Constant Battle

I don’t know about all of you guys but, to me the most difficult time to remain on my diet is nighttime.

Sometimes I’ve been busy all day long and then I finally get a few moments at night to rest. That’s the moment when I’m like “Ooooh I just would looove to eat this or that!” My mind starts to race and I can just see images of food flashing through my brain.
All these thoughts start coming. Then to make matters worse, somebody on T.V. starts talking about food! (Like I don’t already have enough to battle with my own desires !)
Not that I don’t like hearing about food. Actually I love eating it, smelling it, touching it . The thing is, I need to be careful to only be thinking about food once in a while- definitely not when I’m trying to focus on losing weight.

Here’s an illustration of what ends up happening inside my head:

On the one side I hear myself saying
(the bad me)- “Oh there’s no problem with eating just a little more of this…Just a little teensie bit more” I say.
Then I catch myself and find that I’m going down the wrong thinking pattern and I say:

(the good me)
- “No Crystal, you can’t eat that! If you add up all of these little bits here and there that will end up becoming one BIG chunk of calories and you won’t achieve your weight loss goals. Stop Crystal. Stop! You’ve already eaten all the calories for this day.”
So you’d think that by this time I would have convinced myself to NOT eat outside the amount that I should, right?
Well…think again because somehow I manage to come back with another thought:

(the bad me)
- “Oh but you deserve to eat a little more. You’re tired and need to rest.”
It’s truly amazing how we can set ourselves up for failure when we aren’t determined to change a habit.
The whole notion of “deserving to eat” is based upon a false precept that overeating is some kind of reward for all the hard work in other areas of our lives

The fact is that when this internal battle starts going on, I stop everything I’m doing and focus on destroying all the excuses and so-called reasons for overeating. If I don’t consciously stop and redirect my thoughts, the wrong thinking patterns end up winning and take over my will power.

This tug of war is a constant battle that seems to never end. In order to be a winner in this battle I really have to stop and regroup my thoughts. And believe me, when I’ve done this it HAS worked.