February

Well, here it is the beginning of February. I am pleased that I am "three stone-and-some" lighter than I was last year at this time, but had still hoped that it would be a greater loss, not that I am complaining, because a loss, is a loss, is a loss.

This past week has been somewhat of a struggle. I have been listening to my cd's every morning and also the one on my ipod every day, but I have not been feeling well. I have had a terrible rotten cold and also I am very tired as I have not been sleeping well because of that, plus I have had a lot of extra hours to put in at work.

The big house that I work in has been filled with Germans as well as their guest house and so that means there is a lot of really good chocolate around, Swiss chocolate no less. I am only human and I have imbibed . . . not like I would have done at one time, because after all, there is no bad food is there . . . only bad habits, and so I am a bit annoyed at myself that I have wasted some of my hunger on empty calories instead of good food which would have done me a lot better. To be perfectly honest it doesn't even taste all that good to me anymore . . . and I had it more out of habit than anything else. That little part of my brain that told me . . . "Oh boy, this is Swiss chocolate, right from Switzerland no less. You better eat some now as you never know when you will have it again."

Result . . . no real loss this week again. But I have only myself to blame. I have been so busy and so ill that I haven't been writing things down and I have been picking. I haven't really felt like eating a meal, and to be honest some days with the hours I have been working, there hasn't been time to have a meal. Picking is what got me where I was when I started all of this. You know . . . unconscious eating . . . eating without purpose or thought.

I had a good long think about it last night when I was laying in bed trying to fall asleep while my nose ran and my eyes streamed with this lousy cold. I thought about how important it is for me to look my very best when I go to visit my family in Canada in July. I thought about how my dad has diabetes and my mother has a heart condition and how I am not getting any younger and how I need to be more careful.

Today the sun shone for a short time, and as mucky as it was I took the dog over across the orchards for a good long walk. It was a hard slog as the ground is really wet, but it felt good and cleared a few of the cobwebs from my head.

Right now I have a tasty bean and pasta soup simmering on the hob. It smells good and to be perfectly honest . . . it will probably taste ten times better than that Swiss Chocolate ever did.

I am really proud of myself for having done so well, and I am so grateful to Margaret and the program. I am a much different person this February than I was last February. I have way more confidence in myself and I think well of myself. I am a much smaller person size wise and I have faith in myself that I can continue to do this.

Remember . . . it doesn't matter that much what you eat in a day. You may slip up one day and have something that's not really all that good for you, but . . . it's not the end of the world . . . what really matters is what you eat in a week. It's ok to have a treat once in a while, as long as it's only once in a while. A steady diet of treats and indulgences is what makes people fat. Period. The raw truth, but the truth.

That's one thing I like most about this program. It helps to decriminalize food. Somehow when something is not forbidden any more, it no longer has the enticement power that it used to have. Hey that means I have the power now, not the food.

That's a very good thing!