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Thanks everyone for the flattering comments to my I Feel Pretty post yesterday. They were unexpected but appreciated.
At the end of that same post I included this photo.
I talked about how I had passed these goodies on the way to my office and how I could see them from my desk. I wrote:
"I was not tempted to stop. I do not want it. I'm not interested. This is what success is to me."
One of my readers sent me an e-mail yesterday in response to my comments about the treats. She said she could imagine walking by and not wanting to eat them because of how hard I've worked, but that she would have continued to think about them and feel deprived. Then she asked for my advice.
So I'd like to share why I wasn't interested in those foods pictured above. It is hard to explain, but I will do my best.
Work is my safe place. This is not the most important reason, but it was the first one that came to mind. Most everyone at work knows that I eat healthy now. I set expectations for myself to prove it. When we get together as a staff it almost always includes food. I have set the standard that I don't eat the junk. No donuts, no bacon, no cookies, no coffee cake. I eat yogurt or fresh fruit. I eat salad or one slice of pizza. If one of my coworkers were to have seen me eating one of those cookies yesterday I would have felt disappointed in myself and like I had let them down. So work is my safe place because I've already established it's a no-crappy-eating-zone and I'm a rule follower so this works for me.
I don't sneak food anymore. Now if I would have eaten something from that photo, what I would have done was walked out in the hall, made sure no one was around, snuck a cookie and put it in my desk drawer. Then, when no one was in the hallway, I would open the drawer and sneak bites. Yes, I'm talking from experience. Something I haven't addressed on my blog fully but I want to soon is my relationship with sweets and how I would sneak them. I had a twisted view of what sweets were before my journey. I believed they should be totally off limit for me. I believed they were what made me fat. I wanted them all the time, so that meant I needed to hide that I was eating them so no one would know. One of the first things I learned on WW was that no food was off limit, followed closely by the fact that that doesn't mean I should use my 30 points a day only on ice cream. So there was the relief in knowing I wasn't a bad person for eating ice cream, it was just about controlling how much I ate. So now I'm in control. I still eat those McAlister cookies, but now I work it into my plan. I eat it when I have the extra points available to me.
If I wasn't planning on eating it, I don't eat it. The instinctive reason I didn't grab a brownie yesterday was because I wasn't planning to. It would have messed up my whole day. Wednesday is one of my two non-workout days and I usually save my points up for a nice, healthy dinner with the family. If I had indulged in those treats I wouldn't have been able to eat much at Moe's for dinner and then I would have been obsessing over being hungry and deprived instead of enjoying my time with my family. (My dinner at Moe's was an Art Vandela Streaker w/o cheese or sour cream - 5 pts and a few chips 4.5 pts.). Tracking works for me. When I track I'm aware of what I'm putting in my body. I know how much exercise I need to get in and that at the end of the week I'll have a loss. A brownie is not worth messing all that work up.
I knew if I ate the potato salad or deserts I would have physically felt bad. When I first started my journey, this was a surprising side-effect. Within the first couple of weeks of being on Weight Watchers I saved up my weekly points to get a small Blizzard. Oh, how I loved Blizzards. It tasted so good and I was so happy to not feel any guilt while eating it. The problem was after I finished my stomach hurt. I notice this more often now that I'm eating better foods and not processed junk. It hurts to eat bad. My stomach is not used to it. Yes, I emotionally would have felt bad, but I think the physical pain would have been worse. It's not worth it.
So those are the four reasons that came to mind.
What are your reasons for not being tempted by your "bad" foods?
P.S. Here's one of my Goodwill outfits I got this week. I've gotten several compliments on the top today. Shirt and pants cost $6. Love it!
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