Letting myself off the hook (in a good way)

I took a long recovery walk today, over an hour in total with a break in the middle to sit in the park and meditate. It was after this break, walking back home that I had a bit of a breakthrough. I've had a sort of rough week in terms of adherence to my nutrition plan. My refeed day last Saturday included two additional desserts not accounted for in my macros, then watching the World Series win on Wednesday I ended up eating a few fun-size candy bars and handfuls of caramel corn and then to really make sure I felt super terrible about my behavior for the week, on Thursday I ate candy at work. This breaks the iron-clad rule I have for myself that I just absolutely do not under any circumstance eat the extra food available at work. There is free candy, cake, cookies, pastries, donuts and/or ice-cream available at the hospital LITERALLY EVERY DAY. When I started working I was in pre-comp mode so turning it all down was pretty easy, and at that point I decided that going forward, even after the comp, it would just be my rule to not ever eat the junk food at work. So breaking that rule sort of sucked, especially as I am prone to the slippery-slope of bad habits.

I emailed my nutrition coach on Thursday evening to try to get some help and perspective, and she definitely provided it. (Jen also recently wrote a great article about the temptations of the holidays and how we so often screw our future selves, it's a pretty entertaining read.) Essentially she confirmed that my behavior falls under the category of self-sabotage, which happens for multiple reasons. For one, we tend to think we have more wiggle room once we're close to our goals when what we actually need to do is stay the course until we REACH our goals; for another, there's often some self-doubt as to whether you actually deserve to achieve a goal and once it gets close that self-doubt can become a tricky little bugger of self-defeating behavior.

I tell you all of this to explain my own mind-set this afternoon. I was feeling a bit down because I weighed in at 204# this morning, up from 202.6# last Saturday, and heading in the wrong direction to meet my goal of being in the 194-198# range by the end of the year. I took Jen's comment to heart that "a couple of small dietary indiscretions didn't do any harm, however if they are repeated, they absolutely will," and was simultaneously beating myself up a bit for messing up and also resolving to do better, when it occurred to me that yes, I do weigh 204# but I was also walking around Cambridge in size 12 skinny jeans, a feat I never thought I would accomplish (the size 12 or the skinny jeans.) It's just too bad that competition classes aren't based on what size jeans one wears . . .

I tend to have a very black-and-white perspective on my own behavior, either it's fantastic or it's total shit, and so being able to realize that: yes, I made a few crappy decisions this week about food and I need to rein it in over the next two holiday months if I want to hit my goals but at the same time I am doing really well in the grand scheme of my life and my overall habits and patterns, was a pretty nice thing. I can cut myself some slack while also not excusing my behavior or allowing it to continue. This really is a revelation for me, and one I would like to remember.