Misbehaving

Ahh, Monday again.  I actually like Monday, which probably puts me in the minority.  I like the potential it has.  Monday means that another week has started, with a brand new chance to learn and better myself.

It's a good thing I think that way about Mondays, because my weekend was a little bit of a disaster.  Since the 4th of July was on Thursday, Chad also got Friday off from work, which means he had a four day weekend, woo!  Of course, weekends are when we loosen our low carb/paleo rules about food and tend to eat a little more junky food.

On Thursday, we ended up getting huge ice creams.  On Friday, we had potato salad.  And don't even get me started on Saturday (hint: Aunt Flow showed up and the chocolate was calling my name). 

It always makes me feel guilty when I'm bad like that.  I feel like I've wrecked all the work I've done in the past year to improve my health and well being.  It also makes me feel like I'm weak willed and have no control over my actions.

But I try to remember to look at these situations with clear eyes.  Ice cream, potato salad, a bar of chocolate?  Those may be bad to me now, and we may only eat those things once in a long while, but it's not the end of the world.  It's not like we wrecked our whole diet the entire four day weekend.  We still ate real, whole food the rest of the time.  Life is too short to worry about small indulgences, especially when they're only once in a while.

As for being weak willed, I don't know.  I don't think I'm being fair with myself.  Back when Chad and I were first living together, we ate those types of food every day, multiple times a day.  Chad had a voracious appetite for candy, and I still like to tell the story of when he sat down and ate a whole bag of jelly beans in one sitting.  I was no better.  I had to have sweets in the house all the time.  When about half of them were gone, I'd tell myself that I had to eat these because I didn't want them in the house, and I'd try to eat them quickly.  But then once they were gone, I'd either bake more or buy more junk because I just needed to have it, and the cycle would start again. 

So the fact that we're willing to eat clean, wholesome food 90% of the time?  That's pretty awesome.  If you really think about it, that's not weak willed.  That's actually pretty strong willed.  That's knowing what we want and sticking with it.  And when we do eat junk food, it's not because we have no control over ourselves.  The ice cream was a careful decision, and we actually walked about three miles to get it.  The potato salad was also a decision, because we wanted to have a somewhat traditional cookout.  And we resisted getting baked beans along with the potato salad because we knew that would be over doing it.

As for the chocolate?   I decided a long time ago to let myself have whatever I want the first day AF shows up, since it's such an emotional craptastic day for me.  The fact that I was able to get by eating only 2/3 of a chocolate bar and three rice crispy treats is actually pretty good.  I used to eat 3/4 of a pan of brownies!

I suppose the lesson here is to give yourself a little slack.  Don't beat up on yourself just because you slipped up a little.  Try to see the situation for exactly what it is, and then learn from it.  And remember that life is about enjoying every moment.  If you're constantly denying yourself some of life's pleasures (and that includes food), that's not really living, is it? 

The Bumpy Road

Life doesn't always go the way you plan it.  I know this pretty well by now, but nevertheless, it always throws me for a loop when something unexpected happens in my life. 

Like, for instance, having someone turn left in front of our car at high speed, totaling our car and leaving us scrambling to buy a new one.  I think I was more dead weight than anything for my poor husband the whole week.  The accident left me mildly traumatized, and I found it hard to do even the most basic chores. 

Needless to say, the first part of my life that suffered was my diet.  I'm a stress eater.  When I'm under pressure of any kind, I try to ease my anxiety with food.  At first I tried to eat healthy foods, because I knew I didn't want to eat junk when my body and mind were already having problems.  But I couldn't stop myself.  Pretty soon, I found the sugar, and the rest is just a sweet blur. 

(Admittedly, I indulged in much smaller amounts of sugar than I would have back in my calorie counting days.  Today, I consider indulging as eating one or two servings of sweets a day, whereas in the past I've been known to inhale a whole bag of candy in an attempt to make myself feel better.)

I really hate when I lose control of my eating habits.  My brain is saying "hey, don't eat that", but my mouth is saying "shut up, you goody-two-shoes!  Can't you see I need this?".  The sad part is that it's never as good as I think it's going to be. 

And now that I've been eating junk foods for about a week, I've been finding it hard to get back into the swing of eating real food.  My sugar cravings are killing me, and I'm having trouble resisting food between meals.  Sigh.  I think for now I'll focus mostly on just staying away from sugar, and once the cravings go away, I'll cut out in between meal snacking again. 

The next time something like this happens, I'm going to try harder to be good to myself.