The Battle Rages

First the good news.  As a follow up to the Battle of Atlanta post, I ended up losing two pounds over the weekend.  That brought me up to 28 for the first four weeks.  Basically, I lost the same amount of weight as Gabe weighs.  Nice.  So that was a complete WIN!

Now, for the bad report.

Some people believe the Bible doesn't have much to teach us in these more "modern times."  It has lost its relevance and ability to speak - unless it is filtered through catchy tweaks and familiar language and winning theme weeks.  But, I disagree.  I find verses that talk to me all the time.  For example, one today was mentioned in Francis Chan's excellent and challenging book Crazy Love.  Philippians 3:19 talks about the enemies of Christ, whose "god is their stomach."  It really jammed a finger into my chest, as I realized that described me.  Well, up until a month ago when I came to the point where I didn't want that any more.

The other passage I was thinking about recently was from 1 Kings 19.  I actually think about this passage any time I have a big success or victory in my life.  In 1 Kings 18, we see Elijah at the front of one of the greatest victories I can imagine.  God dropped fire from heaven and burned up the sacrifice, the pagan king and queen were humiliated, the evil prophets were destroyed.  Major victory.  If elijah was writing a blog, he would have written a post called "Battle of Carmel."  He would have ended the itemized recitation of victory with "WIN!"  So, where do we find the triumphant Elijah in 1 Kings 19.  Was he riding in floats around the city, screaming "Whoeth Dat?  Whoeth Dat!"  Was he flipping over chariots and setting fires?  Nope.  He was laying under a tree asking God to kill him.

When I first really grasped this verse about fifteen years ago, I realized that human wisdom has it all backwards.  We always think we are weakest after a loss.  The truth is, we are weakest after a win - especially a big, magnificent, unexpected win.  Think about it.  You put your all into it.  You exhausted your supplies of energy.  The win happened, and you were dead tired.  Everyone was celebrating, patting your back, giving you tons of encouragement.  And, for maybe just a moment, you believed the hype.  As a result, your guard dropped.  You maybe didn't prepare enough for the next day.  You didn't give your all - or maybe your all was half of what it was because you were so tired.  Whatever it was, it was enough to trip you up right.  After the glory of the win, there was the crushing defeat.

I remember back in college, I played intramural football and floor hockey for the Baptist Collegiate Ministries at UCF.  (What?  Yes, I actually played.  I was good too.  I also played soccer and softball, but we sucked, so they are irrelevant to the story.)  It happened in both sports.  One year, in football, we had gotten into the playoffs on the heels of an unexpected win.  And then the next game, against Army ROTC, we had to play in a deluge and got our rear ends handed to us.  In floor hockey, it was even worse.  For the playoffs, the games were at different times than regular season.  So our first playoff game we played Army ROTC (stinking ROT-C).  We were underdogs to begin with.  But it was worse because we only were able to field three of our six players, since that was all we had at game time.  The rules were you had to have three players to start, four players by the end of the first period, or you had to forfeit.  We went out there with three players and tried to play.  I played defense - like the entire defense. We had one guy on offense.  And we had a goalie.  As you can imagine, we quickly went down 4-0.  Our fourth player sprinted into the gym right before the end of the period.  We were all exhausted.  I was considering high sticking someone in the mouth to get a break.  It was 6-0 at one point.  But by the end of the first period, we were down 6-1.  Then enough players showed up to actually get to the full number.  We actually were completely stoked, since we were only down five goals and our best players had just showed up.  We went out there and started to claw back.  Me and the other guy on defense said that ROTC had scored their last points - we may have even told them that.  "I hope that's enough, because you aren't getting any more."  The whole gym started to get into the game.  ROTC started getting angry at the fact they were losing their grip on a game they had no business losing.  We ended up winning the game 8-6.  Delirium.  Next game?  Got whipped.

All of that to say that yesterday and today were rough days.  I did fine yesterday.  The kids were out of school, so I got them McDonald's for lunch after we took Heather to school.  It is always hard to smell McDonald's in the car, but I handled it.  I made myself tuna salad and reheated a bowl of my tomato soup I made.  For dinner, we went to Buffalo Wild Wings - Heather got out of class right at dinner time, so our whole schedule got thrown off.  I knew that they had grilled chicken tenderloins there.  I got them with a side salad.  The low-fat raspberry vinaigrette was so sweet - sugar the number two ingredient.  I can't handle that anymore.  So yesterday wasn't too bad.

