Wow....love your passion!  Wonderful journey you're on....thanks for sharing.

Thanks you 2,apprecite your comments

Ummm, Sherrie....just as an innocent bystander listening to what you are saying, Girl, you are hanging around with the wrong crowd of sabotagers.  At a WW meeting of all places!!!  You might want to start hanging with a crowd that won't validate your failures.  That's why you have US!!!  We want you to be successful so badly that we got no problem telling you to, "Step away from the ice cream!" 

Mwah, Mary

Cmon, Mary....don't tell me you've never experienced that way of thinking in your battle of weight loss?  I think it's much more unusual to have never thought that way then to have experienced it and realized it's a self sabotager!!

Wow, now ain't I glad I asked the question...very inciteful conversation ladies!  Sherrie believe it or not, this particular sabotager was a thought process that never occurred to me.  Not that I didn't have my own personal set of self sabotagers, I just didn't have this particular one!  ;-) 

Now it seems odd to me that I didn't because both of my parents rewarded their children with goodies...a lot.  Cooking "special" was my mother's way of showing she loved us, but then again she was also feeding her own addiction so these meals were a way of hiding what she was going through.  My dad was in the Army and gone most of the time so when he was home it was "Candy Time"!!!

I guess I never thought in terms of cheating, I was an emotional eater out of control so I was more in tune with what was triggering my emotional eating.  Come to find out, it was hormones that were my emotions worst enemy, once they were fixed, I 'mostly' got fixed.  Mostly being the operative word...this is a lifelong journey, afterall!

Mary       

Thanks for getting my juices going this morning.....I mean getting my thinking process awake.......

Here's my 2 cents.

First I would encourage Skylar and Gloop to reframe the word "Cheat".  If you as grown adults with the ability to make decisions decide to have a Snickers Bar as your mid-day snack instead of your normal BP on celery (or something like that) then you are not "CHEATING" you made a decision that's all.  If you truly feel you are cheating then I'd say you are feeling some level of quilt....maybe you feel you cheated yourself...??

My thing is all about making choices.  Of course when I was losing there were a few occasions that I ate something that was not the best choice I could have made but I quickly made up for it so the "net/net" of the equation was not too bad.  But I stood by my decision whatever it was.

I think this is one of the big things that helped me overcome my food issues and helped me to change my relationship with food.  Food is not the enemy.

The other point I want to make is by saying "because you were GOOD, you can cheat" again implies you are getting ready to do something bad. 

I think re-framing thoughts removing all the negatives around/about food will help you in the long run.

When you feel good about losing weight and want to celebrate that you've stuck to your plan for X amount of weeks I say go for it....but maybe call it a TREAT instead of a cheat.  As long as you limit it and don't go overboard it seems "legal" to me....lol.

Hey I've never hidden the fact that as I was on my weight loss journey (and I have shed 194.6 lbs as of yesterday)  I had 1 free day every week during that journey.  PLEASE note that I did not go out and eat 2 Big Mac's or bag of Oreo's on that day, I still stuck to my basic plan but I added in some extra treats that i don't normally eat during the week.....like maybe I'd eat the small bag of baked lays chips, or have a small slice of my favorite pie (pecan pie), or 2 Oreo's.

I don't want to sound "preachy" and I hope I didn't come across sounding nasty......

Well that's my 2cents.....
TTFN
Ruth