I was replying to someone's post about a less-than-great food choice, and I thought this was important and wanted to post it for everyone.  I love it when I say something that suddenly makes me see something in a new way!

Lucky for all of us, since none of us are perfect, we don't fail because we make one less-than-perfect food choice.  Just like making one good food choice doesn't mean we succeed.  This journey is a long series of choices. 

I was aware that making one poor food choice would not cause us to fail, but it hadn't occurred to me until now how absolutely little sense it makes that we often think it will, in light of the fact that nobody seems to think making one good food choice means we'll succeed.  I mean, if one good food choice can't make it for us, then one poor choice can break it for us, right?

And luckily, most of us eat multiple times a day, so we get plenty of chances to make good choices!

yeah I catch myself in that line of thinking quite often

Well said.  Yep, its that one bad choice after another that screws us up.

someone posted a while back on the LW board asking why we kept beating ourselves up for not being perfect.  If that worked, we would be perfect by now. 

Very clear, I like what you say.

Perhaps a different flip of the coin, the thought that came to my mind when I read your subject line (perhaps not on topic to your point though) is that a lot of what we do is about MAKING CHOICES

If you don't LIKE your protein and don't take it, that's a choice. (However, some few simply can't keep it down, that's NOT a choice)

If you don't WANT to be thirsty for half an hour after eating, and you CHOOSE to drink with your meals, that's a choice.

Sometimes, I see threads where individuals KNOW what they should do, and they don't do it, and they make it sound like it is NOT a choice. Like somehow "not liking" the flavor of the vitamins makes it okay not to take them, or that "I hate being thirsty" is a good enough reason not to follow the drinking with meals, or "I know that potatos and rice and bread and pasta are slider foods and might make me fat, but when I eat dense protein I'm full forever" ... like choosing easy is the only choice.

CHOICE.... i really feel that word has an enormous power. In our lives we make zilllions of choices. Sometimes we make them over and over and over again, and for some of us that was an integral part of why we got obese. We must exercise the power of choice. if we CHOOSE to break the rules and we KNOW it will result in failure if we never choose differently, we need to OWN that failure. If we CHOOSE to make the right choice, and we make that choice consistently, we also OWN that success.

I choose to follow my carb/sugar guidelines 95% or more of the time. Sometimes I choose not to. I understand that if I don't follow the guidelines, I might dump and I might have RH and I might be faced with both. I own my decision, and I also own the power of getting back on plan, or making one deviation into my new reality. For me it is easy to keep my carb guidelines, but I'm not absolute about it. I can choose to go off plan from time to time, and if I do it with care and forethought, I might even avoid the complications likely to ensue. The important thing is to get back on task.

Being responsible for your own actions and reactions to the world around you is one of the most empowering things in this world. I hold the power, and I do not yield it up to others, or to my excuses (most of the time, I am only human).... but if I own all my actions, I feel stronger in choosing the actions that will work best for me most of the time, and sometimes it's down to me that I choose to go off the rails.

when I lost my mum, it threw me badly. I realized that as much as I normally choose to be a happy, bright, sunny, quirky and yeah, kind and gentle person.... I also had to realize that it is sometimes important to choose to give in to my dark feelings, and give them some temporary power. So long as I don't transfer my "power of attorney" (my responsibility for my own actions) permanently over to my sadness, my desire for sweets, my passion for any one thing... as long as I retain the ultimate authority and don't give it away to others "He caused me to feel ..." or "A feeling of thirs made me..." or the ubiquitous "THEY make me..."

Own it.

And this is probably WAY off your topic Kelly, but I'm sort of in a rambly mood. As always I love the way you put things, your take on things is always valuable to me.

Oh, I think the concept of CHOICE is extremely important.

that's why, when I see people asking things like "When CAN I eat pizza?" or "Are we ALLOWED to drink wine?" I always say "You can eat it whenever you want to.  Do you mean when SHOULD you eat it?"  Or "You are allowed to drink whatever you want.  Do you mean SHOULD you drink wine?"

