Well tonight I had my first Big But. I think anyone trying to change the way they behave goes through this. It’s the classic reason for giving up on a diet. The great excuse for falling back…
My wife Debs cooks the evening meal for the family. Sometimes I’m home early enough to eat with Debs and the boys. More often I get back too late for that. Either way I phone Debs in the afternoon to find out what she’s planning for Dinner. I imagine this gives me something to look forward to, but in reality I’m just a bit of a control freak and like to know what’s happening in advance.
Anyway, as I walked through the front door I knew that Debs had prepared her homemade burgers for dinner. She cooked this last week as well and it’s lovely. Lean mince, quite dry, the healthiest version of a burger I could imagine.
Imagine then the scene. I’ve greeted Debs and the boys, and Debs has told me that dinner will be ready in about 10 minutes, she’s just got to cook the burgers. She goes into the kitchen and I chat for a couple more minutes with the boys before popping into the kitchen on the way up stairs to get changed.
As I poke my head into the kitchen I’m faced with a view I’d normally relish. Two juicy fat pink/red burgers, in a frying pan, bubbling and spitting away in a pool of oil, soaking up every drop they can.
This picture is like food porn for me. But my heart sank and I felt instantly sick. I looked at Debs and said all I could say was “BUT YOU’RE FRYING THEM IN OIL?”. I was so disappointed. I’ve tried so hard for the last week to do well on this health adventure. Eating fruit when I want doughnuts. Having reasonable portions. Eating more slowly and chewing lots. Today I even managed to pull off Habit 1. Only to get home and find the ultimate expression of what I’m trying to move away from, being lovingly prepared by the one person who’s supposed to be supporting me in this.
I went upstairs, and I’m not too proud to say I very almost cried.
I really felt sick. This was it, the end of it. In a few minutes I was going to walk downstairs and surrender to the hedonistic self gratification of fat soaked burgers. There’s no way I’d be able to blog with a clean concience tomorrow. No point in eating fruit or trying to exercise. It wasn’t like it was my fault. Debs did it, not me. I’d been as strong as anyone could expect, but Debs had let me down.
It was all over.
I lay on the bed and tried to figure out how to explain this to everyone I’ve told about the blog. They’d understand. Wouldn’t they? What if someone came up with a great idea for something I should have done. I’d be kicking myself tomorrow wouldn’t I. What might someone say? What could I do differently? What would I say to someone else right now in this second if they were in this situation? What would I advise them to do?
Well, the burgers could still be grilled couldn’t they? They’d only been in the fat for a few seconds, and the less time they’re in there the better right?
I called down to Debs and asked her to whip the burgers out of the pan straight away please, and then put them under the grill instead. She did.
Somehow in that moment of switching life around and imagining I was helping a friend in the situation, all the emotion dropped away. The sick feeling, the guilty pleasure of impending fat burger, the disappointment at failing, the misdirected disappointment with Debs. It just fell away from me. And with a relatively clear and open heart I could see the situation and a reasonable course of action to make it ok.
This, for me, is one of the biggest victories I’ve ever had.
Everything was ok again, but I knew Debs was upset. I went downstairs and explained to her how I was feeling. She was almost crying herself! She’d just gone into autopilot and prepared food as she normally would. We chatted it though, and we’re all good, but wow look how I had reacted to the whole thing. There’s obviously lots of emotion tied up inside me about all this stuff. I need to keep a careful eye on it. When I’m all emotionally charged up like that I’m not inclined to make great choices. Switching things around worked well. I’m sure there’s some NLP thing about this but can’t remember it. Something about looking at yourself from the outside maybe?
I’m going to call these things “Big But’s”. These events, these moments, which have previously pulled me out of diets. I’m starting a list of them so that I can look back at how I’ve made it past them before to help me do it again.
So I’m still “In the program”. It could so easily have been different, but it doesn’t have to be. Onward and upward.
One more thing occured to me as I’ve been writing this. The way I reacted only makes sense if I believed that this was some sort of good vs evil thing. Once the burgers had been in a pan with oil they were ‘tainted’. The devils own burgers, representing the ultimate sin. I don’t want that to be how it works for me. It shouldn’t be about that. It should be about habitually chosing the healthy option in any given situation. Taking the burgers out of the frying pan and grilling them was the healiest option short of throwing away Debs homemade burgers. I made a healthy choice which I’m proud of.
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