'Ain't No Thing But a Chicken Wing

Just keeping you all updated on my progress. I was a little mum about it last week because I didn't do so well and I was feeling bad about it. Last Thursday at my weigh-in I had a gain of 1.2 pounds. Well, it happens. My choices didn't help the matter. We had some people over to watch football the previous Sunday and somebody brought an assortment of chicken wings from Buffalo Wild Wings, otherwise known as the "Casa de Diablo" to me...

I am always very quick to pipe up and advocate for Weight Watchers when I hear people say things like, "Can you have that?" or "Is that your diet food?" Yes, if it's food, of any kind, I CAN have it. I can have anything. No, it's not diet food. It's the same food everybody else eats. I'm just eating it with a different idea in mind than most others. What I'm trying to say is, I don't have to deny myself anything. However, there is one food that I truly have to try my best to avoid, and that would be fried chicken wings. Can I have wings? Sure. Should I have wings? Probably not. They're so little, so inoffensive, so spicy and succulent...and boy, do they wreak havoc when you add up how many Weight Watchers points they are. Even if you bake them in the oven?, you might ask. No, if they're baked or have the skin removed, they're much more forgiving. But come on, where's the fun in that? Some things are meant to be enjoyed to the fullest, and wings is one of them.

I was never a wing person growing up, ever. It was actually a college friend of mine, Debbie, who had a wing obsession, who originally turned me onto them. There's something about that heat from the buffalo sauce, the way it opens up all your nasal passages as you tear the juicy chicken away from the bone with your teeth. It's almost animalistic. So don't be shocked if you ever see me with a chicken wing in my hand...I might just end up beating on my chest like a gorilla and going monkey-postal on somebody.

These days, though, I am pretty good about resisting them. Usually if they're around, I can handle sampling just one, savor it, write it down to record it in my food journal, and move on. But that day, when those wings showed up in my house, I lost all grip on my senses. There were mild wings, hot wings, and terriyaki boneless wings. I steered clear of the mild and hot, but for some reason I decided that the terriyaki was worth trying. I allowed myself one and ate it. Mmmm, salty goodness....Okay, maybe just one more. Mmmm...okay, one more. You see where this is going. It lead to more than my fair share of breaded, fried chicken, which then lead to thoughts of 'well, I've already screwed up today, so I guess my week is ruined'. Right there. That was the moment I screwed up. It wasn't the wings. It was my attitude after I ate the wings.

One thing I have learned from Weight Watchers is that there will always come a time when I will have a bad day and make poor choices. It just happens. But the key to those bad days is what happens after it's over and the choices that I make then. Last week was a perfect example of what not to do when a bad day happens. I let that day of wings completely ruin the rest of my week. It beat me. If last week was a boxing match, then I was Apollo and the week was that blonde Russian guy who killed him in the ring. I let it win. I mean, I didn't spend the remainder of the week eating bon-bon's and potato chips, but I was very careless and used that day as a means of justifying myself. Halloween candy in the office? Sure, a few won't hurt me. Second helpings of dinner, why not? I already screwed my week anyway. I should have just called it a bad day, and started over the following morning fresh. But that message didn't hit home with me till I got on the scale and gained 1.2 pounds. It wasn't my first gain in the last year. They happen here and there, but rarely. It was enough to wake me up, though.

Suffice to say, I did much better this past week. I told myself I was "grounded". All the little hard-to-resist things were going to be resistible this week. I still ate, I still savored, but I stayed much sharper on my game. I made sure I drank more water than usual to help flush out all that excess salt. I upped my exercise this week with more yoga and power walking. I resisted the office Halloween candy and haven't had one single bite of it. Why would I need to eat it? I had some last week and I know what it tastes like. It isn't going to taste any better today than it did before.

I moved on and it paid off. I weighed in last night and lost 3.6 pounds. So not only did I lose the 1.2 I gained, but I lost a little more. That is the reward for staying focused and not letting the bad days beat me. It also pushed me out of the 60's and into the 70's. My weight loss total as of last night is 71.8. That's pretty darn amazing if I do say so myself. So bye-bye 60's. Buh...bye.

Will I never have chicken wings ever again? Uh...no. I love them far too much to ever give them up completely. I just have to learn a higher level of self-control when it comes to them, though. If they were lower in points, this would be a whole different story. But they're so high per wing, that added up only a small plate of them would knock out the entire daily points I'm allowed. Yes, I have extra weekly points I'm allowed to dip into, and yes, I receive extra points the more I exercise (although I try not to use those points), but I still try to avoid them. Wings might be my ultimate trigger food. Occasionally I can stop at just one, but it's clear that other days I can't. Somewhere in there I have to find a rhyme or reason. I might just have to break down and learn to like them baked in the oven.

In the end, this just proves that no matter how much time passes and no matter how many meetings I attend, I am not perfect and I probably never will be. I will always have bad days time and time again, and I will always have to find a way to pick myself up and deal with it. I still have a lot to learn.

Now onto my next challenge. Halloween weekend....