Falling off the wagon!

I haven't written in my blog for a very long time. There are many reasons. I'm enrolled in a college English course and the writing is tough and demanding of my precious time. I've become involved with another company and I'm helping them with their books and the training of their new bookkeeper. (Heaven help them!) I'm still working for the two other business I go to at least four times and week and now I've taken on the books of my boss's son. I have about a years worth of bookkeeping to catch up on. Yikes! And of course, I'm busily working on book number five, then throw in my birthday and Tim's and a quick weekend trip to Southern Utah to visit my dad and his wife, Edna plus Tim's father passed away and we spent a lot of Saturday's visiting him in the hospital--and you've got life at it's finest.

However, those are not the only reasons--which are very good reasons--for not writing in my blog, but the simplest reason and the straight forward one is that I've fallen off the wagon.

We've all seen people who've tried to improve their lives through weight loss, quitting smoking and drinking, stopping drug abuse and so on. And then they've seen them slip off their tenuous program and indulge in he behavior that got them in trouble in the first place. Somewhere in the back of my evil twin sister's mind, we look at them and say, "I knew they couldn't stick with it. They're so weak!" Come on, I know you've all heard that nasty little voice in the back of your head say something vicious like that. Or maybe not. Maybe it's just me. It's not that we like to see people fail at something, it's just that we don't want them to best us.

Well...I now know what it's like to slide off the wagon and back into patterns of behavior that are familiar yet destructive. Before Christmas I finally reached the middle pinnacle of my weight loss journey. 104 pounds. Although far from my goal, that seemed like a great milestone. But that's where it ended.

I know first hand what it feels like when a recovering alcoholic hears the call of the bottle which reaches out, enticing them back with the alluring feel of the liquid gold sliding down a parched throat. I know what a heroin addict must feel when they walk the streets and a dealer shoves bag of the white siren's powder under their nose. I know what seduction there is in having another smoker in the same room with you when you're craving a draw on that tobacco stick. I know because I'm also an addict.

I thought I'd concurred my addition, my obsession, my passion for FOOD! But after only eight months of strict obedience, I had not learned the basic lessons of control. I also realize that with an addiction to food, you can't completely shove it out of your life. It's around you everywhere. Your life is constantly bombarded with reasons to eat: Christmas, New Year's, birthdays, anniversaries, travel, funerals--grief. And if you haven't learned what it means to control the situation, then you'll slip off the wagon just as surely as a heroin addict or a recovering alcoholic. There really is no difference.

I then heard the other little voice in my head, the one that tells you that you really can't do it. You have no business trying to quit something or restructuring your life. You're just no good at it. We all have that voice as well. I listened when it told me "just one won't hurt." So I believed and fell. Just one box of Sees, just one pound of fantasy fudge, just one pound of honey baked ham and one pound of scalloped potatoes and one pound of pumpkin pie. Just one drink or two of egg nog and vanilla ice cream, just one more, and one more and...You get the picture.

Then there's another little voice (I'm full of them) that tells you "well now you've fallen off and lost your momentum and slipped up a few pounds, so what?" That's the voice I really hate. Because that's the voice I believe the most. "Yeah, you're right. I've really messed up. I knew I couldn't lose weight all along. You told me I couldn't do it and now you're proven me right." Boy! I hate it when I agree with myself. I sound like I'm slipping into existentialism. You know what that is, right? According to Wikipedia, "a philosophy that begins with a sense of disorientation and confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world. Or in other words--nonsense!

I believed the nonsense that only my mind can produce. I believed a lie.

I believed the lie my existential mind (disoriented, confused, absurd) mind was telling me. So here I am. No longer at 104 pounds down. I won't bore you with the details of exactly how many pounds I added back on my bones, but enough to have me believing the lie--you've failed, you can't go on--you're a loser. (Well technically that would be NON-LOSER!)

What's great about Weight Watchers, (and this isn't a shameless plug) it that they help you see around the lies you tell yourself and help you through the barriers that keep you from taking the first step toward jumping back on the wagon. I'm still racing behind the wagon hoping it will slow down and let me catch up. No more excuses, no more rationalizations, it's my choice whether I eat low calorie filling foods or consume everything that's not nailed down. I'm still getting my feet under me. Still trying to push out the third voice and still trying. Period.

Thank goodness I didn't stop going to the gym. That's the only thing that's saved my bacon (no pork-fat jokes, please). I still go every morning, punish myself for an hour so that I don't climb into a ditch after falling off the wagon. So for the present, I'm still running behind the wagon, praying for the strength to fight another day. That's all we can ask out of life. And oh, one more thing--I need to forgive the little voices in my head and forgive myself for tripping. After all, that's all we want from life is a little forgiveness when we stumble and a hand up. That's what Weight Watchers does for me. They offer a hand and it's my choice to clasp it or not.Anywhoo, I still can see some improvement even though I'm running fast to catch up with myself. (Is that an existential statement?)