Failure?

Failure...? Or learning experience? I guess that depends on how I proceed from here.

It's Thursday. That means mandatory community dinner in the Christian community where I live. As 6:00 approached, I felt more and more pressure -- still feeling my engine revving, for whatever reason, and my brain going through the list of foods that would stop it from revving and give me some blessed, sedated relief. The #1 contender was a big bowl of popcorn with a bunch of olive oil and nutritional yeast. Good food, but not low-cal, and I knew I didn't have the calories left in my daily tally to swap it out for the spinach and tomato sautee I had planned for dinner.

Spinach and tomatoes, sauteed in olive oil and sprinkled with nutritional yeast, is pretty satisfying stuff and would probably have done the trick and calmed me a bit -- I initially decided to "stay the course," and headed into the kitchen to cook my dinner.

Problem: no clean pans. Last straw. I grabbed the popcorn pan (always on top of my stove), and in five minutes I was on the couch, stuffing oily popcorn into my mouth as fast as I could.

It worked. I felt better. Walked over to community dinner, not knowing exactly what I would do but hoping I would *not* end up with a piled-up plate of comfort food. Hoping...as if I didn't really have any control over it. Maybe a *little* more in-control than that sounds.

The room was just as crowded, noisy and chaotic as it always is. The menu was Sloppy Joes and potato chips. There was a table of fruit available, but it didn't look even a little bit appealing to me. One of my neighbors greeted me with bad news: Child Protective Services is contacting her because her son had a headache and told the school nurse it was because his mom had "hit him with a bowl." True -- but he didn't mention she was making dinner, turned suddenly and hit him accidentally.

I did my best to listen to my friend's troubles, looked around for a seat...and decided to bail. Probably best. Maybe by next week I'll be stronger, more normaled-out.

I've just adjusted my food diary online, and I'm still in weight-loss range, calorically (barely). I need to start fasting now anyway, for some lab tests tomorrow morning. I'm okay.

Maybe I need to make up some of this popcorn and store it in a big canister or something, doling it out a cup at a time as a snack...? Or maybe not yet. Not while I'm still tempted to eat large quantities of it.

One big lesson out of this: stay the course and see if the planned food does what's needed.

Another: don't tolerate situations where I think I need to break my food plan in order to carry on. Instead, make my health the highest priority, even if it means I fall short on some other commitments for awhile.

One more: I need to exercise more. I think it will even out the chemical changes, and will give me more "calorie space" when this stuff comes up.

The biggest lesson is yet to be learned as I live it out: Don't quit. Don't overreact. This isn't even really a failure, since I'm still within weight loss range today. Just do the next thing. :)