Damn you soy chai
An annoying "problem" that picked up over Christmas was this obsession with soy chai. I've never had tea with milk. It just tasted weird to me that way. But, while I was back on the East coast, I was hanging out with my sister-in-law and she ordered one of these soy chais because she doesn't drink milk. I ordered one too, so I could try something new (one of the suggestions in French Women Don't Get Fat). Damn it was good. The problem is that I now crave them all the time. The only good thing about this new obsession is that I force myself to walk to get one.
This downfall that leads me to drink several soy chais a week is is probably a direct result of what happened before Christmas. My attempts at eating like a French woman were seriously derailed right before Thanksgiving. I actually know the moment of my downfall. One night I had this overwhelming craving for potato chips (we do not usually buy them or keep them in the house). I was in the middle of a knitting project and my husband kindly ran out to the local convenience store and bought one of those big bags.
The problem with this type of thing that occurs while you are trying to modify your behavior is that it's a slippery slope. Sometimes, you don't even realize just how detrimental that one first slip is going to be. Sometimes you do, and you choose to do it anyway. In my case, it was the former, but I know realize that every choice I am currently making falls within the realm of the latter.
During Thanksgiving and the few days after it, I would eat the potato chips as a snack while I was doing something else. This is something I had previously avoided doing per the suggestions in French Women Don't Get Fat. At that point, other healthy French woman habits that I had started adopting began to be ignored as well. By the time January rolled around, I had re-gained the 3 pounds I had previously lost and gained another 3 on top of that to boot.
At that point I realized just how dangerous that first time you blow off your new habit is. And this applies not only to modifying your eating habits, but also to all those times you ignore your exercise schedule and say, "today I won't lift weights because I don't feel like it". For me, saying that I will do that weight workout tomorrow, means I probably won't do it at all. And then the next week, the same thing happens. The next thing you know, you've completely stopped your workouts.
So it's back to the beginning for me. I'm going to do a food journal for a couple of weeks and then listen the book again and reinstate Mireille's helpful suggestions. Wish me luck.
