I opened my hall closet to look for my holiday linens and said "oh" to myself. There, on a shelf were three large-ish bows. One was black and white checkered, the other two were red and black checkered. They are in my closet because I was crazy enough to look at Christmas decorations after Christmas, and got sucked into the magical world of CLEARANCE ITEMS... at a crazy place.... Tractor Supply.
Did I need three bows? Hell no..... I didn't even need ONE bow. Yet here they were, patiently waiting for the holidays and making me feel like I needed to do something with them.
If you aren't familiar with Tractor Supply, it's a retail chain store that caters to farmers, ranchers, gardeners, and people who love working in the outdoors. They even have a small section of recreational vehicle accessories. They also sell baby chicks in the springtime. In fact, I'm sure it was the cute, cheeping, baby chicks in the incubator that softened my resistance to the point where I thought it was necessary to buy three bows I didn't need.
I must confess that I do like to shop there from time to time. I bought a pink cowgirl hat for my granddaughter there, some lined rain boots that I wore in the snow (and kept my feet warm), and their blue jeans fit me really well and are very reasonably priced.
Honestly, I don't know what I was thinking when I saw those bows and why I felt the need to buy them. I'm sure I spent less than $5 US on them, but did I really need them? Absolutely not...
Buying these bows is really not a big deal... truly... What is a big deal is my impulse control, my need for instant gratification, which, of course, spills over into my dieting and weight loss as well.
Impulse control is huge for anyone on a weight loss journey. Even though I dislike the word 'trigger', there are many, many things that will 'trigger', our impulses to eat something we shouldn't. Food advertisements, smells we encounter, stress, strong emotions, feeling sorry for ourselves, and just plain boredom. The list is far longer than this, but you get the idea. I think boredom and watching my husband graze are big ones for me.
What should we do when we have these impulses? There is no magic solution. In my opinion, we have three choices:
1. Fight the impulse by distracting ourselves with something else and don't eat anything.
2. Give in a little. Eat something but stay within our weight loss plan parameters. Maybe just a bite of the thing we want, or a serving of something we can fill ourselves up with, like an apple or some Greek yogurt.
3. Go whole hog. Eat what we want and suffer the consequences later.
In my post Calorie Deficit Diet - Ten Things I Want You to Know, I mentioned that you could eat anything you wanted to on this diet, as long as you didn't go over your daily/weekly calories allotted. So, how you behave when these impulses hit you is up to you. However, making one bad choice means you have a lot of harder choices going forward that week in order to stick with your weight loss plan.
It's easy to shove a handful of candy or potato chips in your mouth because you feel crappy. It might be hard later in the week to look at a small serving of food and know that it won't fill you up, because you spent your calories on an unhealthy impulse earlier in the week.
If you give into the impulse, remember that all is not lost. As my husband likes to say, don't let perfection be the enemy of the good. You've come this far, and one bump in the road doesn't negate your progress.
Yes, I need to take my own advice, for sure. I'm struggling with the same things you are with dieting, and I am far from perfect at it. I have impulses that I have given into, but I'm getting better at dealing with them.
I know... I have three bows...
