(photo courtesy of PhotoMIX Company)

Today we arrived home after three days of driving. No, I didn’t stick strictly to my diet on the road and yes, I ate shit I shouldn’t have. The list includes buttery home fries, a huge omelet with cheese and broccoli and toast with butter and jelly for dinner one night. Breakfast sausage and a biscuit with my hard-boiled eggs for breakfast. Peanut butter pretzels and trail mix in the car as an “I am bored of driving” snack. Yep, I will own it all. It wasn’t pretty from an eating standpoint, but it could have been worse.

I also made some good choices on the road. Hard boiled eggs for breakfast one morning, a six-ounce sirloin and two sides of broccoli instead of potato and broccoli for dinner. I didn’t drink alcohol on the road at all. I ate an apple each day we were driving. I didn’t have a beer with my husband at dinner.

Before we were even in our driveway, the relatives at home were already planning a meal out when we arrived, which meant cannonballing back into our winter life without time to take a breath. My husband, of course, was giddy because we were going out for Mexican food, something we haven’t eaten in five months. I had no f*%ks to give, so I went with it.

I ate too much food. I had soft fajita tacos, chips and salsa and had a beer, and I don’t feel one ounce of guilt. Ooops. I probably shouldn’t have said that but it’s true. Sometimes you have those nights. I was tired after three days and 31 hours of driving.

I’m currently looking at bins, suitcases and duffle bags to unpack. Our house needs to be cleaned, after being closed up for five months, my daughter-in-law is already asking when we are coming to see their new house and our grandkids. and I don’t have any eggs or vegetables in the house. No sense in shopping as we are leaving tomorrow afternoon to go to my son’s for the weekend, and I’m doubtful I can get all my stuff done before then. Welcome home bitches!

This is the time when the temptation strikes in the form of: “I’ll worry about getting back on my plan next week.” I, personally, can rationalize this choice because I have to start on a Monday, because that’s my weigh-in day (how’s that for a lame-assed excuse?) This line of thinking is a slippery slope that I do not want to go down. Nothing good will come of it. I could extend the eating ‘free for all’ another day… week… It only leads to a free pass to consume as much food as I want for the next four days and potentially beyond that.

These times where you may whine to yourself “I just have so much to deal with right now that I can’t take on another ‘thing’ like dieting.” It’s so easy to have this attitude because you can rationalize in your mind why it’s okay to step off your plan for a bit. You even feel a sense of peace about it.

It’s a false sense of peace. It’s not really peace, it’s really a sense of relief because we are giving ourselves permission to take the easy way out, to go back to the unhealthy habits of how we deal when life becomes hard, which for us, impacts our food and drink consumption in an unhealthy way. all because life is hard and overwhelming right now.

Sticking to our diet when life becomes challenging is actually beneficial. We are actually taking control of something when everything else may feel out of control. It can help us to feel that not everything is going to shit at the moment and that we have the determination and grit to soldier through whatever is going on in our lives. It gives us something positive to focus on and cling to as well.

It’s the next morning. I got up, spent 20 minutes cleaning out my steel coffee travel mug that I use for coffee every day (five months of coffee oil build up is nasty). After that therapeutic scrubbing and rinsing, I made myself a cup of my favorite coffee that I haven’t had in five months.

And I measured my one tablespoon of half and half…