You know, it’s like the whole world is conspiring against me this week, particularly as I want and need to follow through my little detox program, after all those unneeded carbs I ate in the previous days.
Because there is sugar in the office yet again!
Yesterday, it was a co-worker bringing a home-made plum pie, which looked delicious, and apparently tasted delicious as well. And today, another colleague has his birthday, and it’s currently a flourish of mini-Lions and mini-KitKat in the kitchen, which will be followed by pretzels and booze and stuff around 5 pm. Oy. Oy, I say. Remind me, aren’t we supposed to be all self-conscious and uber-healthy and slim and trim and toned, but if we don’t dip our fingers in the bowl, then we “are no fun”?
However, you may already have noticed that I wrote ‘apparently’. This is because I didn’t have any of that pie. Not one crumb, not one lick, and not even that many glances, actually. And I will not eat the KitKat (the Lions, I don’t like them anyway–too sugary, and potentially dangerous for a certain tooth of mine that might end up stuck in that… caramel paste… whatever it is, I don’t even want to know). It’s not easy, being around all that stuff, so I did a quick, discreet calories check at lunch, and decided that if I were to eat something, then it’d be the small pretzels. 100 cals for 20 pretzels. Simple. Easy to keep in check. And it’s the food I like the most in all that frenzy, so if I’m to have something, it might as well be what I prefer, and not random candy that just happens to be here.
Wait. There is more to that, much more. By now, anyone who’s been reading this blog for more than three days probably knows that I’ve given up the idea of following a specific meal plan (back in 2005, I was doing Montignac/Sugar Busters, sort of). Technically, I don’t consider myself ‘on a diet’. I don’t consider that I have to ‘deprive myself of plenty of foods’. I don’t view this as a temporary way of eating, but as a series of lifestyle changes I have to implement, no matter how long it’ll take me to form new, healthy habits. (You’ll also notice that this IS working for me: I have broken my all-time plateau of 62-ish kilograms, at last!) Now, this method implies not burdening myself with Forbidden Foods, Guilt and other derogatory terms; there’s simply what is good for me and that I can have often, and what is tasty but less good, and that I’d better have occasionally only.
My previous post has already hinted at my inability to eat too much of the latter nowadays, and this is a good thing. But… because there is a BUT… I am far from being freed yet from my nasty tendency to eat something just because it’s there, regardless of how sick I know it will make me. I am working on that. It’s just not easy. I still feel like one of those mini-KitKat would be great with my coffee, like, right now, even though what would really please me in terms of chocolate, if I were to have some, would be delicious, dark chocolate with 84% of cocoa or more–not lowly choc’ that definitely isn’t my favourite.
And I can tell myself whatever I want, such situations will always arise in my life, no matter what I do. Unless I want to shut myself out of any kind of social gathering, and out of work itself (what office does never have candy around??), it is just not possible. I can only get that much control over the foods that pass through my life. So only one solution is left: I need to learn to cope with it. I need to learn that it’s okay at times to indulge a little, but that if such circumstances start to occur too often, then I’ll still have to stop the “it doesn’t hurt if it’s only from time to time” thinking, and keep myself tightly in check. If this is the price to pay to have a healthy body, I’ll happily pay it.
No ‘dieting’, alright. But it doesn’t mean I have to give in to complacency either! I must draw a line, and draw it quickly, before I let the old habits get the best of me again. Not this time, ya hear me? Not this time. I’m done. Over. Period. I’m tired of being fat. I’m tired of being 28 and only NOW able to wear the clothes I’ve always wanted to wear (how many years do I have left, before I’ll start looking really ridiculous?…). No, definitely no. Not. This. Fricking. Time!
On the bright side of things, that candy really doesn’t look appealing at all, so the battle isn’t as hard as it could be. It’s just my nasty habit of wanting to reach out for the food as soon as I see it. Especially free food. Student mindset and all that.
And if in the end, there aren’t any pretzels at 5 for me to munch on, and I’ll have ‘lost the opportunity of munching on something’?
Well, then it must be fate, and I’m not going to spit on that kind of fate, am I? /grins/
