This week’s homework is to deal with
triggers. Triggers are events or things that detour you from staying on
track with a diet / lifestyle change. This is my third year of
working on my choices in eating / exercising / diet / lifestyle etc.
Every year I try and look at my triggers and I have had moderate success.
As my sister says, we are far from being “cured.” J
Emotional Triggers
The biggest emotional trigger for me is
stress. I have thought about this for a long time because everyone has
stress. EVERYONE! Why is it that some are able to not dive head
first into a bowl of nachos and some aren’t. For me, my trigger stress is
what Joe and I call, “Can you squeeze blood out of this stone?” stress.
Other phrases for it could be “The-impossible-task” stress,
“The-no-control-over-the-outcome” stress, or the
“Are-the-people-in-charge-crazy?” stress.
I swear, losing weight is like being in AA
(forgive me for anyone who has been in AA, all I know about it is what I’ve
seen on TV and we all know how accurate TV people are). In AA, they often
say the serenity prayer:
God, grant
me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The
courage to change the things I can,
And
wisdom to know the difference.
I think that I need to make a small card with
this printed on it, like a business card, and when I am feeling the Sisyphusian
Task Stress (Greek punished to keep pushing the boulder up
the hill) I can pull it out and remember I can only do what I can do and I can
only change what I can change.
Food Triggers
I was thinking about these on my run this morning
and although I am far from being ‘cured’ I feel like this is the one area that
I have made some head way. I do not keep a lot of “bad” food choices
around the house and the ones like my Achilles’ heel (ice cream) is not allowed
in the house. There is a bowl of candy for the boys on top of the
fridge. I am pretty good at not touching it. This year I had to
throw out some of last year’s old Halloween candy! That is a milestone! A
Non-Scale victory (NSV) for me. Now, to be clear there isn’t any
chocolate in there from last Halloween, but there is candy. Four years
ago that bowl would be filled and drained, filled and drained, even the “meh”
candy would have been eaten long before it could have gotten stale.
Trigger Sponsor
This is my last AA reference for the day, I
swear! I need a good Trigger Sponsor. Someone who will not let me have
“just one bite” …. Would anyone say to an alcoholic, “Oh, you can have one
drink” because when I am in Sisyphusian Mode one bite is the slippery slope to
3 servings of ice cream with all the trimmings! I think a good sponsor
would say, “What is stressing you out?” and then “Will ice cream fix that?” and
without the Dad Tone say, “How about a walk instead.” (My secret goal is to
suddenly turn into one of those people who are stressed and go for a run!) J
Today on the last day of 2013, I am going to go
through my pantry and fish out any hidden food and purge it, it wasn’t for the
kids anyway…it was for me! And ask my sister to be my sponsor. Then I can
be hers but I haven’t had to field any crazy phone calls from her…so…hmm…
What are your triggers and what is your plan for dealing with
them?
