The learning game...

So yesterday we invited some friends over to watch the Laker game. I knew we were going to have some food that I should stay away from. The reason I say that I should stay away from it is because it becomes a trigger food for me. What I'm referring to are chips. They are my enemy. It's different if I have a small bag of them, like you would get with your meal at Subway. But when there is a full bag of them, along with dip, sitting right in front of me it only spells disaster if I start eating them. And that's exactly what happened to me yesterday. First it was just a couple, then it turned into a lot. I did snack on carrots as well, but I still ate more chips than carrots.

My husband was kind enough to go to El Pollo Loco for me so I could eat chicken while everyone else was eating chicken links. Those things are my favorite. They were making chili dogs out of them. I was going to allow myself to have one without the cheese and chili and just put some mustard on it. As I was warming up the chili I changed my mind and decided to have mine like eveyone elses. I didn't even touch the chicken from El Pollo Loco. Then, to make matters worse, I put more chips on my plate. A friend brought a lemon cake that was so good and I had a piece of that too. I told myself I wasn't going to have any because I'm not a huge fan of lemon anything so why waste the calories on something I don't really like. I don't know where that thinking went because I didn't recall those words at all while I cut myself a slice.

Sigh...the result of all this eating last was a bad stomach ache at 2:00 this morning. It felt like a rock was in my stomach. The only thing I could do was take a pepcid pill I got from my doctor when I had some trouble with my gall bladder. That finally kicked in and I was able to go back to sleep.

So I'm not going to continue to beat myself over my bad choices this weekend. I can't do anything to change them at this point in time so I'm going to use it as a learning experience. I didn't like the way I felt when I woke up with my stomach ache and I'm going to remember that the next time I feel like over eating. It's not worth it. I probably won't have a loss this week on the scale but that's to be expected. And it's okay. This is about learning new habits and changing old ones. I learned a valuable lesson.

This is a new week and I'm back to keeping track of everything. We are going to Sacramento to visit family this week and will be gone until Monday. It won't be easy to keep track of my calories because my meals won't be as structured as they are when I'm at home. But I will make a promise to myself to remember the dreaded upset stomach and to be careful. I will drink lots of water as I usually do and try to keep full on fruits and veggies. I will get my exercise in like I'm supposed to and will weigh in when I get back. This is a journey not a race.