Eating What We Want

Yesterday I blogged about choosing between eating what we want and wearing what we want.   One of my friends, who is successfully winning her own battle with obesity thanks to Take Shape for Life, has said that we can eat what we want AND wear what we want by bringing what we WANT to eat in line with what WILL further our weight loss and maintenance goals! She says, "I do eat what I want! I eat exactly what I want! But what I want is to eat what will bring me to my long-term goal of optimal health. So I have deliberately aligned my wants with my desires and goals for my life."

I love her perspective and her deliberate choice to align her wants with her desires and goals.  Getting into that mindset and getting to a point where we truly only eat what we want and only want what's healthy is a great place to be.

Here's my personal challenge:  Often I really DO want to eat is whatever is fried, high fat, high sugar, high carb.  Four plus years past goal, my fat girl taste buds haven't gone away.  I've heard people talk about how, after they reached goal, those old food items don't even sound good or taste good to them anymore.  I can't honestly say that.  If left to my own devices and if I chose to follow the dictates of my taste buds, I would probably choose a fried chicken leg and thigh over a boneless, skinless baked chicken breast every time.  I would go back to eating loaded baked potatoes and would keep baked goods in the house to satisfy my nagging sweet tooth.  I would order the 400 calorie coffee beverages at my coffee house.  Restaurant menus still look pretty good to me and there are times when I'm tempted to order a big old plate of pasta swimming in a cream sauce.

So, to be honest, I don't just eat what I want because although those high fat, high carb, high sugar items may be what I want to eat sometimes, I want something even more than those things:  I want to remain thin and healthy.  What I may want to eat isn't always aligned with my goals, so it comes down to a constant need to make a deliberate choice.

That makes Maintenance a bit more challenging, to be sure.  But I'm sharing this to hopefully encourage you!  While I sincerely hope that your experience is more like my friend's because it will make those choices easier if you naturally gravitate toward healthy options, you can still be successful even if that's not your experience.

I still have to make deliberate choices every day and sometimes those choices aren't easy.  To support my long-term goal of staying healthy, I keep a "clean" kitchen and keep all of those unhealthy things out of the house.  I simply don't drink calories so even though those specialty drinks still sound good to me, I choose to not order them (I get an Americano with sugar-free syrup instead).  When I go out to a restaurant, I understand that the over-sized plate of pasta in cream sauce is brimming with calories and fat and low on nutrition and I know I'll feel sluggish after eating it, so I opt for a lean protein and vegetable/salad selection instead.

Because what I REALLY want is to stay thin, I want to be optimally healthy, I make choices that support what I want.  I don't want to settle for immediate gratification at the expense of my long-term goals.  It may not be easy, but it is certainly worth it!  Our choices matter, so choose wisely :-)