It doesn't matter ...

Deborah says:
A friend of mine went to a wedding recently. She’s also working on stopping lying and is doing a really good job and creating some really great new lifestyle behaviours for herself. She was invited to stand up for a friend of hers. Now we all know that weddings have nothing to do with getting married, but are really just a three or four day excuse for eating bad hotel food, right?

So this friend planned out her day carefully, picked what she thought was the healthiest option possible off the menu choices for the wedding banquet and scoured the hotel website menu, trying to figure out how many calories this feast was going to cost her.
First came the rehearsal dinner. That’s what it was called. Unfortunately, the dinner was a buffet of cheeses, crackers, potato chips and other snacks she was trying to divorce herself from. She was strong, made the choice to just have some cheese, even though she was starving, and eventually went home and had dinner! And that was even despite that fact that someone’s mother came up to her and said, “Eat, it’s a special occasion! You know calories don’t count on special occasions.”
The day of the wedding, she was up early, had a healthy breakfast, and packed some snacks. It was scheduled to be a long morning getting ready and doing all that girlfriend stuff and she wanted to be prepared. They survived the day, survived the ceremony and finally got to the banquet. My friend was strong. All through the banquet, she was figuring out portion sizes and using an ap on her phone to count calories and keep track (without being noticed, of course, otherwise that would be rude). Another person’s mother asked her what she was doing, and my friend explained she was watching her weight and it was important for her to journal what she was eating. Again, this well meaning mother said, “Just take the day off from counting. What will it hurt, one day?”

I tell you, it hurts a lot. People just don’t understand how hard it is to lay down new behavioral patterns and how easy (and inviting) it is to go back to the old ones! This is what my friend needed to do that day and she did it and I say Bravo, Lucie. I read a blog by a physician that suggested everyone should go on a diet for a month – a restrictive, calorie reduced, give up your favourite things diet, and see how hard the behaviours actually are. The time you have a bad day, are you going to crave your comfort food and then what happens when you realize you can’t have it? Do you have another coping mechanism in place?

The other day I was scheduled to go out with one of my friends for dinner and a movie. She called me early in the day and asked where I wanted to go for dinner. I said it didn’t matter. And do you know what she said? She said, “I wanted us to choose early so you would have time to go online and decide what you wanted to eat.” I love my friend Ramona.

As I matter of fact, I love anyone who doesn’t question my behaviour, suggest I take a day off or cheat. And after four years of trying to explain what I need to do to maintain this lifestyle, my friends have all become huge enablers of my GOOD behaviours. We book ahead so I can figure out my gym/exercise for the day, we pre-pick restaurants so I can check the menus, and we try and do as many active things as we do sedentary. Because it really does matter!

Arlene says:
The folk that encourage you to take the day off are too much like the voice in my head that says the same thing. I have to hear that voice, but I don’t have to follow its advice. I really liked Yoni Freedhoff’s blog in January that described his struggle to exercise one day and that he had to really push through to go, that he didn’t feel fabulous once he had (sometimes you don’t), but that if he let himself skip it for no good reason it would get easier and easier to skip it. We are amazing rationalizers, “not today it’s a wedding/Christmas/birthday”, there is no day off from a healthy life. My cardiac risk isn’t taking a day off, my brain patterns aren’t taking a day off. Rationalizations are lies you tell yourself and we have to catch them to stop them.