Fantasizing is Not Cheating

I’m talking donuts here. Big round chocolate covered donuts. I’ve been dreaming about them for days.

It all started back in August when Elle and I went to Illinois to the National Junior Disability Championship. We were lectured on the eating habits of athletes. Elle was told that if she wanted to be faster she was going to have to drop the pounds.

At that point, I was going to the gym several times a week and Elle was racing many miles a day. We both were in good shape. Rarely did we drink soda, we never ate fast food, meat was not in our vocabulary and I thought we were eating healthy.

Knowing her aspirations for a successful racing career, I said we would lose weight together. I remembered a trainer at the gym telling me to allow myself one day a week for sweets. He said I needed to shock my body and not let my body fall into a routine. I needed to change things up in order to see results. Well, my thinking then was, I work out so I can eat whatever I want.

I told Elle we were going to have sweets only once a week. I didn’t think this would be a big deal because we weren’t eating a lot of junk. Boy was I wrong! We came home, started our new diet and the first night after dinner I craved everything from mint chocolate chip ice-cream to potato chips. Technically chips weren’t sweets but I knew better and included my love for Cape Cod chips and tortilla chips in my sweets category.

For the first week, I had to have sugarless pudding just so the craving would subside. I looked with great anticipation to sweet day and started my morning with a Toblerone in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. Heaven! The day after sweet day, I would find myself staring into our pantry thinking, I didn’t want any stinking herbal tea to help calm me before bed. I wanted a giant banana split with gobs of chocolate sauce pooling in the bowl.

The first few weeks were tough and the scale only dropped two pounds. I was not happy. However, I did quickly realize how much sugar and junk food was actually in my diet. I had been under the illusion that I was eating well.

Then one morning after about a month of our new journey something wonderful happened. The scale dropped. A week after that I was at my lowest weight ever. I felt stronger, healthier and since it had been over five weeks my desire for sweets declined. In fact I ate less and less sugar on my official sweet days.

Arielle too has tasted success. She has dropped pounds and has become faster. This last 5K she completed she beat last year’s time by over three minutes.

We both feel that we accomplished the challenge of one day a week sweets so we have set our goal higher. I’m going for two weeks and she is going for three. So far, I’ve made it a week and a half but every time I drive by Dunkin Donuts….. MMMMM!

I had been content with the way I was. I never set out to change but life presented me with a challenge and I took it. I’m glad I did because I never would have known the strength I feel now. I would have continued with my habits not realizing what I could be. A door opened.

Yesterday, at the gym I found myself saying to an acquaintance-“I’ve always wanted to try those push-ups you do. I’m kind of afraid I won’t be able to do more than two.” I’ve watched him for months, prop his legs on a bench and do hundreds of push-ups-wondering if I could do the same. Little did I know he was a closet trainer. He had me doing sets of ten push-ups until I had reached one hundred. One hundred push-ups! I was hoping I could do four or five just so I wouldn’t embarrass myself. Soon I was getting a new lecture. This time it was about me not working hard enough at the gym. Apparently, I’m supposed to be in pain or there will be no gain. Today, I’m in pain! My shoulders are throbbing.

Monday, I’ll return for more push-ups and on the seventeenth I will enjoy a chocolate donut because I have discovered that the advice the first trainer gave me two years ago was correct. In order to see results, I must allow for change, even when I’m content.