(photo courtesy of Bert)

In the early 1990s, my husband got the opportunity to work for a NASA contractor and we decided to make the move to Texas from New England. I was excited for him because I’m a huge fan of all things space and science fiction. He was going to be part of the space program! He was doing some software thing with respect to the space shuttle program.

His job was pretty great. He worked about four miles from our home with no highway commuting. He was home before 6:00 pm nightly. Our children were toddlers at the time so it was really great. He didn’t work overtime that I can recall. We did get the rare call in the middle of the night. It went like this:

“Hello…. Uh huh…..uh huh………..uh huh……. Yeah, reboot.”

Every. Single. Time.

What made me think of those times was my transitioning back into my winter lifestyle of heading back to our small ranch town in Texas, instead of camping in the great white north. I’ve been home about ten days now, and I must confess that my calorie-deficit plan imploded.

On the way to our camp in May, I did really well on the three day car ride with my snacking. I ate healthy things like apples and snack cucumbers. On the way home, not so much. I did eat the apples we brought home from our apples trees, but I also ate pretzel nubs filled with peanut butter and trail mix….handfuls.

I’ve thought about why I did that this time. I think I was sad to be coming home and I reached for that familiar friend… food. I’d had so much positivity this past summer, with losing weight, riding our bike and not feeling like I was going to die. No stress, just living in a calm environment with zero expectations. I didn’t want to give up that feeling, so I basically said, “I don’t care….”, pouted, and ate things I shouldn’t have. I didn’t feel better eating those things.... nor worse. I felt nothing, to be honest. I’m still unpacking that one….

When weigh-in day came around on Monday after we got home (I’d been home since Wednesday night), I ignored the scale. I hadn’t weighed in the previous Monday because we had spent Sunday night sleeping at my sister's house, after we closed up our camp. We left very early Monday morning so weighing in didn’t even occur to me.

I decided not to get on the scale the Monday after we got back. I had eaten a huge Mexican meal with family the night we got home, had spent Friday through Sunday at my son’s house, playing with the grandkids and eating out, and eating all kinds of delicious meals and goodies my daughter-in-law prepared. After that weekend, I was tired and just wanted to take a few days and re-acclimate.

.

Also, I knew the scale was going to be honest and I wasn’t ready for its honesty yet after the last four days. I hated being in that place. I kept telling myself “If you don’t get on the scale, you can’t hold yourself accountable for what you’ve eaten.”

What was even worse was my food scale decided to stop working properly… so I had no way to accurately weigh food until I replaced it. I had to estimate serving sizes of meat and I believe I was so low on my estimate about protein servings that I wound up hungrier than I should have been, which pissed me off because I wasn’t hungry on this diet, if I ate enough protein.

So my husband helpfully ordered me the food scale I had put in our Amazon cart, forgot to check the shipping address and off it went…. To our campsite….

Do you ever feel like the universe is working against you?

We also hadn’t been able to get to a restocking grocery shopping trip. We shopped on Wednesdays because that’s the start of the week for our grocery store sales (remember I married an engineer, so we shop logically). We picked up some things at the very expensive local grocery store.

I was sitting on the couch, thinking about the past several days feeling sorry for myself about how I didn’t prepare to be at my son’s place well enough, how I could have made better choices with my eating, and the voice inside spoke up. It said: “If you keep going the way you are right now, you are going to gain back the weight you lost, and you do not want that for yourself.”

None of us do, but it happens for so many of us who have been on a roller coaster diet pattern for much of our lives. We really don’t want this.

So, like a computer that has a glitch you can’t fix by giving it a command, you have to reboot.

I decided I wasn’t going to wait on Amazon for another scale and added a trip to Wal-Mart on shopping day. I made myself get on the scale, in the middle of the day, right then and there because I had to be true to what I was promoting. I had gained a three pounds.

Okay then….. That woke me up! I needed to get my shit together.

Since then, we have gone for a 12-mile bike ride, the ‘hardest’ ride we have here because it has long climbing hills. And, four days later, we participated in a 20-mile charity ride in our town to help kids who needed college scholarships. That was daunting because I knew that ride was going to be hard given the hills around here. I did this ride with a cold, stuffed full of decongestant. I’m actually pretty proud of this ride because it’s the furthest we’ve ever ridden in the area we live, and we did complete it faster than we normally ride.

I got my food scale and I’m back to weighing and measuring food and eating as I should. I got on the scale again before weigh-in day to make sure I’m still heading in the right direction. I’ve dropped a few pounds so I am.

We can all get off track sometimes, led there through a series of events, circumstances and feelings that maybe we can or can’t control. When that happens, force yourself into a reboot, no matter how painful it is. You will feel so much better afterwards.

Don’t beat yourself up if you need a reboot. I'm not doing that.  Just push your reboot button and do it.  Life sometimes interferes with our plans.  Remember it’s all part of the journey.

If you need some laughs today, or to take a break from your life for a bit, I recommend a few episodes of the British comedy “The IT Crowd.”