Bad Girl

Okay, it’s confession time… I ate ice cream yesterday.

I know, I know… not exactly W30 and my 2nd W30 starts again today… I had 8 days in and now I have zero days in.

If I look at it practically, it’s not really the end of the world. Everyone makes a misstep and the more important thing that the failure is how you recover from it. Whether you fall completely, laying in the dirt and flailing about, or whether you just get up, take it as a lesson and move on.
I flailed about in the dirt yesterday. I ate about four spoonfuls of the ice cream and then decided I didn’t want anymore and put it away. And then I flailed around calling myself all sorts of names and berating what a weak and useless idiot I am. Of course being a weak and useless idiot requires punishment, so to punish myself, I ate the entire rest of the pint.
The worst part was that I knew exactly what it would do to me physically… It would cause me to crave more sugar, it would set me back in my quest for another 30 days of clean living and then, it would make me tired, lethargic and chemically stoned. I slept through four alarms this morning… My stomach was hard and distended and uncomfortable and I was starving. These are all things that I have grown to not miss about poor eating habits and while I was punishing myself for my misstep, I knew these were the consequences and I did it anyway.

The guilt and self-loathing that I felt this morning was equivalent to having committed some sort of catastrophic crime and I’m afraid someone is going to find out that I’m a fraud…

I knew it, they’ll say! I knew you couldn’t do this long term! I knew that you were just putting on a show! Your ‘fringe’ (to steal my sisters word) way of eating is a sham and I knew you went home every night and ate candy and cookies and ICE CREAM!
It’s not true… it’s not true, I’d have to say back… This was just a mistake… Everyone can’t be 100% all the time… it’s not possible… I did 40 days clean! I had half a glass of wine on my vacation and then started again the next day! ON MY VACATION! Everyone deserves a break when they make a mistake, I would say…
So how come when it’s me saying those loathsome things to myself, I don’t defend myself in the same way… instead of defending myself, I agree… yes, you are weak. Yes, you are a fraud! What made you think you would be strong enough to go against society and its prescribed eating habits? Why would you do this to yourself otherwise?
Well, I know the answer… we all know the answer if we look deep inside ourselves…

My answer is that I’m terrified. I’m very happy to eat healthy and I love the results… my skin is amazing, I sleep well, my mood is stable and positive and I’m in a club of people that appreciate that kind of effort. And the physical side effects of treating my body nicely are that I’m losing weight and things are re-adjusting in my body… I’m close to having to go down another pant size and now I’m sabotaging myself because I’m terrified. The things I’m terrified of are too difficult to write here, so I won’t… I think it’s enough that I’ve opened my wounds this much today… I just know that the things I’m terrified of are real, but in order to move forward in life, I’m going to have to find a way to live in peace with them…

So today I will start new and I will get up out of the dirt and stop flailing about. I will take this as a lesson instead of a crime… I will try and quiet the voice that is calling me a bad girl in the back of my head and start reminding myself that I have abnormally beautiful skin, strong legs, a great laugh and that terrified or not, I refuse to wallow in the not so praise worthy parts of myself… and sabotaging to prevent the fear doesn’t work… I know that because less than 18 hours after the sabotage, I’m no less terrified so I’ll just have to figure out something else!