What to do with a Whacked Out Week!

What to do with a Whacked Out Week! 

What do you do when you have a whacked out week?!  A conference, day light savings time, a trip, your birthday, getting sick.  That was my week, last week! Whacked out!  So what do you do with a whacked out week?  You’ve got to plan ahead of time for all these occasions ‘cause the habit ponies you think are safely put out to pasture, are going to eagerly run to the gate of their corral kicking up their heels, snorting, bucking and pawing at the gate to get out and stampede!  It is easy to fall back into old thinking habits when something gets you off your game.  You just want to saddle up one of those babies and ride off into the sunset. 

Plan, plan, plan.  This is the answer.  Every overweight person, unable to lose weight in the past, knows that an optimum health plan can be completely derailed (sometimes for good!), when unplanned surprises and munching opportunities appear on the horizon.  Just remember (and really plant this in your head), it isn’t about the food-  it’s about the thought habit. It’s about how you use food to be your hero.  It’s habitual thinking about food.  Now, here are the plans I created and recalibrated to take on my very own whacked out week. 

1) A conference

Our university hosted a 3-day advisors conference which I attended.  My first decision concerning how to eat and continue with my optimum health plan, was to ignore the foods, go for the salad, bring my own snacks and hang on for dear life.  After I calmed down and came to, I realized that sort of plan was all about the food, not about my thinking habit.  I would essentially be making myself a white-knuckler (skinny folks who count every calorie and are obsessed with food just as much as we obese people are. The difference being, they don’t eat it-  in fact, they deny themselves.) Not wanting to trade in obesity for white-knuckling, since it isn’t a trade at all; they’re the same thing, I thought it over rationally and went with a better plan.  The plan to enjoy the delicious food I was served.  After all, food can be yummy-  right?  I planned to enjoy food for the taste and to feed me, not my food habit.  I honed in on the habit I knew could turn into a bucking pony: eating food to make a good time fabulous.  I knew that’s what I had to watch out for, the “fabulousness of celebratory eating” binge, not the food.  Understand that I am aware of the nutrition value in the foods I eat, that’s why I chose to go with 80% whole foods when I started this plan, so I keep that in mind (no obsessions, though! Wow, there are so many ways to obsess about food!) when eating.  Here’s how it all turned out:  I loved every morsel I ate-  the salads were crisp, cold and fresh-  the best!  I lingered over a buttery wheat roll that just melted in my mouth. At lunch, I was given a piece of chocolate cheesecake that looked good, but it didn’t look like cheesecake that would make my very soul sing with angels, so I passed it by. At dinner, I slowly and deliberately took my soul to meet that heavenly choir with a piece of Dutch oven cobbler and Dutch oven raspberry brownie matched with ice cold gourmet vanilla ice cream- yes, baby!  One time I had to muzzle my pony-  he wanted more than one chocolate chip cookie at snack time.  He kept bucking and braying, “Have more, have more, you’re at a conference-  this is a mini-vacation!  Haaaaaaaaavvvvvveeeee MOOOORRRREEEE!”   I had to firmly take him by the ear to the back of the room and explain to him three things: first, the chocolate chip cookie was not that good and I only eat food that is delicious and food that I love. Only the crown jewels are good enough for my plate!  Second, the conference is really fun; food cannot make an event more fun, that’s a cultural belief.  Third, I can have a delicious chocolate chip cookie any time I want to go track one down, so no need to invest my taste buds in the moderately tasty ones.  Well, he rubbed his sweet little ear and went back to the corral.  Yup, some of the food at the conference was delicious!  And I enjoyed every morsel.  It’s our thinking we have to tame; not food. 

 2) A trip and a birthday

I celebrated my birthday while on a stupendous trip to my sister’s house.  As a loving sister will, she had several of my favorite whole foods on hand-  like boiled eggs and fruit ( just love those eggs with sea salt and ground pepper, yum!  How do you like your eggs?)  We chose a local Mexican restaurant for my birthday dinner.  I had a steaming, mouth-watering chili relleno and a shredded beef enchilada.  The restaurant is known far and wide for its delicious fare so I knew in advance I was getting crown jewels.  I skipped the rice, it looked pretty run-of-the mill, but the chips and salsa were of the highest quality, so I partook.  And, no regrets, why regret eating and enjoying the food you love?  I happily admit-  I really do enjoy the many flavors, textures, spices and nuances of food now, so I tend to eat very slowly, enjoying the food, tasting it, savoring every morsel- unlike the old days when my mind told me to shovel it in and I obeyed.  My old thinking was, if some is good then more is better!  Sadly, I missed the opportunity to savor the marvelous flavors.  I get more delight out of smaller portions now than I ever got out of the larger portions I ate in the past.  This because now I actually taste the food before it goes down, instead of catching brief moments of goodness while loaded spoonfuls of food would whiz over my tongue on the way to my stomach like a kid on a water slide!  Fascinating to think that stomach-stretching mounds of untasted food were so wasted.  It’s all about the thinking-  more helpings don’t make food more fabulous.  Savoring makes food more fabulous (and tastier!).   In fact, my brother-in-law made pancakes for breakfast one morning and curiosity got the best of me-  does a homemade pancake taste good without syrup?  Have I been missing the taste of the pancake by using it as a vehicle to carry syrup?  I tried one without butter and syrup and by cranky it was delicious!  I would’ve never known had I not tried it (our culture says pancakes have to have butter and syrup-  get out of the box would ya-  try new things!) It was pure delight with a side of bacon! 

3) Daylight savings time and being sick

Insert a sigh right here and right now.  Both of these changes to the average week make a person feel tired and run down.  So pamper, pamper, pamper.  No need to adjust food to compensate.  Food won’t give you back one hour more of sleep; food won’t stroke your head or give you a foot massage when you’re sick.  Point is-  it’s all about those thought processes we use to make food our rescue buddies.  Getting used to daylight savings time will take the body a few days.  All the sugar carbs and caffeine in the world won’t change that.  Pampering yourself while sick may mean taking a languishing bath ( I like to shower until the hot water turns cold), whining a bit to a best friend, or indulging in hours of movies, video games or books.  Raw cookie dough from the grocery store won’t mystically turn into the healing waters of Lourdes. 

 

So, how does one plan for a whacked out week?  Don’t make a plan-  at least not a new plan; stay with the action plan you created for weight-loss before you came across the whacked out week- have an understanding of your own thinking and how much power you give it.  Don’t make it about the food-  understand the way you think about the food (and why).  The only preparation you need is to know what you’ll tell your bucking pony if he goes postal!

 

Post Script:  I lost 2 lbs during my Whacked Out Week.  Sorry, little pony.