I read this nugget of wisdom in the forums awhile back (I’m paraphrasing because I can’t find the original posting and my memory doesn’t totally work anymore):
Every meal is an opportunity to reach your goal.
In the past when I’ve been trying to drop some weight, there’s a lot of “well, one dinner doesn’t matter” and “just tonight I’ll eat the entire pint of ice cream”. I fail to see any single meal as significant.
And this is true and yet oh so false. Like, sneaky-devil-on-my shoulder-whispering-in-my-ear false.
Of course, it’s true in the obvious sense: one meal will not guarantee either total success or total failure on this journey. There’s always room for compromise and food that’s not necessarily on the “healthy” list. And, I’d be Ms. Cranky Pants if you told me that I could never again eat pizza or chocolate again, for example.
But believing that no single meal is significant can lead me down a rabbit hole of bad choices. It’s a slippery slope — one binge almost always leads me to another. It’s like that first string of bad choices are my gateway drug into a world of indiscriminate cookie, candy and ice cream inhalation.
The lesson for me is that on a consistent basis I have to view every single meal as an opportunity — and by consistently taking advantage of all of these opportunities, I can craft an identity and lifestyle that supports a new, healthy me. You know, that athlete that I want be again.
Every goal is reached by collecting a bunch of good choices and hard work and putting it together like pieces of a puzzle, each a stepping stone.