Well, it finally happened. I let my guard down for just a short while and I ate something that I probably shouldn’t have. Last night as I was getting my food ready for today at work, I planned for a really healthy day. Oatmeal for breakfast, two snacks – one cut-up watermelon, the other yogurt with grape nuts, Homemade Lemon Lentil Soup with Kale accompanied by some leftover rice (to help with the effects of the lentils and kale). There was a plan. When I got up this morning, I realized that I had a lunch engagement on my schedule so I left the lunch items at home in the refrigerator.
My day was going along fine. Some challenges along the way, but nothing too out of the ordinary until about 11:00 AM. You see, at 11:00 AM, my colleague and I were on a conference call with the head of a company whose services we had opted to terminate. It was uncomfortable. It felt awkward. I felt guilty that I had made another person feel bad. My guard was down. I was then notified that the lunch was cancelled, so I started to prepare myself for going out to get something to eat. It was then that I remembered the sign from the deli in our building, advertising the special of the day – Lasagna with Meat Sauce and Garlic Bread. Ordinarily this would not even appeal to me as I am a sort of pasta snob, being raised Italian, but today I thought, “Why don’t I just go get a piece of the Lasagna downstairs?” I then mentally justified that I could save ½ of it for tomorrow and I wouldn’t eat the garlic bread. Do I really need to tell you what happened? . . . You guessed it – I bought the Lasagna with the Meat Sauce and the Garlic Bread and a Caffeine Free Diet Coke, of course, brought it to my office, closed the door, and ate all of it. It’s not that it was particularly delicious, it was just there.
I let my guard down and old habits prevailed. At the end of the meal I had eaten too much of food that, frankly, wasn’t that great and I didn’t know why. That mindless momentary satisfaction to feed my wounded soul is going to cost me some time. It means that it will take me more time to fight this food addiction battle. The bright part of all of this is that I have two take-aways from this experience. The first is that I have discovered another closet that I have been hiding in that I was not even aware I had – my office. So I now need to create another line in the concrete that along with avoiding drive-thrus, I will never eat my lunch behind a closed door. While I used to close the door at lunchtime to get away from work related interruptions on my lunch hour, I have changed it to hide the food that I don’t want others to see me eat. Secondly, it reminds me that I am still very vulnerable and fragile. I must continue to pursue my mission with care and caution.
I am very much enjoying reading your blog! I know you can do it! I can personally relate to some of the things you are dealing with. I was diagnosed with diabetes in November of 2008 and have had to completely change my way of eating. We all hit roadblocks every now and fall off the wagon as long as we get back on and keep trying we can perservere!!
ReplyDelete