Making Choices

We made a last-minute decision last Friday to drive to Indiana and visit some friends for the weekend.  Our visit included a couple of meals at a restaurant.  Because I went on 5&1 last Tuesday and have made the decision to take off a few pounds, my menu options at the restaurants were a bit more limited.  Funny thing was - I was OK with that.  I'd made the decision to go back on the program for a couple of weeks, so the other menu choices weren't particularly tempting.  Our friends ordered what they wanted and my husband and I did the same, sticking with salad, veggie, and, as it turned out, salmon for both meals (one Saturday night and one Sunday afternoon).

It's amazing how quickly things in my brain "clicked" once I made the decision and went back on program.  I know what I want and am very focused on my goal, so being around off-plan food really isn't an issue anymore.

It wasn't that way when I first went on 5&1 and early on I definitely struggled at times with feeling deprived and looking at all of the things that I "couldn't have."  However, over time I began to embrace the reality that I COULD have those things - if I wanted to and chose to have them.  I was a grown-up and free to make those choices.  I also understood that there was something I wanted more than the food - I wanted to get to my goal and have a thin, healthy body.  Because I wanted that, and I really did want that, I made the choice to not eat certain things.  I've written a lot about the need to make secondary choices to support our primary choice, and I keep going back to this because it is SO important!

If you have a mindset that thinks of this program as being all about deprivation - can't have that and can't have this - your journey will be a lot more of a struggle.  None of us likes to feel deprived.  We are hardwired to take care of ourselves and feeling deprived for very long often leads to resentment and anger.  Those feelings are hard to carry with us for weeks or months at a time and staying in a deprivation mindset often leads to eventually going off plan because we feel almost driven to "be good to ourselves."

However, if we've made the primary choice to get healthy, then we will view the secondary choices we make - including staying on program - from a different perspective.  We will understand that these choices are steps on a ladder, with each choice bringing us that much closer to what we really want.  We will embrace these choices are just that - the choices we are choosing to make.  When I was on 5&1, I adopted the mindset of "I can have anything I want any time I want, but I am choosing to eat 5&1 instead of that because 5&1 will get me where I want to go and that won't."  That thinking kept me out of feeling deprived all the time and it was one of the things that helped keep me focused and relatively cheerful all the way to my goal (I said relatively . . . !).

You don't have to stay on plan and you don't have to reach your goal.  You really don't!  The choice is yours, and if you've made the choice to stay on plan and get to your goal (and I hope you have!), then embrace this as your choice, then continue to choose wisely :-)