Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail.

I'm in the middle of hell month at the resort.  13-14 hour work days, with no days off from the beginning of May until June 1. I'm tired, hungry, cranky and craving chocolate and ice cream like crazy. I've given in quite a few times, and binged, which makes me feel awful in so many ways.  Today was no exception.  My energy levels plummet, my body aches from the inflammation that sugar causes, I feel like a loser for giving in.

So what do I do when I jump, screaming, off the wagon? In the past I've thrown in the towel, declared "FUCK IT, what's the point, I've already lost the battle" and jumped right into a bucket of ice cream.

At the resort, we have a small convenience store. I am usually the person to run the store, as I process bookings, answer the phone, do the mountains of laundry that never seem to end, and deal with customers and guests. The problem with the store is that when I stand in my usual spot at the counter, I have shelves of chocolate  behind me, ice cream freezers to my left, a chip rack to my right, and candy bins on the counter in front of me.  I'm like a recovering crack addict selling crack, while being surrounded by crack.

I'm just shaking my head thinking about it.  I have to prepare myself for battle every day when I go to work.  I am often surround by my drug from 8 o'clock in the morning, until 8 o'clock in the evening, 7 days a week from mid-May until September.  Every morning I have to start from scratch, "TODAY, I'm not eating any junk food".  But then I miss breakfast or lunch because I have to clean a cabin or mow the lawn, then I am ravenous, and I reach for the closest/fastest thing to stuff in my face. I'll reach for a chocolate bar, while in my head the bitchy voice is saying, "what the hell are you doing, you are fat enough, you don't want to look like a sausage, do you?" But the bastard voice on the other shoulder is telling me, "It's ok, you really want it, you will feel better, your blood sugar is probably really low, it's ok, you know you want it, you need your sugar fix, just one isn't going to hurt, comeonyouknowyouwantojustgivein"  I hate both of those voices. They are mean and nasty, and don't get me anywhere. I need to find a new voice that is full of reason, compassion, and wisdom.

So today I lost the battle again, and I'm judging myself like crazy.  But I am eternally hopeful (Did you know that hope was the last 'evil' to fly out of Pandora's box? I think about this sometimes) so tomorrow I will try again. I try to treat my tomorrows as a sort of Tabula Rasa, with no expectations or judgement to start out my day. But sometimes it's hard not to judge myself right off the hop before the day has even started; I've fucked up so many times that I sometimes feel like the recovering drug addict in the family who continues to fail everyone. Except that I'm only failing myself.

What do I do about this? My dear Sister-Friend is probably pulling out her beautiful hair and screaming at the screen as she reads this, "HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU!!!??? FUCKING MEAL PREP!!! AAAAAARGH!!!" Or as they say in the modified keto group I follow on FB, "Failing to plan is planning fail".  And I agree, wholeheartedly - I need to make a plan of attack for this battle, but for some reason, I can't bring myself to do it. It boggles my mind, this tendency to self sabotage. I'll be sitting in front of a glass of water, dehydrated, but I won't drink it. Because I know I need to. This stubborn streak, as my husband pointed out this morning, does not do me any good. He thinks I'm contrarian, simply to assert my independence.

I know where this need to assert my independence comes from; it comes directly from a shitty childhood, in shitty foster homes, dealing with shitty adults who felt the need to assert their dominance on me in very inappropriate and shitty ways. So now I assert my dominance over me, in very shitty ways. I have to do things my way, even when I know that I'll fail.  It needs to stop. I've proven I have dominance over myself and over my life, now I need to re-align that dominance.  This shit needs to stop.

So where do I go from here?  Perhaps some therapy (I want to look at EMDR in another blog post) to deal with the shit.  Work with my lovely husband (who absolutely wants to support me in any way that he can) to pre-plan our food for the summer. Stop judging myself before I even get in the door of the store. Get my staff to run the store while I work outside.  Go hit the punching bag when I need my sugar fix.  There are many possible solutions, I just need to figure out how to convince myself to drink the glass of water before I get dehydrated.

AAAAND I need to stop judging myself.