“. . . therefore I quote” Dr. Phil

The hostesses of my women’s circle served a pre-Thanksgiving meal for lunch today. And I didn’t have dessert. Let me clarify.

Dessert was a cranberry, pecan, white chocolate pie with a crumble topping.

I can think about it now, because, now, here at home, I have no opportunity to slam a slab down on a harvest paper plate and “taste” it. How did I pass it up? At the time, I was seriously feeling yesterday’s weight training workout and was overwhelming determined not to completely negate all that pain work.

Tonight, as I sat here, thinking about the upcoming holidays and all the “opportunities” for eating stuff that will contribute to “ba donk a donk butt” syndrome, I perused my “health and fitness” shelves for weapons to fortify myself against the onslaught of yuletide Epicureanism.

In my searching, I ran across something from Dr. Phil’s book, The Ultimate Weight Solution: The 7 Keys to Weight Loss Freedom. It doesn’t just pertain to the temptations we’ll all be facing in the next two months, but rather the temptations we face the rest of the year. I read this a number of months ago and it REALLY made sense to me. I had forgotten it until tonight. So the quote for today (or tonight, at this point) is:

“If you’re like most people trying to lose weight, you probably think that you must be disciplined and resolute twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. This is a will-power driven mind-set, however that is doomed for failure. When your willpower runs out of steam, you invariably break your resolutions. In the aftermath, you develop a sense of guilt that only undermines your efforts and makes further weight-control indiscretions all the more likely . . .

. . . Now here’s something to sit still for: you do not have to be strong twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

Read that sentence again: you do not have to be strong twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The truth is, most of the fattening damage you do to yourself is inflicted at very isolated points in time. What this means is that your eating isn’t eternally out of control; it’s out of control only at certain times, during what I call impulse moments. These are brief periods of time, lasting no more than two or three minutes, in which you forget your resolve, you react without thinking, and you break your momentum by caving in to the urge to overeat or binge. Although they seem to come out of the blue, impulse moments are activated by cues in your environment . . .

. . . You can expect to experience four to seven impulse moments during the day. An impulse moment can occur at specific times . . . It can happen when you walk by a bakery and are enticed by the sight and smell of fresh pastries . . .

. . . The best defense for heading off impulses, urges and cravings is twofold. First, you must audit your day in order to figure when impulse moments are most likely to hit. That way, you’re in a better position to avoid them by changing your routine, changing your schedule, or changing your environment.

. . . The second part of your defense involves your response to impulse moments . . . As soon as you feel the impulse, begin engaging, deliberately, in the [an] incompatible substitute.

. . .When you switch gears and start engaging in substitute activities, you change your train of thought, you change your routine, and you change your entire way of coping.

Yes, this requires a little bit of energy, but the good news is that impulse moments pass as quickly as they hit . . .”

It’s that “incompatible substitute” that was such an eye opener for me. The book lists a few examples of incompatible activities, like working in your yard, cleaning something, going for a walk, taking a shower, going to bed . . .

One of my most effective strategies was invented by FirstHusband. We bake a boatload of cookies/cookie bars every year to give away, and we used to taste quite a few – pre and post baking. Now, we pour ourselves a glass of red wine to sip while the smell of cookies permeates the drywall. Chocolate chip cookies and red wine? Temptation gone. Orange juice would probably do it too. But how boring is that?

Any other ideas for “incompatible activities?” I’ll take anything! What activities are incompatible with eating?

“. . . therefore I quote” Thursday: If you have a quote to share from something you’ve read recently, feel free to comment and/or include a link to your own “quote” post.

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