Better is Good Enough

I think one of the reasons I've hung in there with this whole weight loss thing is that I am not terribly perfectionistic with my eating. Yeah, I eat butter. I enjoy cheese. I eat sugar sometimes. Pizza. Bacon. Stuff that diet purists gasp in disgust about. You CAN'T eat sausage and lose weight! Oh my gosh! You HAVE to eliminate every.last.morsel from your diet that is not pure and holy. Or Else.

Well, I am sure that works for some people, and that's great! Really. But coming from a life punctuated by gallons of ice cream, sleeves of Pringles and liters of Coke, becoming a diet purist just is not on my "doable" list. I am 40 years old. I am willing to change some things, yes. Like cutting out fast food, and learning to eat lots of veggies. But no chocolate? Ever? That is just never going to happen.

I've become really comfortable with accepting that doing *better* is often good enough. I do not have to Do It Perfect; I do not have to follow someone else's Perfect Plan. I do not have to do everything 100% "right" because, frankly, not only is there no "right," but 100% is impossible and frustrating to aim for. If I improve my eating and behaviors *most* of the time, I see results.

Today my family went out for lunch. It was a diner-type place that we have never been to before, and the menu was typical of diners: burgers, fries, shakes, pies. The "salads" looked like they would leave a lot to be desired (pile of iceberg, tomato wedge, couple pieces of ham, full fat dressing) and the only chicken on the menu was breaded and fried. Soup? Forget it, the only one they offered was a heart-stoppingly rich, cream-based clam chowder. They had all kinds of greasy fried sandwiches, too, like my old favorite, the Reuben. So, what would you do?

Aim for "perfect" and get a tasteless, unsatisfying iceberg salad.
Give up because you can't be perfect and get a bacon cheeseburger with fries and a Coke.

How about a happy medium?

I started by ordering water to drink, because drinks are just not all that important to me and are an easy place to save calories. Then I looked over the menu and found one of my favorite foods: a turkey club. Yum! I asked them to make it on whole grain bread and "hold the cheese." (A personal mini-rule I have is: cheese is fine. But if there is cheese AND mayo, don't have both! One is enough for flavor). My side dish choices were potato salad, fries, or a "side salad" so I chose the side salad with blue cheese dressing on the side (they did not have a vinaigrette).

Along came my plate: turkey breast, lettuce, and tomato layered with 3 slices of whole grain toast, mayo, and bacon. I pulled my usual club sandwich shenanigans and dismantled the sandwich, pulling out the center piece of toast and about half the mayo, removing the fatty edges of the bacon, and the reassembling the sandwich. (Yeah, I am a fun date. No, I wouldn't do that in an upscale restaurant, but then, I wouldn't be eating a turkey club. I'd be ordering halibut or sturgeon or something. Given the deer heads leering at me from the walls of this diner, I figured no one would care that I was making a mess of my sandwich. If you are more anal than I am, you can ask the waitress to leave out the center piece of toast, use half the mayo, and make the bacon extra well done. But it is funner to shred the sandwich with your fingers). I then ate the sandwich but left the crust. The "side salad" was in fact about 3/4 cup of shredded iceberg, a few diced tomatoes and a little cuplet of dressing on the side. I ate the salad, tasteless as it was, just for filler. I pretty much left the dressing off, though. Not worth it.

Dessert? Nah. I was full.

So, you see, I had my delicious turkey club with BACON and MAYO on crispy hot toast and it was so yummy that I didn't even consider dessert or fries or any other crap. Diet purists all over the world are passing out in disbelief that I call eating bacon and mayo a success. But I do, and it is! What I ate today at lunch was 1000 times better than anything I *would* have ordered a few years ago, or anything I would have ordered had I "given in" to the call of greasy burgers and fries. How many calories do you think I saved? Several hundred, at least. 100 in cheese, 200 in burger meat, 150 in soda, 400 in fries... something like that, not to mention dessert. Yeah, I did great. I am happy.

Better is only good enough, though, if it is reasonable. I mean, you have to think, better than WHAT? It has to be better ENOUGH to make a difference in your weight. I used to eat 5 candy bars at a sitting, but that doesn't mean I can be happy eating three or four candy bars now instead, because that is "better" than eating five. The "better" has to be in context. It has to work for you.

But when you think you have to be perfect and only eat veggies and salad and grilled chicken you *might* be setting yourself up for distress when the day comes that you cannot have or do not want to have that kind of meal. You will be at your mother-in-laws and she will have made her famous family recipe lasagna *just for you* and you will not be able, in that moment, to say "no thank you, I brought this chicken breast in a baggie" and you will eat that lasagna. And if you are all Diet Purist Perfectionistic, that will spiral you into a vortex of shame, guilt, anger, and regret. It's a piece of lasagna! Get over it. Eat more salad with it or something. Just do better. Better is okay. You do not have to lose 20 pounds a month to be a success.

In the context of my day, I am well. For breakfast I had a delicious Chai tea latte, a big bowl of oatmeal with pumpkin, flax, walnuts, cinnamon, vanilla, brown sugar, and milk, and green tea. As a snack in the afternoon, I had a french vanilla cappuccino and a bite of donut. (Yes, A Bite!). Dinner was a nice helping of cabbage roll casserole and a handful of fresh blackberries. So, that turkey club at the diner was just fine, in context. I ate 1286 calories today (so far... I may have a 100-calorie cup of pudding before I go to bed). I biked for 30 minutes. I feel great aside from this weird cold/flu thing I am fighting.

Try not to be too hard on yourself. Enjoy your food. Be moderate. Do better. Not perfect.