Mark my words

Hey Amigos,

Confession time. Weight Watchers, brilliant marketers that they are, marked their one point bars down from $7.50 to $5.00. If I were in a grocery store, this is the type of thing I would NEVER buy. Never.

But somehow, in my WW meeting, I felt trapped in some vortex where $5.00 is a great bargain (thank GOD they don't sell things like bridges in New York and long term care insurance). Before I knew what was happening (and that's almost the straight truth...I was a woman possessed) I had 2 boxes in my backpack, one chocolate peanut butter and one chocolate mint. They're little bars, 1 point each.

Do I really need to tell you what happened? Really?

If you were thinking that it took me approximately 24 hours to finish both boxes, you'd be right. 24 mini bars, 24 hours. Of course I wasn't eating them every hour. I'd eat one, then a little while later another. Then I'd freeze them and have those. Then I'd have three at a time.

See, the trouble is (and any fellow food addicts can back me up on this one) if a trigger food is in my house, I'm almost completely powerless against it. I can hear my dad now talking about willpower and sucking it up etc., and my mom saying "Just don't eat it" and my sister saying both. I've tried. If it's there, I will eat it. Sad but true.

So we come to another weigh in day and I'm filled with trepidation. I've probably gained this week. Mostly because I ate too many points (I know this to be true because in spite of the embarassing quality of my binging, I DID record it all) and only got exercise 2 days this week.

In some of this weight loss stuff are definites. Things that can't be changed. Or, maybe they could be, but I'm so busy focusing on everything else in my life that I choose not to change them. Like my trigger foods. I simply cannot have them in my house. Absolutely positively not. And the thing is, if I stick to that rule, I'm fine. And sticking to it is easier than you think, once I've identified the problem. Another thing is, I know the exercise that suits me best. It's walking. And I don't mean walking indoors to one of those Leslie Sansone videos (even though she is pretty good and you get a good work out) or a treadmill. I mean walking and actually getting somewhere. It's something I like to do and something I know I will do and it's not a chore and I always seem to find time to do it (except when it's hotter than Hades as it is right now). It's also something I can do with my dog. I've tried other aerobic activity, and the only one that ever stuck, that I never got bored with, that I always did, was walking.

Those are my definites. Maybe some day, way in the future, I'll be ready to change them, but they're both good, positive things, so I'm not going to beat myself up for having what others may see as 'restrictions.' I see it as playing to my strengths.

It's amazing, but I feel better than I did when I started writing this post. Maybe it's the fact that I've made another promise to myself. I tend not to break promises to myself. I never promise myself anything unreasonable, but there are several promises that I keep. If I don't I'm actually disappointed in myself.

It's as if I made a promise to someone else and didn't keep it, but I'm both people, feeling bad for having a promise made to me broken, and for actually being the one breaking that promise.

A couple of the promises I've made to myself over the years

*make my bed every day
*always be in the process of reading something (currently I'm reading The Black Echo by Michael Connelly, never read anything by him before; great literature it ain't, but it's a good mystery)
*eat breakfast every day
*bring lunch to work during the week
*always clean the litter boxes at the minimum once daily
*ALWAYS ATTEND A WEIGHT WATCHERS MEETING

That last one is a biggie (hence the caps). The one promise I made when I started the program. I've told you about that before. I didn't promise myself I'd lose weight. I didn't promise myself anything other than I can bring myself to one lousy half hour meeting every week.

So now I've got another big promise to add. And putting it here makes me all the more accountable.

I will never buy another box of WW one point bars. I'm making a clean break. I wish them well and all the success in the world, but they can't be a part of my life.

Time to move on.