Celebrate Failure

I’ve talked the past few days about overcoming challenges at work with a positive attitude. As I slog through my people problems, I continue to work through my issues with food. My oral proclivities do not always blatantly manifest. They subsist in the background of my busy life like a dormant virus. But stress has a way of causing them to erupt and when they do…

It starts with a whisper…. “Things aren’t going well today, you should really treat yourself.” Visions of Snickers bars and chocolate cake dance through my head. But I fight them off with images of elephants dancing in bikinis. That strategy is successful for a while. Copious amounts of coffee and then lunch staves off the munchies temporarily but the drive home ignites my brain into overdrive as I plan the evening meal. When I am stressed out, this simple thought process is overwhelming. Making dinner suddenly feels like running a marathon. Cooking takes time, effort and energy I just don’t have. Usually I win this argument with myself by thinking about how much it’s going to cost to feed my beastlets, but when I’ve had a really bad day, I conveniently don’t care.

We have this “terrible, horrible” restaurant in Ferguson called Queen’s that makes the tastiest hot braised chicken and crab rangoon for miles around. It often calls to me “Margaret, you know you want me.” And I am suddenly weak in the knees. I obviously have no spine. Tuesday night, Queens lured and snagged me. With great glee I sliced off my right arm(Queens ain’t cheap) and carried home my box of sugar, fat and salt. Not only did I mistreat my body with that disgustingly yummy “food”, I inflicted bodily harm on my family as well. I freely admit we were all immensely happy. And then, to make matters “worse”, I ate a big waffle cone filled with ice cream because, well, I had ceased to care about the junk I was ingesting.

Wednesday morning I stumbled out of bed only to experience the dreadful Chinese Food hangover along with a healthy dose of remorse.

The truth is, no matter how much meal planning I do, I freely admit that I too fall prey to the delectable delight that is fast food. But I am not a failure! I am not conquered by that grease-laden delicacy! I too shall overcome the disastrous consequences of eating deep fried processed parts and rice byproducts. I have hitherto promised myself that I shall never, ever, eat Queen’s again(that’s a blatant lie).

The truly wonderful thing about weakness is that it reminds me I am human. I also love the challenge of failure because it reminds me I am strong enough to dust myself off and make better choices next time. I know that no matter how much I preach against processed foods and deep fried anything, I am sincerely glad that they exist for the truly bad days in life. And while I must make good choices 95% of the time, being bad 5% of the time feels AWESOME!