My Inner Toddler

This past weekend two old friends came to visit for a few days.  It was great – we caught up on old times, had a few drinks, shopped and had some great food.   Calorie-wise I ate more than usual, but when I compared what I ate to what my Bodybugg said I burned, it was a break-even situation.  So even though I didn't lose weight over the weekend, I didn't gain.  The real damage was weakening my resistance muscle – several times I ate when I really wasn’t hungry (Karen brought Lindor Truffles and I am helpless around them) and Saturday night I had four pieces of pizza even though I was full after two.  The poor choices continued long after my friends left - last night I grazed my way through the kitchen and this morning I found myself eating a lot of unplanned food.   I finally recognized that my habit of saying no to unplanned food had been broken and needed to be repaired from the ground up.  This afternoon I've been trying to redirect myself every time the thought of food comes up, which means that every two minutes I have to deal with the automatic thought 'I'm hungry, time to eat!'

Basically, my subconscious is acting like a toddler in a room full of delicate glass figurines.   Oooh! Shiny!  Pretty!  Want to touch!   I have to be hyper-vigilant, watching her every move, or else she will pick one up and break it.  Put that down honey, it might break. No sweetie, put it down, that’s fragile! No! Put that down! I SAID NO!  Sigh.  My entire day has been like this.   I wish I could check myself into daycare so someone else could keep an eye on me for awhile.

What have I learned from this?  Never let my guard down - if I didn't plan to eat it, I should just say no.  It's too hard to relearn habits after a relapse.

I'll get to put my newly learned lesson to the test tomorrow, because I am flying to New Hampshire for the day, which means airports and eating out.  I'll bring some healthy snacks and keep reminding myself that  hunger is not an emergency, but I think tomorrow will mostly be me vs. myself, gutting it out against my subconscious.

In other news, I went to the gym this morning and swam 500 yards nonstop - a new training record!  Yay me!