"So this is what commitment feels like"*

I'm trying to get back in to blogging, as you can hopefully see, but every time I fail at a commitment I made to myself I think, "I don't want to write about THAT!  I can't tell them that happened..."

But I guess that's supposed to be the point, isn't it?  It can't be all running and staying on the wagon and eating rice cakes (:::shudder:::), now can it?  (Shut up, I know it was never like that!) 

It's going to be falling off the wagon and strapping on a bag of Tostito's like it's feedbag (AKA Tuesday) and one day last week where I think I consumed almost nothing but sugar and caffeine.  (That was so bad that I did almost blog about it to get away from the shame, but I was probably too wired to form coherent thoughts about it.)  The question is do I write about that?  Do I want to publicize my descent?  Do I think NOT publicizing it will mean it's not happening?

Well, yeah, I think there's a part of me that definitely thinks that.  Not like an active conscious thought, exactly...  I was talking to Kiosk about her sugar trigger, because she is coming up on a difficult time frame to deal with that.  She asked me for advice on how to deal with it, even though she acknowledged that she didn't really expect me to have any.  (Gee, thanks!)  I suggested exposing herself -- not literally perv.  She has a cake batter weakness because no one is around to see her eating it when she makes a cake.  I suggested invite someone over to her ostensibly to "help" make the cake, but really they're helping by not leaving her alone with the cake batter. 

And then I thought, "doctor, heal thyself."  Because that's my thing.  If I don't blog about my failures, then that's like snarfing the cake batter alone, isn't it?  If I commit to something and then don't follow through, what difference does it make if I'm committing it to myself?  No one is there to see when I screw up.  Again. 

Here are just a few of the things I have recently committed to and not followed through:  not drinking during the week, working out at least three times a week, following the plan at Spark People and you get the idea.  I commit to doing something or commit to avoiding something but the end result is the same: lots of not following through followed by strapping on a bag of Tostito's and the cycle continues. 

The problem is that I can't just not try to commit, because that's not going anywhere good.  So, I think what I'm going to do is just commit to one thing at a time.  Once I've fully embraced that commitment and it's become a habit then I'm going to move on to another thing.  Because right now if I have wine at night, that's a shame spiral.  And if I don't track what I eat, then that's another excuse to have a calorie ball because I'm already in the shame spiral from not tracking it in the first place.  Sometimes I think I make commitments just so I can break them and dive in to the shame spiral.  (Epiphany!)  So, that's not going anywhere good either.  I don't know if this is the best plan towards success.  After all, I still hold a hope that I will end the year in the onederland.  But, I do know that since I have started to get back on track, I have only been successful with one thing at a time.  (Eww, kind of a bit like AA, one day at a time...)  So, I'm going to get back to being regular with the gym and once I have firmly accomplished that then I'm going to work on layering from that.

I will also try to keep blogging as I go.  But, that is TWO things so...  ;-)

Heather

*PS* Note on title:  Because I signed up for Spark People, I have been inundated with motivation emails.  Sometimes they are short parts of board posts from their in-sight bloggers.  This was the title of one that I did a rare save in my inbox so that every time I checked my mail I saw that.  I kept thinking that I too wanted to know what commitment feels like.  But, not in a cheesy annoying way -- in a way that's more kick-ass then that particular post turned out to be.