every day is a new opportunity...

... to pick your sorry self up, dust your backside off and get back in the saddle. Or on the wagon - what ever it is that you might have fallen from. For me: going back to Weight Watchers, after slipping down the slippery chocolate-covered slope of bad habits since some time back in 2016. Watching it creep up through the self-flagellating process of getting on the scales in the bathroom. Knowing that the button that keeps my pants on was under great stress and hanging by a thread.

It should be a comfort to anyone who can't seem to walk the straight and narrow to know: you are  not alone. Temptations abound every where, every day, in an endless array of items you should avoid. But that dangerous thinking of 'just one' leads you off the path so easily- that 'one' making you think: 'oh, what the hell, I've already fallen off - might as well eat the whole bar/bag, start over tomorrow!'

I didn't want to go back, get lectured, feel incompetent, hopeless on Jan. 2 with all those other well-intentioned who resolved to do things in this new year of pristine opportunities. I knew it would be a mob scene, as any place of exercise and calorie burning would surely be swamped as new years' resolutions were activated. So I waited a couple of weeks and forced myself to go the middle of January. Even so, there was a crowd of people with good intentions, high expectations, and optimism lined up, nearly out the door, waiting for the alternative to the guillotine to make them feel inept, lazy and depressed as pounds were measured.

If there is a bright spot in all this, it is the fact that the day I went back, to get up on that same horse that has bucked me off numerous times: it was very cold, so I had on a lot of layers which I did not take off. Probably foolish to be weighing things that can be removed, extra pounds that can be shed in minutes. But going the next week and wearing only shorts and a T-shirt, thereby dropping much of he pseudo-weight was remarkably encouraging, even though it was piled up there on the chair, waiting for me to put the layers/weight back on.

The most helpful aspect of the process for me is writing down everything. Making notes all day long as you put things in your pie-hole. Just knowing you have to put it on your list makes you stop and think. And actually adding it to your daily count makes you much more conscious of every little thing you pick up, consider consuming. Remembering the mantra, constantly aware: If you bite it, write it.

I was offered a vast array of yummy eats yesterday as others shared a buffet with fajitas, rice, beans, chips and cheese, tasty desserts. I will admit to having several sinful churros, fried sweets that are all carbs and granulated sugar. Along with my little micro-waved lunch of 7 points.