I’ve been unmotivated.  I stopped writing.  I stopped exercising as much as I should.  I was eating too much sugar.

I’ve been traveling a bit lately, and it’s always hard to stay on track when I’m out of my environment.  For one of my trips, I had an expense account, so heck, why not get an appetizer?  That chocolate caramel pyramid?   Yes “free” food isn’t free, but it was tasty.

But I’ve gained 10 lbs.  I’m exploring how I feel about that.  Is it the number on the scale I care about?  Not really; I didn’t much care about that when I weighed (literally) 100 lbs more.  Do I care about what other people think?  No, they haven’t noticed, or if they do they haven’t told me, which is fine.  Most of the time, when I’m worried about what other people think I realize I’m really projecting on to them my own feelings.

Given I don’t care about the scale or what other people think, why start working on weight and health again?  I’d say this is the upper limit of what I personally feel comfortable carrying on my body.  It’s harder to get my legs up kickboxing, and the fat moves in ways that are disconcerting when I’m moving.

If I gain much more weight, I’d have to buy new clothes, and I’m really tired of shopping for clothes (I know that’s hard to believe!).  When you’ve had to replace every single scrap of clothes in your wardrobe several times, it just gets old.

But most of all, I’m not enjoying being controlled by my cravings.  I’m sick of always being on the lookout for the next treat.  What a boring life, if that’s all I have to look forward to!  I’m tired of being insatiable.  Food just can’t do what I’m trying to make it do, whatever that is.

I’ve realized that the exercise helps me regulate my mood so I don’t crave sugar and carbs so much.  I’m committing to at least 30 minutes of something every day.  What are you committing to?

Things I’m wondering about…

Why is a raw sweet potato 4 WW Points, but a cooked one 3 points?  Would anyone eat a raw sweet potato?

Not my feet, not my scale, not my weight

Whaddya know!  Tracking works.  You know that, and I knew that.  I know it again, too.  I lost 2 lbs this week, for a total of 113 lost.

I know that tracking works, so why did I stop?  Because it was all too much.  When I was originally tracking, I was doing flore- eating core foods but tracking points.  I wouldn’t eat my weekly points or my activity points.  Not surprisingly, it was very effective, but also hard to maintain.

When I got down to 22 daily points, I panicked.  This isn’t the way I wanted to live my life!  So I stopped tracking.  For the most part, my diet has changed enough so that worked well.  But after the Halloween debacle, it was time to get serious again.  Not too serious, though–I’m going over my daily allotment of points by a few each day.  And that is ok!

I’m hoping Thanksgiving won’t be very challenging this year, even though I’m not doing the cooking.  We are traveling to LA, and my sister and mother in law are both doing Weight Watchers.  We’ll have pumpkin pie for the kids, but we’re going to try Hungry Girl’s Pumpkin Smash.

Speaking of pumpkin, I now do a variation on the Hungry Girl pumpkin pudding, but instead of using premade pudding I use an immersion blender and blend in a can of pumpkin into 2 cups of milk, vanilla or butterscotch pudding mix, and some pumpkin pie spice.  Add a little lite Cool Whip, and you’ve got a fantastic dessert.  No, it’s not pumpkin pie, but it’s great for every day.

But oh no! Apparently, we are looking at a pumpkin shortage this year! Ohhhhhhhhh noooooooo!  Should I go and buy a crate of pumpkin now?  Screw the Eggo waffle shortage people; this is serious.  (Serious=it affects me.)

At least half of the Hungry Girl recipes feature pumpkin; why, I’m eying a chocolate and peanut butter fudge recipe on her site right now that uses a can!

I AM going to clear out the local Lucky.  If you can’t find pumpkin to make your pie, you can blame me and my pumpkin hoarding.

So what does my husband say?

“Sounds like you should start tracking again. And set a goal.”

Sputtering. Bu-bu-but.

Leave it to a guy to cut through the crap.  I’m starting tacking again.  As for a goal?  Hmmm…

I realized that the biggest difference between free candy and candy at the store is that free candy, is, well, free.  I don’t have to actually make a choice and pay for it.  Even when the amount transacted is trivial, it’s that transaction that makes it easier for me to resist.

So, this week, I set up a deal with my husband: all that free candy isn’t free.  If either of us eats a candy bar, it’s ok, but we owe the other a dollar.  Whatever the “street value” of the food, that’s what we owe.

A wonderful thing happened: we were both able to resist the free food now, since not only was it not free but you had to ‘fess up about it, too.

And my husband lost 4.2 lbs this week!  That’s huge at any time, but especially so when you’ve been doing this for a while.  He’s down almost 80 lbs altogether.

My weigh-in is tomorrow.  I doubt I’ll match his success, but I feel I’ve been successful just by putting this one to rest in my own mind.

How about you?  How do you fight free food?

Do you really care what other people think about you?  To some degree, we all do.  But to some extent, obsessing about what other people think distracts us from the more important issue, which is what do I think?  What matters to me?  And then doing or changing something because it matters to me, not to some “other people.”

I find most of the time those “other people,” those people who I imagine are looking at me or commenting on me, are really the sh*tty committee that lives in my head.  You know them, they probably are in your head, too.  They are the ones who say that you look crappy in that shirt, and your pants are too tight, and why do you always do that, and why did you SAY that, and blah blah blah.

Sometimes, though, the sh*tty committee needs reinforcement.  So they start enlisting poor unsuspecting Other People to back them up, to agree that to any objective (of course!) Other Person, who you are or what you are doing is Bad.

So.  I listen to the little voice.  Then I decide whether or not I do, in fact, care.  If I should care.  If it’s something I can do something about.  Or want to do something about.

If I don’t care, or if I do but not enough to do something about it, then it goes in the Don’t Care category.  When that little voice peeps up again, I tell it again (gently, because it does mean well) that I don’t care, and it’s time to let it go.

So what won’t you care about today?

I’m trying the usual things… Motrin.  Excedrin.  Napping.  A warm bath.  And I’m trying the not-so-usual things.  Two Weight Watchers bagels.  Two large bowls of beans and rice.  A big bowl of Fiber One. Not a very exciting binge, eh?  Nothing like the raw cookie dough of days past.

The good thing about getting rid of the junk around the house is that I’m pretty limited in how I can self-medicate with food.  Nonetheless, now on top of feeling sick I also get to kick myself for expecting food to make me feel better.

Though it’s not that unreasonable a hope?  If I don’t eat, I get headaches and become… unpleasant.  Just ask my family.  Wait, don’t ask my family.

Just goes to show that my new healthy habits aren’t as habitual as I’d like.  How do you stay on course when life takes a turn?