It's ok

I had quite the revelation this morning and it hit me so hard upside my head, it may have actually changed my entire life.  I know that sounds pretty profound, but it was just two little words "It's OK".  Well how can those two little words change someone's whole life....let me explain....

First let me give you a background of my life to this point....I'll try to keep it brief.  Every time I made a mistake whether it was something I ate or something I did, etc I was always scolded by SOMEONE.  "C'mon Becky you can do better than that!"  "Why would you do that?!?!"  "I can't believe you ate that much!"  "No wonder you're so fat!"  "You need to work harder" "You need to try harder" "Should you be eating that?" and all I heard was "You are not good enough"  "You don't try hard enough" "You keep messing up".  I NEVER recall any kind of positive reinforcement in my life from anyone and if there was any it was VERY scarce.  Of course I'd identified this a long time ago through therapy, etc and had vowed to NOT do that to my own children and to try to eliminate as many people as possible that DO do it.

So you all know I have a private group on Facebook.  Just me and my good friend and we confide in each other, share our goals, share our slips, and celebrate our NSVs together and so many times I've said I was pissed because I ate something I shouldn't have or didn't make it to the gym as many days as I'd wanted or didn't feel like I worked as hard as I should've and her response was "and guess what?  It's ok".  So at first I wondered if this was her condoning my behavior and kind wished she'd said something a little more motivating or gave some encouragement to do better next time, but nope just "it's ok".

Fast forward to last night while I was making dinner.  I opened the cupboard and there was a 1/4 of a bag of Mike and Ike's left from the movie I took the kids to last week.  I ate them.  I did it.  I ate every single one and they were DELICIOUS!  However, then the guilt crept in and instantly I had the urge to throw in the towel, give up on my goals and devour every piece of sugar I could find in the house to get rid of it and then in the back of my head I heard my wiser than wise friend say "Guess what?  It's ok".  Almost instantly the craving to hunt for chocolate and inhale it faster and with more power than the Dyson in my porch was lifted. It's ok, It's ok. It's ok....it played over and over and over again in my head and it turned from "it's ok" to "it will BE ok" and finally in to "YOU are ok" and I went about my evening.  Ate my grilled fish and roasted veggies I'd prepared for dinner and didn't think about that handful of candy I'd eaten again.  There was no shame, there was no guilt, there was no emotional attachment to the candy or the drive to "show it a thing or two" by eating ALL of the sugar in the house.  I was ok and I survived a handful of candy.  And I AM ok!

For once in my life I feel like I am not a bad person for a few pieces of candy.  It will NOT destroy my life, it will not make me gain back the 180 lbs I've lost so far, it will not wreak havoc on my efforts thus far.  IT. WILL. BE. OK. and just knowing that helps me curb the desire for more.

My biggest NSV of the week, month, year, or my lifetime is that I feel like I'm a step closer to concurring emotional eating and THAT is an amazing feeling!

Happy Hump Day ALL!