The chief cause of failure and unhappiness is trading what you want most for what you want now. – Zig ZiglarI was gone all yesterday afternoon. I had lunch before I left the house, and was famished when I walked in the door at about 5 p.m. And even though dinner was planned and wouldn't take long to fix, all I wanted to eat was popcorn.
That probably sounds weird, especially considering it was about 90 degrees at 5 o'clock here in the Middle of Nowhere. I used to have popcorn for dinner every Tuesday; that was my weekly treat. I saved the calories for it and really enjoyed it, popped in oil and drizzled with butter. No plain old air-popped "crunchy air" for me.
But as spring turned into summer, popcorn kind of lost its appeal.
Until yesterday.
I'm sure it won't hurt me in the long run, but it did put me over my target calorie limit by almost 200. It was good. And it was what I wanted now.
Anyway, back to the quote. What I want most is to meet my weight-loss goal by January 1, 2007. And while what I wanted at 5 p.m. yesterday afternoon probably wasn't the worst choice, it also won't help me get what I want most.
Now I ate popcorn once a week for the first three or four months of the year, and continued to lose steadily. The difference is that I was kind of blindsided yesterday by How Much I Wanted To Eat Popcorn. So there was some emotion involved that was never there when I was enjoying my Tuesday treat. Or, if it was there, I wasn't aware of it.
I can't believe how I'm overanalyzing a bowl of popcorn. What I need to do is fuhgeddaboudit already, have a liter [or 10] of water and get on with my day!
Beth has checked in and it's so good to see an update from her, and PastaQueen is designing Missing Blogger flyers and has a great post about how weight-loss bloggers need to keep posting through thin and thick.
I wouldn't dream of leaving my house for a week without asking my neighbor to keep an eye on things, but several bloggers who are part of my daily morning routine have gone missing without a peep. Sometimes they come back with tales of an exotic vacation. Sometimes you just get a "Page Not Found" error when you click that link day after day.
And now, since it really is about 2:30 a.m. here in the Middle of Nowhere, and I haven't been able to sleep since midnight, and I'm having trouble tying all this together into one nice, neat, coherent, profound and meaningful message, I'm going to go tuck myself back into bed.
See you in the morning.
4 comments:
You helped me out after the fried calamari incident. I keep thinking about it, but in a good way. I think, here it is, more than a week later, the fact that I over ate is out of my system, but not out of my head. The fact that these "incidences" are fewer and far between us not lost on me. It still pays to figure them out though.
Debbi: You're on to something ... but I do think that when we visualize "what we want most" that it has to be something other than a simple number on a weight scale. So often I've seen people get incredibly frustrated because they "only" lost xyz amount of weight and not exactly the number they had hoped for.
As I think about it ... in my case, what I want most is to be comfortable and happy at a healthy, low weight.
Sometimes that means eating a lot of popcorn. Sometimes not.
Keep up the good work. You rock!
-J
I can't believe you were posting at 2:39 A.M. this morning. I couldn't sleep either. How many times have we done that now, been up at the same time half way across the country from each other? I did beat you back to bed though. It started raining about 2 A.M. and I was in bed going to sleep to the sound by 2:10.
Maybe you need to go back to your Tuesday night popcorn for supper and the big urge for it wouldn't happen. I know that popcorn is one food I will never give up, hopefully. I do love it so and there are worse foods.
Fiber, dahlink, fiber. That alone will help your diet more than the oil will hurt it. Trust me.
Yes, I really am awake at 3 am. Sigh.
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