Petit Choices

So I’ve been bumping along this week, not quite in the zone and anxious about it.

I’ve exercised, yes – well, four days instead of my usual five. But I’ve also eaten, and not all that carefully. Out to dinner on Wednesday. Out to dinner on Thursday. A few extra snacks here and there. Friday I scale-hopped in the middle of the day (I know, I know: what was I thinking?) and saw 10 stone 10. Not pretty. Presumably that’s probably about 10 stone 7 (147 lbs) if I weighed myself first thing in the morning, which is about four to five pounds above what I was pre-binge.

I guess it could be worse, but I can feel it and see it. Yesterday I stopped by a friend’s birthday drinks and felt like I had muffin top above my jeans. Then I had to squeeze – and I do mean squeeze – into a fancy dress outfit that fit perfectly fine a few weeks ago.

It’s not a nice feeling.

And yet this morning what did I do? I went to brunch with a friend and ordered a brie and cranberry panini and then had one of his pancakes with syrup. (I didn’t touch my chips, though.) Hardly a disastrous meal, but I broke a couple of rules here: One is that I don’t go to brunch (the combination of breakfast and lunch does my head in, thinking about what I think I should be “allowed” to eat since hey, it’s technically two meals) and two is that I don’t eat off other people’s plates.

Yes, rules are made to be broken (occasionally) and seeing as I’ve spent the day trying to decide what I’m allowed to eat after that brunch (in other words, my head filled with food) I may think twice about doing it again. But in the past, this is where diet downfalls have started for me: In the petit decisions (can anyone tell I just read French Women Don’t Get Fat when I was in Paris?). Sometimes in the past I have leaped off the diet tightrope with a massive bellyflop, but other times it has been a few tiny stumbles after another, and I never quite regain my footing.

Tonight I am having a Chinese takeaway, something I’ve not had for a year, I think. It is a caloric meal, but it is a single meal, not a binge. Tomorrow I will wake up, have breakfast, go to Pilates (well, hopefully run to Pilates, which has been my routine of late), and then probably meet a friend at a restaurant that has a good choice that doesn’t require too much thought. One foot in front of the other. I can do this.