It’s not how many times you fall that matters, but how many times you get back up.

We had a wonderful week-end, although it was rainy and cold outside.  I’m fully back on the  no sugar/flour course … I feel so much better when those two substances aren’t in my food.  I’ve been doing some reading, trying to clarify what I know works for me.

The truth is that the only other time I lost significant amount of weight was  when I significantly restricted sugar and flour in my everyday eating.  I still remember the day I ate a cookie for the first time since I’d stopped having them whenever I wanted.  At first it didn’t taste good at all (much too sweet), but I persevered and ate another and another until it did taste good.

And that was the beginning of this last weight gain.

So I’ve been wavering between thinking that I can’t live without *sweets so should just have them in moderation (which works for the first bite, but then I want more and more and more), and recognizing that I can’t eat just one.  At least not now at this stage in my journey.

*I say sweets, but mean anything with flour and sugar which includes my great-aunt’s yummy biscuits.  I would have been okay if I hadn’t eaten any, but just one unleashed the carb monster in me that had me white-knuckling in order not to shove more and more in my mouth.  The fact that I restricted how many I ate was due more to my not wanting to appear to be a pig in front of everybody than to my powers of restraint.

I’ve never smoked, but I’ve seen the expression on smoker’s faces when they inhale that first cigarette and I’m sure that was the expression on mine when I inhaled that one biscuit.

One of the books talked about restricting carbs.  And that just because you fall off the wagon (start eating carbs again) doesn’t mean you have to stay off.  It may take me a lot of times to learn to say no, but learn I will.  And I will learn that just because I want them doesn’t mean I should have them.  That cravings don’t equal need.

Because I know several truths about myself.  One is that when I don’t have flour/sugar in my eating, I don’t have cravings and I have tons of energy.  The other is that right now there is no moderation in my life with flour/sugar.  None.  So the third truth is that I am giving up flour/sugar.

I just need to remember that as long as I avoid that first bite I can do this.