Days 50 & 51 & 52: Who’s In Charge Here?

Sorry I haven’t written in a while. Please don’t take it personally. I’ve just been avoiding you. Yes you. I had a terrible weekend. The fall came on like my period does every month. Everything was good, I was losing weight and then BAM…what the hell?…it blind-sighted me. The gluttony began on Friday evening and ended in a half-bag of liquorice watching the Half-Blood Prince. On Friday, when I only had 200 calories left, I decided that, because it had been a while since I had gone over my calories, today would be the day and what better way to do it than Pizza. And what goes well with Pizza? A heaping pile of shame! And what goes really well with shame? More Pizza! You can see the vicious cycle.

Saturday was really not my fault at all. I was ambushed. I went into the New Day Bakery to get whole wheat bread and my favorite coffee, and there were fresh gigantasauras sized chocolate chip cookies sitting out, get this–cooling off fresh from the oven. The aroma filled the store and I was completly at the will of the cookie. My thought process went something like: ‘OK, I can do this. I’ll get one and just take a small bite and give the rest to the children. The children will love the rest of the cookie. It really is all for the children.’ Well, you’ll be shocked, horrified and amazed to find out that the children got bupkis! The damn thing was gone before I got half way to the gym. Yes, you heard me right. I actually walked into the gym with warm semi-sweet chocolate adorning my face and shirt. I don’t even know if this is legal. So, I got on the treadmill and didn’t get off for an hour and a half. I didn’t push super hard though as I was kind of sick from the HUGE cookie and large coffee that I had just sucked down. That night I had a really healthy dinner and a huge salad and managed to only go over my calories by 200.

Today, I was doing really well until I ate a good dinner (a Whole Wheat Pita at the Pita Pit...better than Subway and only 300 calories without any sauce!) and went to the movies. I stopped at a drugstore to spend my last $15- on my last 350 calories and did a really stupid thing. I had just read how great liquorice is for you, how it promotes weight loss and helps to kill hunger. Well, it doesn’t work well enough as I ate 1/2 the package. I didn’t even bring the whole thing in with me only 2 servings, but I snacked on it before and after the movie and that turned into 5 servings in total. This weekend I re-learned for the 12,487th time that I CANNOT BE TRUSTED WITH A WHOLE BAG OR BOX OF ANYTHING!!

I had an interesting conversation this morning with Rodger, my husband. He was in a Buddhist seminary program for 3 years and thinks he knows everything. It’s super annoying especially because, he’s usually got some good points. Anyway, I told him that I wasn’t sure how I should be feeling and reacting to this past weekend of slip-ups. I feel like I need a good “talking to” or flogging because I just feel like I’m out of control with my actions even though I’m “mindful” that I’m fucking up. He said that yelling at myself would only work for a short while and then I’d be back to slipping up. (He apparently has a lot of faith in me.) He said that the Sanskrit word for ‘mindfulness’ is “smrti” which literally means “that which is remembered.” (“Remember” in this sense is to “recollect” not reminisce about.) So to be “mindful” is not just having bare awareness of what you’re doing, but to be guiding it in the right direction all the time. So the key to not slipping up is to remember the state of mind, intention and thoughts that I had when I was on a roll, doing well, and winning the battle of the bulge!

Rodger also told me about a Monk who, when having problems making decisions would say out loud, “Who’s the master here?” So, I was at the gym, on the treadmill and was running for two minutes at a time. It was getting hard and my mind started saying things like, “That’s great Liz. I think that you’ve done plenty…can we stop running now?” I “recalled” this mornings conversation and said out loud, “Who’s the master here?” And out loud I answered, “I AM!” And I kept running.