Out of control

Welcome January. The month I take down my Christmas tree and actually get my Christmas letters sent (maybe, they are still in a semi-assembled pile). And the month to take back a little bit of control.

November AND December were doozies on both the spending and eating front. Spending I’ll talk about in a later post. Today I’ll talk about my friend, food.

Welcome back, overeating. I hadn’t missed you a bit. Christmas cutout cookie? Don’t mind if I do. Latte? Yes please. With whipped cream? Of course. Massive amounts of cheesy potatoes? I thought you’d never ask. Christmas cutout cookie? Sure, I’ll have another (five). Pie? MMMMMM. Pie.

And thus was my November and December. Between moving, multiple sicknesses making their home in our family, and holiday festivies I fell into some old, bad habits. I would start out each day great. Healthy breakfast. Nourishing lunch. Then somewhere between lunch and bed I’d find cookies and it would spiral downward. One cookie is a treat. Six cookies…overkill. And I told myself “you can take it off in January.”

So it’s January. Five pounds up (it was eight, but I’ve been pretty healthy this week). Still at a healthier weight than I was a year ago. But I’m committed to getting my weight back to where it was…for health (and to be honest, a bit of vanity). The last five are not just “bloat” pounds…you know, the kind that a few days of eating healthy takes away…I already lost those three. The last five are honest to goodness not good for me weight. So I’m on week 2 of my cookie detox. I told myself I wouldn’t punish myself, but the cookies had to go. And I forgot how incredibly HARD sticking to a strict healthy eating plan was. After the weight is gone it’s easy to look back and think “that wasn’t so bad”…but now that I’m living it again it really is incredibly hard. Not impossible, just hard.

So fellow cookie detoxers…take heart. It can be done. It will be done. It isn’t easy. It isn’t fun. And you should find some joy in what’s on your plate. For me, the joy for now is in some really yummy butternut squash soup and not a frosted snowman.