I am human, and the nature of human beings is that we are not perfect.  I am not perfect.

Every now and again over the past 13 years I seem to let it slip my mind that I am a weight loss surgery patient.  It’s usually during times of stress, be they family, financial, medical or whatever.  I then find myself eating cookies, chips, froyo, ice cream and other assorted processed junk foods.  I think I am getting comfort from them, perhaps in the moment only.  Next I find myself with headaches, feeling lazy, tired, and angry at the world.  (Which is my self loathing turned outward as well as inward).  I don’t like feeling this way, yet I repeat the behavior every now and again and along with all of these negative feelings I also find my jeans getting tight.  Uh, oh….right?

Here I thought I had changed my relationship with food.  I thought I understood both intellectually and emotionally that food was fuel for my body and the quality of what I put into my body would result in the quality of what my body would give back.  I have proven this to myself time and time again since having weight loss surgery in 2004.  So why do I repeat these self-sabotaging behaviors?

Perhaps it is because of the very nature of human beings….we are not perfect.  Perhaps I have not completely learned the lessons to be learned from these behaviors….  I am not sure, but I am still working on it.  I will always be working on it.

Folks who have never been plagued with the disease of obesity go down that slippery slope and then regain their footing and lose the few pounds they may have put on being mindless about their eating habits. 

The key is in the word MIND - when I am mindful of what I am doing I typically make the choices that support my health.  When I allow my daily life to control me, instead of me controlling my daily life is when I reach mindlessly for something to soothe the stress or continue to take my MIND off what is going on around me.

I am my own boss.  I control my choices.  I control my food, my fitness, my hydration, my health.  These things I can control.  I can also choose to acknowledge an emotion and push through it to the other side instead of feeding it Cheetos to make it go away.  This is what I have learned these past 13 years.  What if I focused on what I can control and just let the rest be what it is?  What might happen then? 

Do you think the junk food marathons might end sooner and begin with much less frequency?

That’s what I experience.  How about you?