About Me

I am a 33 year old mum of two who has spent her entire teenage and adult life struggling with her weight. I am not going to struggle with it anymore. I am in charge!

Wednesday 13 April 2011

Free ice-cream versus Me

Our night out last night coincided with Ben and Jerry's free cone day. The cinema we went to has one of their stands. I love a good freebie and am a big ice-cream fan. Combine the two and well...... But I didn't have any. For me that is worth repeating, I didn't have ANY! I looked at the times and saw that the give-away period coincided with when we were going to see a film. I thought about all the flavours I really like. And then, with no battle in my head at all, decided that as I had been so careful to plan round our meal out it would be silly to undo all that by eating ice-cream just because it was free.

This was huge for me. Not only the fact that I by-passed the free ice-cream but the fact that there was actually rational thought behind it. And rational thought that didn't involve me having to force myself into not eating something. It's almost like someone has re-programmed my head.

When we got to the restaurant for dinner they were out of stuffed crust base. We had the garlic stuffed crust instead. I wasn't that taken on it so ended up eating a lot less than I would if the base we normally go for had been there. I also discovered that the cookie dough dessert now comes in single servings. It was always a share one when we went before. If we got the share one then I would always end up eating far more of it than my husband. He doesn't have as much of a sweet tooth as I do. OK so dinner wasn't as good as I could have chosen from their up-dated menu but it wasn't as bad as I had planned around either.

I have started today feeling really positive about being able to make a good choice when it came to the ice-cream. I also really feel that I have made some good progress with having a one off diversion from sticking to healthier choices and not going off track. A friend of mine was a nutritionist in a former life and she is a strong advocate of eat 'good' 80% of the time and eat whatever you would like the other 20%. In the past I have never got that. I always thought that it has to be either all 'good' or it goes to pot. I think I understand a bit better now. If I eat all 'good' then I feel deprived and it goes to pot any way. I can see myself being able to make that 80/20 thing work for me. At first I thought 'but if I do that it will take me longer to reach my goals'. Actually thinking about it though I think, long-term, the opposite is true. If I went for 100% of the time my deprived mind set would soon knock me so far off track I would fail and head straight back to the first step. The way I planned round the party at the weekend and going out last night feels right.

5 comments:

  1. INDEED a bigbig NSV.


    MizFit

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  2. I had to go and google NSV. :oD

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  3. YES! You are 'getting it' in an emotionally healthy way and this is HUGE. Was there a time when you were overly controlled by someone or something in life? I will also be curious as to how you deal with black and white type thinking. I do notice that naturally healthier people don't really do that.
    For me, I felt super controlled by my mother AND she was an all or nothing person- hence her yo-yo dieting. I was aware enough to see that her eating all or the whole thing of something was definitely not good, but I still got hung up in thinking I had to control everything with an iron fist. Moderation is now my creed.

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  4. I was in a 5 year relationship in my mid-teens which really wasn't that healthy. I wasn't overly controlled in it but I didn't want to be in it for about half of it yet couldn't see how to get out of it.

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  5. Yup, this kind of thing can definitely contribute to a pattern, even if we really don't want it to.

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