
I am doing the South Beach Diet. If you aren’t familiar with it, it basically encourages you to eat lean meats, non-starchy vegetables, reduced fat dairy, nuts and it requires you to cut out all white flour, potatoes, and rice, and use good oils instead of butter or vegetable oil. You can have limited carbs as long as they are whole grain.
Well throughout the day yesterday I had some cheesy vegetable casserole stuff (definitely not reduced fat cheese I’m sure), some banana pudding (with a Nilla wafer on top), a generous helping of spaghetti (not whole grain), grilled cheese (on white bread), and about six Keebler Fudge Stripe cookies. Yeah, I said it. Six.
I’d like to say that I just nibbled here and there and before I knew it had accumulated a week’s worth of my cheating but that wasn’t the case. I was fully aware going into each and every decision that I shouldn’t be partaking in it. During the six cookie debacle, I felt like I was in a sitcom. I had been upset about something and was in my car. I had tears running down my cheeks as I mindlessly put the cookies in my mouth. I even made a conscious note to myself. “Rhonda,” I said, “you are emotionally eating right now. You’re not even hungry.” Unfortunately, the response to myself probably would’ve been something like, “Yeah, I am aware of that you big dummy. Just try and stop me.”
It wasn’t pretty.
I noticed yesterday a weird sort of defiance in myself when it came to food. Each time I ate something I knew I shouldn’t have, it almost felt like I was doing it out of a sense of spite. Spite towards who or what, I am not sure. I’m still trying to figure that out. It was almost like I’d take a bite of spaghetti and say, “take that!” But again - the only one I was hurting was myself so I don’t know what the deal is there.
This morning I feel more clearheaded and can see the dysfunction in my eating habits yesterday. I guess all I can do today is try to learn from my mistakes, right?
On a positive note, I am back on the wagon this morning. Typically in the past, I would have threw in the towel for the week (because I have some weird OCD-ish thing about starting on Mondays). I also would have felt defeated on a larger level. Today I am not discouraged about the big picture. I realize these days may happen now and then and that I just need to quickly brush myself off and keep going.
Like Dory from Finding Nemo would say, “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming.”