"Maybe I'll have that last piece of pizza," I said to myself as I walked down the hallway toward the back door. As soon as I thought it, it was an irresistible urge.
I wasn't all that hungry. I'd had a decent lunch (my homemade veggie soup from a few weeks ago) and snacks throughout the day. I'd just had those other pieces. I couldn't even tell if I was full, and that's a lot of pizza to eat just because you want it and not because you need it.
Telling myself to leave that last piece on the baking tray, and staying away from it, was the hardest thing I've done in weeks.
At the moment, I opted instead for an 8-ounce glass of light cranberry-pomegranate juice, a half cup of dried cranberries, and a 16-ounce glass of water. (Don't be too proud of me yet; read on.) The last piece of pizza is currently sitting in the fridge waiting for me to tuck it into tomorrow's lunch.
I didn't earn this badge, but the alternative I chose wasn't much better.(Also, behold, the staying power of advertising slogans.)
I've come to realize more and more lately that I do use food as a reward and an excuse, more than I ever admitted to myself. And not just sweets, either. My budget is a little out of control lately, and part of it is because I buy food that I don't end up eating (the bananas I've thrown out, the half-empty containers of cottage cheese, half an eggplant, so much fruit). I stopped really planning my lunchtime meals about a month ago, and I started going out for lunch once or twice a week, sometimes more often. I have no idea how I lunched over the last month except by dint of trips to Subway. I fell back into my habit of buying sodas and gum at the gas station every morning instead of in bulk at the grocery. And I will eat any damn fool thing around the house or that I buy on a whim, whether it is good for me or not, because I'm bored, or it's available, and I allot it to the things I will eat. It's ok to indulge occasionally, but like this recent satire on The Onion points out, it's easy to make indulgence a habit.
A local friend who recently lost weight made the struggle to deny urges and redirect reward hit home when we were talking about our experiences. She said that in the past, she'd accomplish something, then reward herself with food that was bad for her, and she caught herself thinking that she deserved to eat. "No, I don't deserve food as a reward. I deserve a manicure or a vacation. Food is food." As much as I've heard that before, it really stuck with me and started me thinking about how powerful all the urges I have in my life can be - the urge to have that piece of pizza, to do a round of the house when I'm awakened at 4am, to bite or pick at my cuticles.
I'm still trying to understand it and trying to figure out a strategy for moderation, control, reprogramming. Part of my strategy in the past has been substituting good foods for the junk food that sometimes accumulates in our house, and part of it has been ignoring the junk food. Those ideas don't always work. There have been cookies and chips sitting in the house since my boyfriend and I threw a small party over the weekend; there was most of a veggie plate and some hummus left over, too, but I polished those off earlier in the week as snacks and lunch components, and now I've moved on to the junk. I denied myself that last quarter of the pizza, but not long before I wrote this post, I ate a large, soft chocolate chip cookie without more than a shrug. Was I just delaying that reward and giving myself a food that had even less nutritional value as a consequence?
Another good way I can control my junk food intake is by food logging, but lately, I rebel and stop entering my data pretty soon after I start - sometimes after entering just one breakfast food.
We had our Fanci Exercise Intervention. I think I need a Fanci Food Facepunch: new habits, new reinforcements for good behavior. They say the best facepunch is the one you give to yourself. So, can anyone give strategies, insight, non-generalized tips? I feel like I have at least some of the tools (knowledge of what I need to do to be healthy, habit of buying healthy food and exercising, resources for the knowledge I don't have, a support system for my mental and emotional health) that I need to fight the good fight, but that maybe I'm missing something. Or maybe I've underestimated the strength of the urge to have that last piece of pizza, to read the internet all night instead of taking the dog for a walk, to passively and actively fight against my own health. There are days when it's harder to tell it no. But if you're lucky, you can realize what you're doing, dust yourself off, and rally your troops to your cause.
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