Putting Things in Perspective

First, a confession: I blew it yesterday. I did not get as much exercise as I needed to hit my goal, and I went over my calories by a good clip. Last night was the dreaded family night, and I'm ashamed to say that dinner, when I entered it into the tracker this morning, was just over 1200 calories. Yep...I had enough calories in one meal to get a person through an entire day. I koew going in that Thursdays are going to be bad, so I usually "budget" my daily calories for them, but I was hungry all day yesterday! I ate healthy, satisfying food at breakfast, lunch, and two snack times. Which meant that, where I normally have a "calorie bomb" for dinner on Thurs. and stay in my ranges, I was nowhere close yesterday.

In the past, that would have completely and totally derailed me. In fact, had it happened just a week or two ago, It would have sent me back to my old ways for at least three or four days (and quite possibly longer).

But, again, things are DIFFERENT this time. So, when I started bemoaning the fact that I was behind on my exercise, and had blown my diet, and was never going to be skinny now, and woe was me, the first thought that crossed my mind was "you are not behind."

I wanted desperately for that to be true, so I took a minute to really *think* about the situation, and to evaluate where I was at. I knew I was starting to slip off track, and I desperately wanted to hang on, so I went back to my trackers and looked at the week as a whole.

That one, simple action really put things in perspective for me. First, I subtracted the minutes/calories burned of exercise I'd done this week from my weekly totals. Then I divided the numbers by 2, since it's Friday, to get a picture of how much work I needed to do today and tomorrow. To my pleasant surprise, I only have to add 10 minutes and 150 calories burned to each day in order to make up for what I missed. I've been in the habit of taking the weekend off from my workouts, but with work back in session, Saturday workouts make sense, anyway.

That gave me a much needed boost, but I was still lamenting yesterday's dinner. To fix it, I started by looking at what exactly I had eaten vs. what was available, and the ways in which I'd made good (if not perfect) choices. I had a homemade burger, baked beans, chocolate lava cake, and ice cream. There were also chips and potato salad available, but I passed that up. I could have eaten the burger without cheese, or forgone dessert, but I *love* cheese, chocolate, and ice cream, and I cannot imagine leading any "lifestyle" that doesn't include them in moderation. I ate ONE burger, a single serving of beans, and half the amount of dessert I would have taken just three weeks ago. So, all in all, I made good choices.

To prove to myself that I didn't blow everything to pieces from one day of high calorie foods, I multiplied the top of my calorie range by 7 and then subtracted my end totals for sun-thurs. The amount of calories left for the remaining two days was ABOVE those ranges, which means that, just like with the exercise, I'm not behind at all.