A Mental Block

Hmmm....sounds familiar doesn't it?? 2 weeks were GREAT! The program felt easy. I was losing weight (like crazy) and I felt good.

Then I hit week 3 and all hell has broken loose.

Last week I struggled through the week. It started with eating too much on Labor Day and using a lot of my weekly points. That messes with my mind because when I feel like I don't have the safety net of "extra" points, I want to eat more. Stupid, I know.

As I said in my last post. I used the scale last week as a positive tool. When I discovered that my weight was up at my doctor's appointment, I weighed myself each morning to keep things in check. I increased my fluid intake and decreased my food intake. I ended last week with eating about 5-10 points over my entire points for the week and maintained on the scale.

Now I'm in week 4 and the mental block continues. I am a complete emotional eater. I eat when I'm stressed, happy, sad, bored, etc. I am learning that I am not actually a binge eater by definition; but I will sometimes call what I ate a "binge". I have been quite emotional this week for some reason. I've been doing some soul-searching this week and I think that's part of the cause of the emotional eating. I was doing pretty well. Up until last night I had only used about 10 of my weekly points. I used all the activity points that I earned, but still had about 38 weekly points left. This was great. I felt like that was enough of a buffer to help deal with the weekend (allow me to eat a little more than during the week).

Then last night happened.

Ugh.

That's my kind of glass!
Better with white wine though!

One of my weaknesses is wine. I like my wine. The problem is that when I drink wine I overindulge every time. Last time I bought wine I tried buying the pack of 4 little bottles (about 6oz each) to help me only have 1 glass (or even 2). And, I was successful. I had 2 glasses of wine one night. Great! So, yesterday I stopped at the grocery store on my way home from work. I was hungry (not good #1). I thought to myself...I did really well with that wine the last time I bought it so I'm going to buy it again. So I did. And it starting innocently enough last night. 1 glass of wine. Ok - so if I have another glass it's only 3 more points - no biggie when I have 38 left. 4 glasses, probably about 20 triscuits and 1 Oreo cookie later I was pissed at myself!

I counted it. I'm not positive if it was 20 triscuits that I had because I wasn't counting them as they went into my mouth. I mean, binges aren't usually weighed and measured! But, I estimated how many I think I ate and counted it accordingly. Amazingly enough, I still have 8 weekly points left and will still be earning activity points this week. So, I just have to keep things in control from this point forward. I will do what I did last week. I will increase my fluid intake, decrease my food intake and get things under control.

Easy, right?

Sure. If I wasn't dealing with a continued mental block. I felt like crap this morning when I woke up. I had this great plan for today. It was going to be easy to just get back on track. But it isn't. It never is after I overindulge. I want to just keep doing it. Or, I'm so frustrated with myself that I want to just say screw it and I'll get back on track after weigh-in on Sunday.

But this time needs to be different.

My mind/behavior/habits aren't going to change overnight. I need to WORK on them to make a change. So, I'm working on it. It's a struggle and I have to have talks with myself constantly, but I am determined to win. I am determined to make this the last time I ever join WW. This will be the time that it sticks and I reach lifetime status with WW. It's going to take time. But, the more I stick to the program, the more time I will have. Right?

Today I have eaten more fruit. I drank more fluids. I ran on the treadmill (without walk breaks..we'll discuss that in another post). And I finished my day at 33 points.

A good day. Tomorrow will be an even better one! Each good day will decrease the mental battles until this eventually becomes second nature. And this time it WILL become second nature. There will always be struggles....but they will become fewer and easier to handle.