Do something Friday

Can you predict the future?

I bet you can.

1. What is the outcome of not packing your lunch when you know you have an afternoon of meetings? 

2. Of not prepping the veggies you bought on Sunday so they are washed, cut, and containered for easy use during the week?

3. Keeping a box of cookies in the pantry (at eye level)?

4. Buying two tubs of icecream because you never know when someone is going to stop by?

Ok -- here are my guesses -- you can see how close I get ....


1. If' you're like many, that means a quick trip to the fast food joint du jour to pick up something and eating it fast so you can get back to the office to prep for those meetings (or return a bunch of calls you know you won't have time for later).....  Resulting in stomachache, guilt, extra calories and the food still didn't bring you any joy (partly because it's low quality and partly because you ate it so fast, it doesn't matter how good it was (or wasn't) because you didn't taste it anyway)

2. Next time you have time to prep those veggies, there not going to be fresh looking and you'll feel frustrated because you've wasted more money....again.

3. Every time you go to the pantry because you need something (or you're mindlessly looking for something to graze on), you eat 3 and by the afternoon, the cookies are gone.  Leading you to have to hide the bag in the trash because you don't want your kids realizing you've eaten the whole thing (without sharing) in one day.  (and you're guilty and frustrated because you ate the whole bag...again.)

4. You eat most (if not all) of the ice cream you justified buying because you thought you may have "guests".  You feel frustrated and guilty that there might be something wrong with you because you failed the will-power test (again).

If I'm even remotely close -- make some actionable changes.

Prep your veggies on the weekend.  It's a worthwhile investment of 45 minutes.  You will save that much time in the first two days you don't have to "run out and pick something up".  (Shoot....you'll probably gain that much productive time by just not having to feel guilty about the money you wasted on the rotten veggies).

If cookies are an absolute must, atleast put them higher in the pantry so you don't have to face them down every time you open the door.  If you don't see it easily, you won't crave it as easily.

Your guests won't die if they don't have ice cream (given the national statistics, it is likely they should send you a thank you note for not forcing them to eat calories they don't need!)  If you really need ice cream, buy one container of the kind you really LOVE and serve it in the smallest bowls you have (esspresso cups work great for this!).  If it's the really high quality ice cream, it's so rich a little goes a long way in the satisfaction realm.  

People who have worked at managing their weight for any length of time are really good at predicting their future.  You know what's likely to happen.  Don't think things are going to be different this time if you haven't made any changes.

Remember the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results.