlighted in an earlier leftover within this series – since I now skip the process of preparing and cleaning up after dinner, I have less to do before bedtime and can therefore meet my sleep goals.
