Eating healthy. It’s a lovely thing to do, especially during swim suit season. Shall we say sweats have become the go-to items in my wardrobe. They fit and they hide things.
I’ve made this determination (again): “This is it! This 10 pounds has to go! It’s time to get in shape and feel better! More energy! Eat healthy. Exercise. Easy Peasy! Piece of cake – ahem – fruit! You got this, girl. You can do it!”
And I did have it. Until the day I didn’t. I ate a light breakfast. Then there was the really healthy low-fat lunch. And then…..I remembered the left over egg roll in the fridge, and it was over. All over. I was done for.
I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I was obsessed with it, actually. I could hear it taunting me from the back of the refrigerator. No matter how much I tried to focus on the yummy snack of oranges and yogurt I had planned, I couldn’t forget it was in there.
Fried wanton wins out over oranges. Every. Single. Time.
And then it was a slippery slope. “Well….I’ve already eaten the greasy roll of deliciousness. This tiny little Ghiradelli Salted Caramel Dark Chocolate square won’t make much more of a difference.” So I ate that too. Or should I say two.
And the slope got slipperier by the second. Right next to the squares was a lovely, enticing Lindt Coconut Cream Milk Chocolate truffle. It was so itty bitty – what could it hurt?
At that point, I was almost at the bottom of the slide, so the left over Buckeyes my friend Alisa made couldn’t possibly do too much more damage, could they?
And then I saw the Oatmeal Scotchies, which are my downfall at Christmas…..and well…..I had to stop somewhere. It wasn’t easy, but I walked away.
Before I knew it, 10 pounds had surely turned into 15 and I had quite the bellyache from the conglomeration of foods mixing in my stomach. Good times. Where are the Tums?
Was it worth it? No. Not at all.
Each individual food item wouldn’t have been so horrible all by itself. If I had only eaten the egg roll. Or the chocolate square. Or the truffle. Or the buckeyes. I’m not in bondage here. Do I want to lose weight and get in shape? Of course. Do I want to still enjoy life? Why yes, yes I do. Life’s too short not to eat an egg roll every now and then.
But with each piece of forbidden fruit (and I use the word fruit metaphorically here – if only I had eaten fruits – sigh), it was easier to say yes to the next unhealthy thing.
And now…..it’ll take WAY more blood, sweat and tears to get where I want to be, all because of some fried wanton and chocolate. A moment on the lips…….forever on the hips, or something like that.
Are you relating this in your mind to anything else yet? I am. Lots of things. Like TV watching, which isn’t bad in and of itself. But when sitting down to watch that 30-minute Hawaii Life turns into wasting an entire day watching a whole season of your show on Netflix – slippery slope.
And there’s the other things, like negativity. Complaining. Griping. Murmuring. Gossiping. Sinning. And the list could go on and on.
Once you start, it’s a slippery slope. The more you do it the easier it gets so you do it again. And again. And again. Until it becomes a habit. A lifestyle. And you’re nowhere near the goal of who you want to be and what you want to do.
I could have stopped myself. I should have just stopped thinking about it. I could have walked away. Or brushed my teeth. (Brushing your teeth is a great way to avoid eating something – who wants to eat an egg roll that tastes like minty freshness?) Or I could have thrown it in the trash.
There are a lot of could-haves, but…..
And then the eater’s remorse finally set in. The How-could-you’s and the Seriously-did-you-really-just-eat-all-that’s were ravaging my guilty self.
Did I mention I haven’t quite gotten to the exercise portion of weight loss…. so that just added to the guilt. Yes, sometimes I justify poor eating choices with, “Well, I worked out today, so it’s all good!”
And that’s when I just stopped and said, “Enough is enough!”
Okay – I didn’t make the wisest food choices for those three minutes. (It didn’t take me long to wolf all that down! It wasn’t a pretty sight.)
It wasn’t my finest hour, but it wasn’t the end of the world. I may not have helped myself but I didn’t kill myself either.
I’m human. So are you. And that’s okay. I forgave myself and made a plan of attack for how to handle that temptation when it comes back around so I don’t fall again.
And I enjoyed the rest of my day.
So what did we learn here today, class?
- It’s best to avoid the slide all together.
- But if you find yourself on the slippery slope, you can jump off at any time. Don’t keep sliding down.
- Make a plan of attack before temptation hits.
- Egg roll and a mixture of chocolates eaten in 3-minute’s time will give you a tummy ache. Keep some Tums on hand.
- Most importantly, you’re human. Forgive yourself when you mess up and move on and enjoy your life. You only get one, and it’s too short to live in the land of regrets.
