Who or what are the saboteurs in your life?

What a temptation this question presents to make my eating and weight about something or someone else, but I shall resist that temptation and say that the only saboteur in my life is ME. Yes, I am responsible for every morsel of food that goes into my mouth and for every move my body makes (or doesn’t make). It’s me, all me, 24/7. To think otherwise is to say that I am an unwilling victim of someone or something else. I am not.

Having said that…

Can people encourage me to eat? Sure. My DH and I have weekly bouts over whether or not to indulge in corn chips during the football games (a legal but unhealthy choice on our eating plan). This weekend one or the other of us talked us both out of going to the store to get them. Score one for our team! Every day we don’t do something like that results in me waking up the next morning grateful instead of sorry and sad. But, even when I give in, I’m the one sabotaging my plan, not Joe. We’re each responsible for our own elastic waistbands.

Do certain high-fat, salt, sugar and wheat products stimulate my appetite seemingly beyond my capacity to resist? Absolutely. But who is it that makes the first move? It’s definitely not the Rugala or whatever else might send me in an uncontrollable eating binge. Just to be sophisticated, I might even split myself into two warring halves, with one half sending baked goods signals to the other half to get me to go to the store. But, in reality, it’s all me. Food does not have the capacity to jump down my throat. I have to make a conscious decision to get up, buy it and consume it. So, in essence, I’m always the one making the first move.

My concluding unscientific postscript (with apologies to Kierkegaard) is that failing to see that I am in charge of myself when it comes to my health and well-being is a much more serious problem than my neighbor shoving a tray of cookies at me when I visit for tea.