Snowball!

Anyone ever heard of the snowball effect? Anyone ever lived the snowball effect? Anyone just occasionally feel like a giant snowball, both growing out of control and dizzy as you hurtle downhill? Of course we’ve all been there, for one reason or another. Everything is going just fine, thank you, and then — wham — suddenly it’s not.

Yesterday, if you’d asked me how this healthy life journey was going, I’d have said, It’s great! I feel well; I feel confident. I’m in control of where I’m going; I chart my own course. That’s a lot of semi-colons, but stick with me. Today, I got up early on a Sunday because I had a training class from 8-5. It’s a pre-requisite for taking my newly-minted Brownies overnight camping later this month, and while I wasn’t altogether looking forward to spending a full day of my weekend at a training, I wasn’t dreading it or anything either. And it was fine. We cooked over a Dutch oven and a propane grill and set up a tent and I totally failed the knots lesson. After the square knot, I was pretty much a washout. But — and this was in no way a fault of the training but all on me — I came home realizing that I have a lot to do in the next couple weeks. My daughter’s birthday party is next weekend and I have multiple lists I haven’t ticked through for that. And then the following weekend is Girl Scout camping. We’ve never done an overnight troop event before, plus camping requires planning for a lot of hypotheticals. It requires organization, which has never been my strong suit, and, as presented by today’s training, a good deal of liability before you get to the heart and the fun and the memories of it. More lists. My thoughts echoed: Undone, undone, undone.

Happily, the training, which was supposed to be from 8-5, ended a little early. Whew. I stopped by the grocery store because I wanted chef salads for dinner. Whether it was the Fritos from the Frito pie I’d had at the training, or the fact that I hadn’t had a bite of the delicious smelling but gluten-filled Dutch-oven gingerbread applesauce cake, when I hit the grocery store, everything bad for me looked good. Not just good, amazing. Amazing in the way that the desert feels about water. Chocolate covered cashews? Cinnamon sugar rice Chex? My personal crack — sour cream and cheddar chips? Yes, yes, YES! my stomach screamed. But cooler heads prevailed. After much debate, I got a package of frozen pure-fruit bars. They looked delicious, and topped out at 60 calories. It’s summer-hot today, and I could imagine bringing them home, the excited exclamations of the children, and the three of us sharing in a moment of camaraderie on the back porch. Those fruit bars were like a beacon to me, and also a symbol of a good choice, and a choice where I wasn’t doing without, but just doing one better.

So… guess what wasn’t in any bag when I got home? Probably a couple things — I find that you rarely end up missing just one item; it’s usually a bag — but I did not come home with those frozen testaments to my iron will and conquered cravings. I came home with … worthless grape tomatoes, and inconsequential ham and practically inedible eggs. Crummy, meaningless, hollow husks of foods that WEREN’T MY FRUIT BARS. Now, if my daughters had this reaction to coming home without a favored treat, they’d be in some hot water. There would be a lesson about using words (oh, I used words, all right … about not using THOSE words), about dealing with disappointment and being lucky to have so many other available choices. I chose none of those paths. And when I was out of canned goods to shelve as noisily as possible, I ate probably a full cup of blueberries, straight out of the container. And then some of those worthless grape tomatoes. And then some cashews. So, so far, maybe this is anger-eating, but it’s still basically on the up and up. But, really, not only did I not get my fruit bars, I didn’t get my sour cream and cheddar potato chips! And I haven’t had a damn cupcake in months! Not even a Cheez-It! But I do have a small hoard of candy. I haven’t had refined sugar in 6 weeks. But today? I had Almond Roca and I had sugared gummy assorted “fruit” slices and some chocolate covered raisins. All right after the other. Not savoring and seeing how my system felt, which had been my eventual sugar re-introduction plan, but mainlined. And then, in an effort to curb it back a notch, I had more cashews, which everyone knows are meant to be eaten as quickly as you can get them into your face.

Snowball. Coming out of the red-hazed food coma, I realized, well basically: Frick. Frick. Frick.

Yesterday, I took more than 15,000 steps (per Fitbit). Nearly 6000 of them at a jog. I finally think I perfected the grainless pancake, and until today, I hadn’t had refined sugar since mid-April. I’ve remained gluten free, which isn’t for everyone but has been huge for me, for six months. Today… I fell off the wagon a little. Not even as broadly as “today.” Today, Sunday, during the 5pm hour, I was a bit of a disaster. But 6pm is minutes away. And I have 6 months behind me to counterbalance the 5pm fiasco. There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell I’m going to turn back now.