I ate a brownie the other day.
And this event elicited a comment from one of the people I was with.
The implication was that, since I’ve lost weight and am helping others lose weight as well, I should not be eating brownies.
(If I had deprived myself of that brownie, there’s a possibility that, after this meeting, I would have driven directly to the grocery store, bought an entire pan of brownies from the bakery department, and eaten them all in my car on the way home. However, in the meeting, I chose not to deprive myself of that brownie. Instead, I enjoyed it, relished it, took pleasure in it, and felt grateful that someone had taken the time to prepare it.)
The comment about my brownie-eating activity, to me, felt like sabotage. It didn’t feel good. But it did get me to thinking about what I really wanted. The comment, which was something I did not want, pointed me in the direction of something I did want. And what I want is what most people who deal with weight issues want.
We want support. We want encouragement. We want recognition and acknowledgement for our efforts and for our successes and for our choices.
For me, allowing myself to thoroughly enjoy that brownie in the presence of others was victory. If I had eaten a pan of brownies in the isolation of my car, that would have felt like failure.
For me, taking pleasure in the warm, chewy, chocolaty, brownie goodness was a cause to celebrate. Eating cold brownies from a grocery store would have caused me to revert to old patterns of thinking.
And sometimes, when the people in our lives don’t provide us with the support we think we want in the manner in which we want it, it becomes important for us to celebrate ourselves. It becomes important for us to encourage ourselves. It becomes important to turn up the volume on saying kind things to ourselves, on treatingourselves well, and on loving ourselves.
If you feel that, on occasion, you encounter sabotage, look that sabotage as a clear and direct signal for you to treat yourself like the precious creature you are.
Up Next: ‘Tis More Blessed to Receive than to Give
