In It For The Long Haul

Yesterday my husband and I went grocery shopping. I swear, sometimes you have to prepare yourself for seeing all the amazingly “yummy but not good for you” food that is out there! On our stroll down the frozen food aisle for a bag of frozen corn, I found myself looking at Salisbury steaks, beef pot pies, tater tots and a whole bunch of other frozen foods that taste good but are full of nothing but calories, fats and sugars. For one split second I thought to myself, “Ooh, I used to love to eat all of these kinds of food when I was young. I wish I could eat some of these things now just to remember what they taste like. Maybe…” and that’s where I stopped myself but I knew what the next words in my thoughts were going to be. I was going to finish with “when I get down to a normal weight I could start to eat some of this stuff.” And it wasn’t the sort of “maybe once a week as a special treat” kind of urge, instead it was a mental image of a huge plate piled high with tater tots smothered in ketchup, fried chicken nuggets and a steaming beef pot pie as a side dish. I actually was starting to think that I had conquered that sort of thinking. It’s been awhile now that I’ve found myself thinking about losing weight and changing my eating habits as a lifestyle and not as a short-term means to an end but obviously there’s a little part of me that still needs some work. The good thing though is that I caught and identified those sorts of thoughts before just going along with them. In all my previous weight loss adventures I openly thought to myself that this is a short term thing, that after I lose the weight I’ll be able to eat whatever I want. I can see the progress that I’ve made but I can see how much more work I have to go.