This past week was rather difficult for me. After a long summer relaxing, working out, eating properly, and working on losing weight, I returned to work as a teacher. Last week, with all of the stress surrounding returning to work, I had a setback.
Last Wednesday, I had a very stressful day. I had to stay late for some meetings and working on my classroom to prep for classes that started this week. During one of the meetings mini Toblerone chocolate bars were placed on our tables for us to have as a treat in the later afternoon. Let me preface this next part by saying that I have been VERY good over the past two months of being on a diet and have had little to no sweets. I reached into the center of the table and grabbed not one, but two of them. I chose both a milk chocolate and a white chocolate one. I proceeded to eat both of them in quick succession not even really tasting them. I was like a hungry animal that had found its prey.
I admit, I am a chocoholic and because of this I was truly unable to stop myself with just the two small Toblerone bars. On my way home from work I had to stop by the grocery store to pick up a few items for dinner. As I walked down the aisles I made the mistake of turning down the cookie aisle. I headed right for my favorite kind, Pepperidge Farm’s Milano cookies. I looked at the bag for a moment and thought to myself, “is this really worth it?” Then before I could walk away and talk myself out of it, I was at the checkout stand with the bag of cookies in my cart. I quickly walked to my car and once situated, proceeded to open the bag of cookies before I even left the parking lot. During the short two minute ride home I managed to gulf down the first five of fifteen cookies. I got home, put away the groceries, walked the dog and then sat down on the couch with the rest of the cookies.
At this point, I was unstoppable. I was home alone and I needed to finish the bag of cookies and get rid of the “evidence” before my husband got home from work. I didn’t want him finding out my dirty little secret. I not only ravaged the entire bag of cookies, but I did so in record time. By not having many sweets over the past couple of months, I felt like I was starved for them.
After the fact, I had a couple of realizations. First of all, chocolate is a trigger food for me. If I have it once, I have to have it again and soon. Once I have consumed a large quantity of it, I am then satisfied for a while. Secondly, my old habit of trying to hide my food intake, especially bad food, from my husband has not really gone away; it just appears to be mainly kept under control. Next, I learned that one mistake will not completely ruin your diet unless you keep repeating that mistake. Finally, I learned that I need to find a way to better handle myself in situations like this one.
The good news, even though I ate something bad, I still counted it in my points for the week and got right back on track. I was unable to go completely wild on my one free meal for the week because the cookies cost me 25 points and I am only allotted 46 per day. I ate almost 60 points that day.
Now, almost a week later, I still think about those cookies and have realized that it wasn’t really worth it, especially since I only lost half a pound this week rather than the one to two pounds that I have normally been losing each week. So, I paid for it a little bit on the scale. This will not happen again.
I need to return to staring at the chocolate rather than just eating it. For the past month a jar of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups have been sitting on my entertainment center. They are my husband’s treat that he eats every so often, but he can afford to eat this stuff. I have never opened the jar or even thought about opening it until I went to move it to take the picture for my blog post this week. At least gazing at the jar longingly is much better than eating the entire jar.
My Weight Watchers leader provided me with the quote for this week and I find it very appropriate for the topic of my article. “When you buy in bulk, you eat in bulk, and you get bulkier.”
