I starting posting my daily food log over in the September 100% Compliance Challenge thread instead of here.
One of the questions that occasionally pops into my head (whispered by the little guy with the pitchfork sitting on my shoulder) is, why is it necessary to be 100% compliant? Isn't 95% good enough? Is half a gram of oil in my spaghetti sauce really going to pack the pounds on and give me heart disease and cancer? Is one cookie in an otherwise flawless day really going to make a difference to my health? Probably not, but....
Those "little" exceptions do make a big difference in my mindset, habits, and behavior patterns. And my mindset, habits and behavior patterns make all the difference to my success on this program and my chances of staying healthy for life. If I am in the groove of doing the program 100%, it actually gets easier, not harder. I never believed this before. I always thought I had to have my little treats to make it do-able. I thought this because I never had the courage to actually try doing it without them! I know better now.
It has been over 3 months since I had a piece of candy. Candy was one of my treats that I couldn't let go of.....but I couldn't let go of it because I kept indulging in it. The longer I go without it, the less I think about it and the less I struggle. David Kessler in
The End of Overeating explains it better than I can:
....for a long time to come, you'll still have to fight the conditioned responses that drive overeating. You'll still have to deal with the emotions propelling you toward highly palatable foods. Like much of the information on a computer hard drive, the neural pathways that created the cue-urge-reward-habit cycle can't easily be wiped out. They can, however, be managed.
If you're exposed to a cue and consistently manage not to seek out a reward, new learning begins to take hold in your brain, and the cue begins to lose its powerful association.... As a conditioned response becomes less automatic, the cue becomes decoupled from the reward. The drive begins to ease, and in time, the stimulus can cool.
So, to the little guy with the pitchfork, THAT is why I'm doing this. Not because one cookie will make me fat or sick. But because one cookie will strengthen the neural pathways of cue-urge-reward that have stood in the way of my success. It's about my brain and re-training it so that it will be easier for me to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
It has already started to happen. When I do encounter situations that used to defeat me, like walking past the bulk bins of goodies in the natural foods store, I can feel that my reaction is different now. Before I would have stopped and looked, smelled the chocolatey-coconutty-fruity scents emanating from the bins, imagined what they would taste like, debated with myself about whether to get "just a little," and ultimately lost the fight. Now, I avoid going near those bins, and if I do see them, I immediately shut down those thoughts and turn my attention elsewhere BEFORE I start to imagine and debate about it. A couple weeks ago I noticed after a shopping trip that it did not even occur to me to get something from those bins. It might occur to me next time though, if I am having a bad day or am too hungry or maybe see someone else scooping up a treat I used to love. So I will have to be vigilant and remember that my goal is to completely extinguish that cue-urge-reward response. I have to slam the door hard on those thoughts and walk the other way.....or the door will never close and I will be in this same place 5 years from now.
When I doubt that this can work, I remind myself that it has already worked for other things. For example, I don't have the slightest inclination to ever go into a McDonald's or a KFC. It has been so many years that the idea of getting a meal there is totally foreign to me. Those restaurants are just buildings in the landscape, not places to get food. I would like to feel that way about all sugary, fatty, processed food, eventually. I can do this if I remind myself why it is important to abstain from those things completely.
)
Oh yeah! Forks Over Knives is on Netflix instant view. Maybe I'll watch some of it tonight. DH and I saw it at the theater but I want to see it again.
