Dear Self,
I promise to work out later this afternoon so that I don’t wind up feeling guilty about devouring those two HUGE pieces of yellow cake with the creamy milk chocolate icing, which I decided to have for breakfast….
Yours in Guilt Until Then,
Me
Yup. Not only did I sleep in this morning* (and by ‘sleeping in’, I mean I slept until 7:30am instead of my usual 5:30am), but on top of that I decided to nix my morning routine of exercise-opting instead to head directly for the kitchen where I knew I had baked a delicious cake the night before. And two slices of cake later, I was just as full of milk chocolate creamy deliciousness as I was of guilt for stuffing my face.
Should I feel ashamed?
I guess I probably would feel like a pig if I found myself doing this every other day. However, this was not the case. But it brings up a good point nonetheless. I think the problem with a lot of people who overeat or who eat the wrong things is that they make excuses for themselves. For instance, I’ll often hear other people saying, “oh, it’s not a big deal if I eat this now because it’s not like I eat it every day…” or the infamous, “once in a while can’t hurt you….”. But what do these people typically look like? What is their day-to-day routine of activity? How much free time do they have, and how are they spending that free time?
I don’t profess to be an absolute health nut, though I am, admittedly, neurotic at times. However, I do keep my health at the forefront of my life. Each piece of food that goes into my body is a conscious decision that I made to put it there. There is a saying that you should treat your body like a temple, and it’s true! If you care about your overall health (not to mention the amount of money in your bank account), then you owe it to yourself to be more careful about what you eat.
But, It Was SO Delicious!
Even though it was definitely not the “breakfast of champions,” I’m not going to beat myself up for having a couple of generous portions of cake this morning. I’m tempted to, but I’m going to hold off on it. I know that in order to maintain some relative semblance of sanity when it comes to healthy eating, you’ve got to leave yourself a little wiggle room for the occasional treat, otherwise you’ll just wind up binge eating at some point. Look at most people who stick to strict diets. Sure, most of them do great in the beginning, but then they wind up losing their self control. If you want to find out what these guys are up to, just check aisle 10 of the grocery store, where you’ll more than likely find them going nuts over the candy and potato chips. It’s not pretty.
Excuses, Excuses, Excuses
I was running late for work & didn’t have time to make myself something healthy.
I got home late and was exhausted & didn’t have the time to throw something together for the next day….
The kids had to go to soccer practice, and I didn’t have the time…
I couldn’t find the time…
If coming up with excuses for things was a sport, than we’d all be elite athletes. You know, the funny thing about time is that we always make room for it when something is really important to us. That being said, why can’t health be an important enough issue for the majority of people?
What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn’t much better than tedious disease. -George Dennison Prentice