Trust

My goal for this week, (because, yeah, I do kind of have goals even though I try to be mellow about them) is to not gain more than a pound. After a few days of eating with abandon, I seem to have swung back to a more moderate place yesterday, and I have been working out as much as ever. I'm going to my trainer's class this afternoon. My weight fluctuates from day to day, but I go by my Weight Watchers weigh ins on Monday evenings. Right now I'm at about the same place as last week, so if the next couple days go well, I might even lose. Every single time this happens -- I eat in a way that feels out of control for awhile and then I work my way back to a place that feels better -- I am relieved to have made it back and comforted that it hasn't really damaged my efforts to lose weight. I feel almost, almost but not quite able to trust it.

As I wrote on Thursday, I am trying to banish the voice that tells me eating a lot of crap is bad. And part of that is about the fact that it's not bad. Bacon has no ethical value attached to it. Eating bacon isn't like torturing puppies or cheating on taxes or even driving a car. Gaining weight isn't bad. Nor is being fat. I'm working on that. But I also recognize that I am trying to lose weight. I want to lose weight. It's not necessary, it's not the right thing to do, it's not me doing good. It's something I want. So the other piece of banishing The Voice is trusting that a little setback like a craving for pizza or two parties in two days at which I choose to eat delicious food, does not derail my efforts to lose weight. It doesn't put back the 65 pounds I've lost, it doesn't take away my remarkable biceps, and it doesn't mean I will be eating that way forever. And even though I've seen it happen time and time again, I apparently don't quite trust it yet because I am still feeling that relief when I make it to the other side.