The Chocolate Battle
You’ve made a commitment to yourself to stay on target. You’ve signed a contract with your favorite support group and dedicated yourself to a restrictive routine for three weeks and have not fallen from grace. You’re determined and believe that you are capable of achieving your goal. You remind yourself of how terrific your doing and how proud you are for taking off nine pounds of fat in just three weeks.
Comfortable with the tests of will power that present themselves daily, you prepare for an evening of food and entertainment. You run over in your mind how proud you are of yourself and how simple this new way of living has been thus far. You praise yourself for drinking eight or more glasses of water and logging every morsel that has passed by your lips. You complement yourself for developing new eating habits and weighing in with your favorite support group on a regular basis. You’re feeling confident in yourself and your commitment.
The doorbell rings it’s your company each of them has a dish to share for the potluck for the Birthday party. The cake is sitting in the center of the table and looks delicious. It is calling to you, “taste me, taste me.” You resist. To distract yourself you reach for a piece of gum out of the cupboard and pop it into your mouth. Everyone that enters the house admires how well you are looking and then they spot the cake.
They begin boasting about how delicious it looks. They make comments like, “Oh, I can’t wait to bite into that’. You begin to argue with yourself. “One piece won’t make a difference.” The other side argues back one piece will make a difference, because one piece will lead to another and another, you know it, that’s how you operate.” You hear yourself, you feel like Jan on the Brady Bunch when she battles between her evil side and her angelic side. You know what you need to do, but it’s becoming more difficult. It is becoming more and more tempting. You walk into the living room and begin to visit and fidget with the gifts. Then your size two, never had to worry about weight in her entire life friend comes up to you and starts sharing her vacation experiences with you. She goes off how she ate the most incredibly delicious chocolate moose the night before returning home.
You find your mind fixated on the cake in the center of the table. You get a kink in your neck trying to catch a look. There it sits, calling to you. You’re so focused on the cake that you completely miss out on the joke your husband just told and has the crowd rolling in hysteria. Your three year old starts tugging at your skirt, begging to eat. Your guests begin to follow suit and line up. They heap their plates with mouth watering entrees and side dishes and there you are with a 3 ½ ounce chicken breast, your cup of steamed green beans and an Akmak cracker. You forget about the Birthday party and start to throw yourself a Pity party. You begin to sulk and start-up a conversation with yourself. You block your guests out completely. You hear only the background music of crunching, munching, slurping and gulping. Your internal self-indulged dialogue echoes the words, “Go ahead eat, go ahead, what harm will it do?” You want to hit yourself in the head to make it stop. Your self-absorbed, overwhelming desire to eat causes you to ignore the fact we are fighting a war and some of your friends have children in the middle of it become unimportant. All you care about is the war you are battling in with in your head.
“Poor me, poor me,” you cry to yourself. Never mind that your best friend Doris just shared with you that her son Jacob was injured and is being transported to a hospital in the states this very minute. The only thing you can focus on is the chocolate cake on the table. The only thought you have is to grab the knife and sneak every crumb you can get away with.
You convince yourself that those crumbs won’t hurt. The temptation becomes more and more difficult to resist and just as you are about to sneak a bite your husband comes up behind you and whispers a sweet nothing in your ear. Saved by a whisper, but the rescue only lasts for a minute. Then you begin cutting again and battle in your head begins once more. The struggle is on full force. The twins are going at it. One repeating the words “go ahead take a bite, one little bite won’t hurt.” The other imploring you not to do it.
Then an obnoxious voice yells from the other room, “Great cake, you really ought to try it.” The good twin chimes in with “don’t do it, don’t do it.” Then the evil voice speaks, “Cut yourself a piece of cake, after all you made it, you should enjoy the fruits of your labor.” “Yes, but what about the fruits of my labor for weeks the good twin explains. The optimistic side of you and the pessimistic side of you fight it out.
You know what I’m talking about, the side that encourages and pumps you up, the side that allows you to move on so you can succeed. The side that knows you must stay in control and not waver from your commitment. The part of you helps stay in control. The side of you that desperately wants the positive the outcome and realizes that you must dismiss temptations. That part of you which provides you with the knowledge you must make some sacrifices if you desire to achieve your ideal weight. The side of that has convinced you that you must make some sacrifices if you are to change, if you are to achieve anything. Nothing comes without a price tag. Something we all should know.
Because losing weight and creating change is more about changing bad habits it is vital that you surround yourself with high energy-positive people. It is equally important you believe that you can achieve your weight loss goal or any goal, because if you don’t believe it. The simple truth is you won’t achieve it. Thus, I stress the importance of positive self-talk and true commitment.