I Walk the Line

Today's blog post was brought you to you by a text-versation with a friend.  (Sidebar: in our techy world, why is there no short word for this?)  We were talking about WW.  She went to a meeting after having missed a week.  She had earlier anticipated a "huge" gain and said that she only gained .2.  Given what we have shared about our habits the last few weeks, I said that I never look at these little gains as true gains and really consider them more like maintaining.  She said I was "wise."  (Look, I'm just quoting in the interest of accurate reporting.)  I joked that, yes, I was in fact a fat sage.  And then further went on to say that this didn't stop me from beating myself up about it and wanting to punish myself with potato chips.  She said "shut up" and told me that I'd been looking amazing and that I should be proud.

And I said -- blog topic!  :)

I AM proud of myself.  I DO feel good about what I'm doing.  But just as my negative behaviors and thought patterns are addictive and enticing, the positive ones are too.  I get to feeling good and very proud of what I've done and how far I've come.  And here's the thing -- I'm not a religious person, as anyone knows, but I do understand why "pride" is a sin.  It leads to feelings of imperviousness.  I feel like I can do anything, accomplish anything -- and EAT anything.  And DRINK anything.  And that is the problem.

I can't.

So, I'm cognizant of the line I walk.  I want to be proud of what I've done and how much better I am looking and feeling.  But I also have to be aware that I have a ways to go until I get to my goal. If I am too proud of what I have done, then I lose sight of how much more I have to do.  But I also can't focus too much on that either because then it seems too big and I feel like I can't get there.  I have to maintain a very steady balance of being proud without being arrogant; of awareness of my successes without letting them cloud my judgement. I want to be "good" (ick, I can't find the prior link but you know how I feel about this) but I also want to be able to have fun and not be obsessing over points all the time.  I need to generally be balanced.  Something I have always struggled with.  I don't like the middle.  Billy Joel's "I Go To Extremes" has long been my personal theme song.

I'm not going to find the secret to solving this problem through the confines of writing this blog post.  I know this because it's taken me over an hour to puzzle it out and I'm still not feeling like I'm going to find a conclusion.  Take this away though -- when you see me in person, and you hear me being hard on myself know that I am aware that I am doing it.  Know that I want to stop and "make the voices in my head like me instead" (thank you Pink).  And know that many more of them do now than did before.  But, it's a long way to go because I struggle with liking myself devolving into arrogant overconfident cockiness which leads me to be impetuous and fall off track which leads me to overindulging and being lazy which usually eventually leads me to trying to crawl back out of that hole by exercising more, eating better so I can forgive myself and like myself again which devolves into being arrogant...  You get the idea.  


It turns out my line?  It's a circle.  :)


Ever your one and only,
Heather