It's not the collapse that defines you...it's how you handle it

Post binge
After writing about my major binge on Thursday, I was astoundingly not hungry on Friday. This surprised me because usually after a binge, I'm hungrier and find it just about impossible to get back on track.

Yesterday I didn't even think about eating until about 3pm. I only ate then because I knew I really shouldn't go all day without eating. I ate lightly and slept well last night. Very unusual.

The urge, the lapse and the collapse

Today's Weight Watcher meeting seemed to be tailor made for me. The topic was how to handle a collapse, and that our secret weapon is POSITIVE SELF TALK. It's all about giving ourselves the freedom to fail. Forgiving ourselves when we do and then moving on.

Our leader, Janis (Federal Way, WA and I love her!) gave an example of how it starts. Let's say you have a bag of Halloween candy bars to hand out to the trick or treaters...

1. You have an urge to eat the candy. What do you do? You can ignore it, or do something else and fight the urge or eat something healthy or you can give into it which leads to...

2. A lapse. A lapse is you have one candy bar. Okay, now that alone isn't so bad. Not perfect, but it's okay. It's just a little lapse.  But what if you eat the entire bag of candy bars, that is...

3. A Collapse. Now you've collapsed. Totally fallen off track. You feel horrible. Guilt. Shame. You hate yourself. You call yourself names. You think you're a bad, bad person. No willpower. Lazy. And if you're me, stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid!  That's always my ultimate insult to myself, that I'm stupid.

Now this is the interesting part. How do you handle that collapse? Does it throw you into a tizzy, a week or a month long binge, or even longer? Or do you just tell yourself, okay, I collapsed. Screwed up. It's okay. I'm a human being capable of making mistakes. Where do you go from here? You get back on track. Immediately. Right now, this very minute.

I feel like this is exactly what I did. I've heard this and read this before. It's not exactly new information, but for some reason it worked this time. I immediately got back on track.

The toilet water trick

This is kind of gross, but I think this could work. Janis said if she's at someones house and they have junk to eat, such as fried chicken or fudge, she considers it the same as drinking toilet water. She said at home she wouldn't drink out of the toilet, why would she eat crap when she's at someones house. You've got to love Janis.

Now for the kind of bad news, the weigh-in

I'm not beating myself up about my weighin today. It's not great, but it could have been a lot worse.

My weight at my last meeting (7 weeks ago):

9/11/10  --  174.8

My weight today:

10/30/10 -- 178.2

Gained: +3.4 (in 7 weeks)

Total Loss since 2/12/2008:

61.0 Pounds

I'm not thrilled about this gain, but I'm also not bitterly disappointed in myself. Considering I haven't been tracking my food, and I tried the Geneen Roth plan of eat what I think my body wants and when I'm hungry, it's sort of a miracle I didn't gain a lot more weight.

I do have a new idea. It's called following the Weight Watcher plan. I've been off of it for so long that it almost feels like something new.

I have exactly 15 weeks until my three-year Weight Watcher anniversary on February 12, 2011. If you had told me three years ago that I still wouldn't be at goal by now, I would have laughed at you. I was so very determined back then. Somehow, I fell off track, lost sight of the prize, and have been playing around for far too long.

There's nothing like a good Weight Watcher meeting to set me on fire again...and I'm on fire!