right back on the bandwagon

I have an terrible way of coping with my own failures. Especially when it comes to dieting or "lifestyle changes" - I'm trying to make my good eating habits stick around longer than a month or two - hence the "lifestyle changes."

However, I've had several *high five* moments in the last few weeks!

I have to tell you where I started or my accomplishments will seem very trivial. In the past {and I'm talking 15 years kind of past} whenever I was on any type of diet or healthy eating kick or exercise routine one tiny little slip up could cause the entire thing to come crashing down around me. If I was doing Weight Watchers and went over my points, even for one day, I would instantly declare the entire week to be a waste AND THEN go get a milkshake because "these aren't allowed on my diet so I'd better get as many as I can before I start that diet again." It never mattered what program I was on. You could just as easily replace Weight Watchers with South Beach or The Zone {or probably anything else you can think of}.

The same thing happened with exercise. If I missed a day/routine that I had been planning for that week, I just skipped the rest of the week and wrote it off as another failed attempt.

Well, I did great sticking to my plans all through July. I was eating what I was suppose to be eating, my cravings had all but stopped, and I was being rewarded with (small) decreases on the scale. I had the motivation of our cruise to keep me going so strong that whole month. But the cruise became a catch-22. I was so motivated to stay on plan to get me to the cruise, but I KNEW I wouldn't have the kind of food control while on the cruise that I would need to stay on plan during the trip. {And really who wants to be completely strict while on vacation?!} So I gave myself a break. I didn't completely write the week off... I stuck to plan for breakfast & lunch, but ate more like everyone else for dinner. I still didn't go overboard at dinner but I did have dessert most nights.

The best part was that when we came home I jumped right back to being on plan. I didn't give it another thought. I didn't give myself a grace period or promise to do it the next week or make excuses, I just got back to my "lifestyle changes."

Yesterday I had a meeting at school and the Principal ordered lunch for everyone. Of course it wasn't something that was on plan for me so I ate a little {it was my first time meeting these people, and I didn't feel like explaining my food choices to them the first day} and tried not to feel too guilty. But as soon as that meal was over, I got right back on plan. I didn't throw away the rest of the day simply because of one little glitch in the system.

It's not much, but I'm proud of it!

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Make sure you check out the end of my post from Monday. I'm doing a giveaway of some of my favorite things!