Running the guantlet as a gannet!

4th January 2013

There are two ways to look at life. One is as though nothing is a miracle; the other is as though everything is. Albert Einstein

So this is officially gonna be a toughie!  The first weekend back on track, so we’re just gonna have to man up!  Not easy though is it?  I left my meeting last night, dropped my helper off and then drove home, it felt like I was running the gauntlet.  As I drove round the outside Bloxwich town centre I must have passed a dozen takeaway shops, Chinese, pizza, chip shop you name it.  I am by now hungry anyway and my desire for cooking has totally disappeared.  It’s gone eight o’clock.  I don’t stop, I keep my eyes on the road, my windows closed to resist the smells and thank the universe that the lights didn’t turn to red!  Phew I’ve made it past them all, so now I’m on the main road driving home, I pass within a mile, a co-op, a pizza place, another chip shop, Chinese, Indian, pub and a Tesco garage!  I’m thinking to myself, I could just eat chicken chow mein or a cooked chicken from Tesco but instead I kept saying to myself, STOP IT and drive, you have a prawn salad made up in the house which you can put between two slices of bread now stop being tempted by your overloaded toxic food environment and drive home woman!

It’s damned hard though and no denying but I did it, I got home, I made my sandwich and poured my glass of red (ProPoints earned to cover it on my Pedometer) and I settled down in front of the tv.  What happened next was just plain unfair, my mom walks out the room saying, “where’s my skips?” which is absolutely fine because I can’t stand Skips they’re gross, then walks back in with a packet of Walkers Cheddar Cheese Crisps!  Erm, I don’t think so, that’s just not in the plan at all for tonight, my hardest night of the week, the one night I just want to eat junk, drink wine and fall asleep!  It’s also the night before I’m due on so I’m starving!  I finish eating my sandwich whilst eyeing her up, she’s offering the dog one, why isn’t the bitch offering me one – I stop looking, it’s for the best, I can’t have them, I’ve used my dailies already.  “Did you know we’d got these Bev”, she hollows, by now I’m on the verge of ripping them out of her hand and snorting them straight from the packet like a truffle pig!  I resume composure “No mom I didn’t, where were they?”  “oh there in that green thing in the utility room, I thought they’d all gone but there’s a few packets left.”  So once I’d finished my sandwich – you know what’s coming don’t you, you know after only 4 days of tracking and 10 days of overindulging that resisting temptation really isn’t that easy, especially when I’m tired from going back to work (no matter how much I love my job), I’ve been up since 5, done 5 meetings, walked the dog twice and hours of paperwork in-between – yeah we all know how this story ends.  I stand up, walk to the kitchen, put my plate by the sink, and walked out of the kitchen and into the utility room where I methodically open every drawer in the green thing!  I then go sit down and waste 4pp on a bag of crisps I wouldn’t have even considered had they not been there!  Once I’d finished them I reminded my mom that she’s to hide her stash, not share with me where they are hidden and if she does feel the need to eat them in front of me, please don’t wave them around as she walks past me, nor draw my attention to the deliciousness of them because I’m apparently I’m not weak, I’m hardwired this way!  It’s the hedonic hunger instinct that’s in my genes that made me do it!  And that my friends is why we won’t be buying Walkers crisps again in multi-packs of 6, if she wants a bag of crisps she can go buy one bag or if she does buy 6 she needs to bloody hide them!

Of course it was Thursday and you’ve already read above that this is my ‘oh dear’ day when it can go great or tits up, and being the first of 2013 I knew it was going to be a tough one, and it was, because once the taste buds had been tantalised it was all over.  I pretended to be tidy and took my crisp wrapper to the kitchen, where I opened the fridge (erm that’s not the bin lady!) but in the fridge I found some cheese and in the cupboard I found some Weight Watcher crackers and yes this is a very predictable story isn’t it!  Another 7 ProPoints later, I’m spending my weekly allowance quicker than you can say Jack Robinson (what does that saying mean anyway?)

So today I shall be portioning up all the leftover cheese into 40g pieces and freezing them, because I cannot resist it, even if I have hidden it away in the salad drawer!  If you’ve been in my meetings this week you know we’ve looked at reclaiming control of our own overloaded food environment – i.e. our kitchen.  My experience last night has proven to me, I still have work to do and that is what I will be doing later on today, I can’t leave it until tomorrow because if that cheese is in that fridge tonight when I pour my glass of wine and my first weekend of 2013 begins I just know I’m not going to be strong enough to resist.  Every year my subconscious says the same thing to me, “it’s your birthday this month girl, wait till after that, then you can get back on track”, well this year it can go get stuffed, because I’m not waiting, I’m sorting the kitchen, taking back my power, and make my weight loss effort even easier this year!  It’s all about taming my appetite and making that as effortless as possible!  Who’s with me?