Today, though, was where things got really bad.  First thing in the morning, I had to take the kids to school.  After that, I ran to Publix with Gabe.  Here is a rule of thumb.  If you are dieting, fasting, changing your approach to food, DO NOT go to Publix before 9am.  They are still baking breads and desserts in the bakery.  They are frying up chickens and chicken tenders in the Deli.  The whole store smells of delicious carbs.  I hadn't eaten breakfast.  (Dumb dumb)  I quickly got what I needed, forgetting the toilet paper (foreshadowing), and raced out of there.  Then I had to hurry and get my shower, because I had to run an errand for Heather.  Once a month, one of her student groups has a luncheon.  Since she is in class that morning, and the other students all are uncooperative punks (that's not the reason - but I think they don't try to hard since I'm around), I have to pick the food up for them.  The first one was Publix, but I wasn't on a diet so I was okay.  The second time was picking up subs from Subway.  I hadn't eaten, but I just went and got my own sub later.  The third time was picking up pizzas.  This was during my juice fast.  I had to drive with twenty pizzas in the car while starving.  Wonderful.  This time, it was Sonny's BBQ.  I was very hungry at this point.  No breakfast, tortured at Publix, toting BBQ in the car.  I dropped it off and went to get lunch.

Being legitimately hungry really damages your thinking process.  I was meeting my friend Greg for lunch.  We picked this sports bar named Hobbit's.  I figured that most sports bars have grilled chicken sandwiches.  I could just get a side salad and eat the chicken off.  Well, this wasn't most sports bars.  They had a chicken sandwich.  When I asked how big it was, the waitress made a circle with her hands that looks pretty small.  Not what I was going for.  I needed a good sized chicken patty if I was going to get that.  The rest of their menu was pretty slim pickings for me.  Lots of fried foods, sandwiches, appetizers.  It was a pretty stupid place to go, especially when your default selection was eliminated.  They did have wings, though.  As I mentioned in the Atlanta post, I'm not a wing fan.  I don't know much about wings.  I kind of assumed that most wings are grilled - or that you can get them that way.  I don't always think about the fact they are fried.  These were fried, but without breading.  So I thought that was my best option.  "I'll just get the wings, get a veggie basket, no biggie."  I think that I have forgotten a bit of how restaurants do things.  I have been eating so much "naked food" that I don't think about sauces - or I just rely on my yogurt sauces or vinegar based stuff.  I picked three different flavors: carolina gold bbq, fiesta ranch, jalapeno lime ranch.  I should have done the last one alone.

The jalapeno one was very good.  It was a white sauce, but thin and applied in a reasonable amount.  The fiesta one was white and goopy - like paste.  It was ok, but I scraped some off.  The Carolina was this orange color and just drenched on it.  It was a western NC sauce - mustard not vinegar.  It was good, but for four of the wings, I wiped them off with a paper towel.  I ate a bunch of the carrots and celery and hoped it would offset the overdose of sauce.  I left feeling pretty bad - it was a mistake to order the stuff.  Sure, I had avoided the burgers, bread, cheese, subs.  And I didn't get a food I have an issue with. But it still was a bad choice.

By the time I git home, my body was sure to remind me of how stupid it was.  I had to race upstairs with Gabe so I could get into the bathroom in time.  After I picked up the other two kids, I got to visit the facilities again in a rushed manner.  (Really wish I had remembered the toilet paper.)  I still feel gross.  And to make things worse, I've been hungry all afternoon.  I may not have had a huge failure, but my judgement was poor and it cost me.  It won't derail my efforts.  I don't see it driving me into a downward spiral into the arms of the Pillsbury Dough Man.  It probably won't even hurt the weight loss.  But it cost me an afternoon of feeling bad, which I, for the most part, don't struggle with any more.  And it shook my momentum a little bit - made me have to deal with doubts and questions that I had been putting behind me.  I guess it shows how far I have come that I actually see this as a defeat.  Also, the fact that I still managed to avoid the bigger trouble spots shows something.  I just need to regroup and make sure I'm more careful to not get cornered in a situation like that again.  It was a good teaching opportunity and warning.  I will learn the lesson and heed the warning,  That way I can even count this loss as a win.