The best laid schemes of mice and men go oft awry, saith the poet Robert Burns, and I'm afraid it's all too true, as I have learned again this past month.
I'm still stuck at 155, which wouldn't be so bad if I weren't looking at climbing back up to my former weight. All my old habits are creeping back, and I'm eating more than I should, a troubling development, especially since I'm not exercising more.
(Also, the online recording has not worked very well--too cumbersome on the cloud.)
One of the criticisms I have of plans like Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig and Nutrisystem is their insistence that food-addicted people can eat whatever foods they like, as long as they eat small quantities.
Well, duh! That's the problem!! If food addicts could eat small quantities of chocolate or ice cream or donuts or pie, don't you think they would? The people who hawk these plans know it, too. They want fat people to join the club, buy the expensive food, lose the weight, go back to overeating, gain it back, drop out of the club, and then a few months after they gain back even more weight than they originally lost, get back again on the plan. It's all good for Weight Watchers and company. They get paid no matter what.
So, is it possible to eat small quantities of food I like? I don't know. Shirley Simon believed it was possible and proved it by eating a small piece of her favorite treat, cherry pie, and throwing the rest away. Impressive, no? Of course. But then again, I can't find out what's happened to Shirley since her book came out in the seventies; maybe she's gone back to being fat. Maybe her addictions got the better of her.
If so, I can relate. I'm at the place where I've lost the war in the past. This is one of those forks in the road (apt metaphor, no?) where every dieter must make a choice: continue on the road less traveled, the path of eating righteousness, or shift back to the highway to heft--the broad way, as it were.
But having chosen the narrow path, how to stick to it? That's the question. I don't have the answer at the moment, but it's the crux of the problem for everyone who struggles with his or her weight. Solving this mystery is the key to conquering obesity, and I'm going to keep working on it.
What can I do today? Well, today I'm just going emulate the friends of Bill W. and try to make one small decision at a time. The first one: what to do with the two cookies I have left over from the DAR meeting? My choices: 1) buy ice cream to eat them with; 2) eat them with milk or coffee for breakfast; 3) save them to eat after dinner with yogurt; 4) take them to work and give them to skinny coworkers; 5) throw them away.
I must confess I don't like any of these choices. I've already eaten enough of them and want to stop, really. Taking them to work is the least objectionable, because it doesn't involve throwing them away, although it feels like I'm dumping them on my coworkers, who might not like them and might fear telling me that. Plus there are only two of them. Not enough to make me seem generous. Hmmmm . . .
There is a sixth choice: save them for practicing the Thin Gourmet technique. This is not a bad option, I guess, although I suspect I might be fooling myself into making cookie eating seem virtuous by calling it practice. I do need to practice that technique, however, since I haven't been very successful so far with eating slowly and contemplatively. But then again, I could practice on celery, couldn't I? I'll consider this option, though.
And I'll carry on, despite recent setbacks, and report on my progress here (although a little more frequently this time). See you later!
