As I continue to work on figuring out this whole maintaining thing, I’ve come to realize that this is never going to end.

I mean I know I tell myself and you all that all the time, but it’s when a bad day hits and you have to make that decision that it’s really, seriously, no doubt for life that this reality really smacks you in the face.

Yes Virginia, I have bad days.  I know a lot of peeps who see someone who got to their goal as someone that must do everything perfectly.  They must always stay in their Smartpoint range or whatever their current plan is, they always work out, and of course are always eating healthy food.

I’m here to tell you plain and simple – that’s bullshit.  We are human.  We are going to mess up.

It’s how you handle those not so good days that will determine if you will be successful.  Do you say screw it, I was bad yesterday so I might as well be bad tomorrow?  Do you beat yourself up over and over for being weak?

Or do you realize it, own it, and try your best to change it?

I mean think about it.  Is eating bad for one day, or even more as terrible as like killing a puppy?  That’s silly, right?  I know I’ve beat the hell out of myself over and over in the past for not being “perfect”, for not being strong enough to do this program as intended.

Well it’s just as silly to beat yourself up over going overboard on vacation or enjoying yourself at a party or just plain and simple having a bad freaking day.

BUT, and this is a huge, all in caps screamy BUT, you can’t be so relaxed about it that your bad day goes into another bad day and another bad day until you are back to your old habits.

It’s a slippery slope and you need to hold on with both hands so you don’t slide down.

So if I have a bad day, and I’ve had plenty, I made a deal with myself.  I would track it – track it all as best as I can.  With the new App there is no reason not to track it.  I mean there may be point differences here and there, but at least you are putting it down.

I had a day a couple of weeks ago where everything just went horribly awry.   I forgot my breakfast and lunch that day.  You see I get up at 3 am to go to work and I’m not exactly with the program before I leave for work.  I usually have all my overnight oats stocked in my fridge at work and two or three lunches.

Meal prep is my superpower.

Anyway I had worked a ton of days in a row and my schedule was kicked to the curb.  I was tired and cranky and half way to work when I realized I didn’t have my food.

I DIDN’T HAVE MY FOOD.

At least I had my coffee, because without that things would get really ugly. But I did have an individual Fage yogurt in my fridge.  That would do for breakfast, right?

Wrong.  Without having my oats and blueberries I was hungry again in an hour, with nothing to eat.

Breakfast:  5 Smartpoints

So basically the only thing available was crap in a vending machine.  I toughed it out and made a plan for lunch, which quickly went straight into panic as I realized my emergency frozen mac and cheese from Trader Joe’s was not in my freezer.

I had used it when I stayed late and forgot to replenish.  Opps.

Looking at my app and thinking about how much time I actually had for lunch I decided to go with Wendy’s Apple Pecan Grilled Chicken Salad. I freaking love that and it couldn’t be that bad, right?

Lunch:  18 Smartpoints

So yeah, the salad was 12 and the dressing was 6.  Crazy, right?  At least I wasn’t hungry anymore, but I think since I let myself get to that point my mindset was screwed.

I didn’t have my usual snack that I eat before the commute home, and I started to get hungry again.  It had been a bad flippin’ day and now I was hungry and tired and just couldn’t wait to get home.

Dinner:  12 Smartpoints

So I could have ate the Steak and Cabbage I had made for my lunch as soon as I got home, but instead made Pizza.  There’s nothing wrong with that, but I would have been better off eating as soon as I could reheat something rather than waiting for something to cook when I was already hungry and cranky.

So I had one smartpoint left for the day.  I still had about half my weeklies so I had one of those Weight Watcher chocolate pretzel mini bars while my pizza was cooking.  I don’t eat those a lot because I would rather spend my Smartpoints on food, and quite frankly they make me want more junk.

Snack (pre feeding frenzy):  2 Smartpoints

I ate my pizza and just wasn’t satisfied.  Usually I am FULL when I made one of those because I load it up with veggies.  I used more cheese this time too.

It was too late.  I was headed off the rails.

So I decided I could have another one of those little chocolate things, right?

Mini Bar: 2 Smartpoints

Well that was good, and I have my weeklies, so another wouldn’t be all that bad.

Mini Bar:  3 Smartpoints (because after 1 they become more points!)

As I collapse on the couch I look at my treadmill.  I was 2,000 steps from my usual 10,000 that day.  I force myself to get up and on my way to the treadmill I decide that some ice cream would settle my stomach before I put a mile or two in.

Skinny Cow No Sugar Added Ice Cream Sandwich:  4 Smartpoints

That was good but man wouldn’t something salty taste good now?

Cape Cod Potato Chips:  13 Smartpoints

Yep, 13 freaking Smartpoints worth of chips.

Now here’s where the difference between successful people and people that fail happens.  Did I measure out 13 Smartpoint worth of chips?

Nope I had that bag and was just eating.  It was during that time that a little voice in my head said “What the EF are you doing???”

So I stopped.  Usually when I buy those chips I immediately portion them out in baggies, but of course I didn’t take time to do that when I first got home from the store because of all the hours that I worked.

I remembered the promise I made to myself about tracking everything, looked on the bag for how much a serving weighed, dumped the rest of them on my scale and figured out the freakin’ points.

Then I tracked all my other snacks.

60 Smartpoints.  Mostly in JUNK.

I went over my weeklies by 5, but I tracked it.  I stopped and purposefully thought about what I had just did.

Yeah, that was not good, but it made me think of something one of my former Weight Watcher leaders used to say all the time.

A bad day on Weight Watchers is probably better than a good day before.

If I wasn’t on WW I guarantee you I would have hit that vending machine mid morning.  I would have got a burger and fries for lunch, and instead of making a 12 point pizza  I would have ordered one that would probably amount to about 2,398 Smartpoints.

And I would have ate it all.  Keeping it real peeps.

I can’t even imagine how many Smartpoints I would have eaten.

That’s not to mean that I get to let myself off the hook.  There’s the real difference.  You have to find that line between beating yourself up and saying “That’s okay!”.

So I realized what I did.

I owned my mistakes.

I did my best to change it by restocking my emergency stuff at work in case this happens again.

And it will, because life ain’t easy folks.

Most importantly:  I didn’t walk/run on the treadmill for 3 hours to try and make up for it.  Hell at that point I felt like complete crap.  I didn’t starve the next few days to make up for the calories I had consumed.

What I did do was get right back to it the next day.  Right back to My 30 Point Life.

That’s what winners do.

If this is in the vein of your way of thinking we have a pretty awesome Facebook group going.

Join my Weight Watchers Tough Love Group on Facebook.

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