And we have lots of choices.  Even if I can't keep a particular protein down, it's my choice whether I get a different type of protein or just don't get any protein in at all.  It seems highly unlikely that anyone would be unable to tolerate any kind of protein at all, when there are so many different foods high in protein available.

And if I don't want to be thirsty for half an hour after eating, I could choose to drink.  But there are lots of other choices to.  I could choose to eat something low in salt, that is less likely to make me thirsty.  I could choose to end my meal with a bite of fruit or a spoonful of yogurt, which would help relieve that thirst.  I could choose to suck on a sugar free hard candy or chew sugar free gum, if that helped relieve the thirst.

Usually, we have more than two choices.

I agree wholeheartedly. I really like to read your simple (and not so wordy) responses to some posts that ask clear questions about choice.

To me the most powerful epiphany in my life (and it was in stages over time) was how powerful I could be if I CHOSE to own my choices.

I'd rather feel uncomfortable being unable to "blame" and know that it was more "choice" than hide again under the dubious comfort of giving that power to people, words, commercials, etc.

This doesn't mean that I don't fall into the trap often.

Hubby and I have a GREAt relationship. But it isn't perfect. One of my biggest problems is that I grew up in a sort of "blame everyone else" household. Too often we're having a bt of an argument and I hear the words coming out my mouth, "You make me feel...." and nearly always I'll hold up my hand to interrupt myself, and I'll try to figure out the reality. it might be, "When you talk about going away for a week without me, I feel sad. I know I'll be lonely." He's not MAKING me feel sad and lonely, his actions result in feelings, and those are the ones I choose to give free rein to.

It's hard to escape the blame-game totally, and hard to accept control of your choices. If I drive 50 miles to see a show, and the show is cancelled, I have no choice over it being cancelled, but I do have a choice over whether I go ballistic over it, or accept it as one of those things.

When I'm absolutely perfect at it....will probably be something like 500 years from now. But it's an important part of my own self-knowlege. To understand when something is based on MY choice. And another essential part of the puzzle is that it is OKAY to allow something to upset you. You might KNOW that it is a choice to become infuriated, and you might know that you're granting the person or situation power over you, but that's okay too. Choice is very multi-focal. When mum died, I chose to allow myself the full gamut of emotions. I chose not to button it up inside. I am not comfortable with extended unhappy feelings, and it was hard to actively choose to allow the emotions free reign. When I got to a point, I was also able to choose to put my sunny me forward again. Sometimes it was more a facade than a reality, but in all situations I had the power of choice.

I like being powerful over something!

(and sometimes I choose M&Ms)

You are making complete sense to me.

We can't always control our feelings, I don't think, but that's OK.  We can choose what we do when we have a particular feeling.  If I drove 50 miles to see a show and it was canceled, I would feel disappointed.  And while it's not fun to feel disappointed, I think it makes sense to feel that way sometimes, especially if it was a show I was really looking forward to.  But I get to choose how I behave when I feel disappointed that the show was canceled.  I can say I'm disappointed, I can be quiet for a while on the drive home and think about how much I wanted to see the show, I can yell and scream and the poor person who told me it was canceled (who probably had no control over the cancellation), I can yell and scream at other people who had nothing to do with it, I can drive recklessly because I'm mad, I can think of something else special to do that night like go eat at a nice restaurant, I can plan to see the show another time, and so on.  There are all kinds of options available to me.

Yes, exactly you got it.

Yes, it's not always possible to control our reactions, I get that. But to me that means that I can make a choice how I handle my reaction to bad decisions.

So I try to own my choices, accept my reactions and be powerful.

I choose to be mad sometimes, and then I choose to stop being mad.

And sometimes perhaps it's just the illusion of choice and control.

Well Said

 Thanks for the reminder!! I love it.