The Diet Battleground -- The Weekend

This weekend marked one week of counting calories. Yesterday, even though I didn't blog, I did weigh. It thrilled me to see I was back down to 133.6. You'd think that would give me the push I needed to count calories and make healthy choices, but to my surprise, I battled the "I want to eat what I want. It's the weekend. Time to relax!" mindset.

On Sundays, I eat a meal with two other families and we each bring a dish to share. I made a couscous dish that didn't turn out. Too much vinegar and though it was only 100 calories a cup...Yuck! Not an option. That left me with chicken wings, salad, chips and salsa, fresh pineapple and cookies.

The savory, spicy aroma of chicken wings filled the house. My stomach growled and I looked up chicken wings on the internet. I could have 11...then I thought to read the label on the package in the trash. Two of THESE chicken wings were 160 calories. 160 calories! For two? I decided not to eat them. Not that I couldn't, but I chose not to. I didn't want to "spend" that many calories on so little food.

Instead, I made a salad and topped it with a serving of chips and salsa and still had plenty of calories to spend. And what did I do with them? More chips and salsa and a couple of cookies. And finally I did have three small pieces of fresh pineapple. I could have made better choices, and could have made worse choices. I'm not going to beat myself up over it; I did stay within my calories.

The point I want to make is that the real battle for me was in the mind. The weekend is "time off" and in my brain thoughts circulated that it was time to be off from dieting. I wanted to relax. Ahhh, now there it is. In my mind, eating what I want equals relaxing. A falsehood...a tradition...cuture...a habit. Whatever you want to call it, it's the real diet battleground. Changing your thinking is the first step in changing your eating habits.

Weight Today: 133.4