So I ended up at McDonalds, eating french fries and chicken nuggets. I just wanted comfort food. I got “caught”. Charlie Todd and Ben Rodgers were walking by McDonalds and saw me. I guess they had been talking about my blog and this diet. It’s embarrassing to be caught.
Today I’m back on track. I’m calling yesterday this week’s cheat day, so I’ll still be on my diet on Sunday. This was a stumble, not a fall. I’m going to keep up with this diet and this blog. Accountability helps.
One of the challenges of living by an “never do this” or “always do this” rule is that, when you slip, the first instinct is to call the whole thing a failure and give up. I’m not sure why, but I think it comes from mixing up your rules and your goals.
For everyone trying to lose weight, your goal is not to follow the rules. Your goal is to eat less, eat better. That’s something you do over a span of time. You can’t fail in an instant. Sure, Pat, cheated on Day 9. But in 10 days he’s still eating better than when he started.
The same applies to something like NaSkeWriMo: if you write every day for eight days and then write nothing on day 9, you might want to give up, because your perfect streak is over. But your goal isn’t to have a perfect record, your goal is to write more. And the person who only writes every other day still has more work done by the end of the month than someone who stops after that “perfect” week.
This is up to you, Pat, but I would recommend letting Sunday remain your cheat day, even though you slipped this week. Or, if you want to reset, let next Tuesday be your next cheat day. It’s more important that you establish habits than it is to punish yourself for slipping this week.
Oh, and congratulations on the new scale. Here’s why I think you should weigh yourself every day. (That’s the blog for my app, FatWatch.)
(via benzado & slowcarbcrazy)
