WooooHoooo

The scale gifted me today with a lovely surprise - 198 lbs. That is, 198 with no change. I've been doing the ounces up and down since 199.8 last week (mostly up, as in 200.4, 202.2...but no more new century sightings until today. I've been quite clean and sane with the eating, though last night I had 4 chocolate chip cookies and then some Ghiradelli's chocolate squares with caramel oozing out the centers that I'd never have eaten had I not had the cookies, but I figured, WTF? One of those moments I wrote about yesterday...done well for a bit, have a treat that expands into more. But as my overindulgences go, this was small potatoes, and I don't mean chips.

I had the cookies at a meeting - they looked awesome, and were actually worth whatever their calorie counts totalled. It was going to be one cookie. One was good, so another and so on... The rest of the meeting after eating the 4, I was thinking, "well, since I had THEM, I might as well stop at CVS on the way home and GET SOMETHING ELSE. And so the Ghiradelli's, which by the way are STUPENDOUS. As I was carrying them to the register, I thought about getting some chips, and nuts, or something else. Then a miracle happened. I decided that I only wanted the chocolate, and that yes, it was more than I needed, but I could minimize the damage by just having what I wanted. It wasn't my typical habitual binge mentality.

And this morning, finally broke through to a new low. I'm grateful, and know that doing the sweets eating once in awhile in a limited way isn't a bad thing. I just can't do it all the time, or even 50% of the time. This is new behavior, and better than that, my thought in the moment last night of knowing I only wanted the chocolate was new thinking. Maybe my wiring is being rerouted a little! New ruts being laid down in my gray matter that will slowly lessen the old habitual circuits of thought. Whatever is happening, it's working. I've been asking for help and it's coming in the form of good supportive caring people, new patterns of exercising and eating, and what feels like divine intervention. Ask and ye shall receive. And I can say that this is the best incentive to stay the course.