I was going to say that I let it run me over, but I had a much more active role in the process.

I’m back from Nebraska.  The trip went great.  It was a tad awkward at first since it had been so long since I’d seen everyone, but once we got warmed up, it was fine.

I had gotten off to a decent start.  I knew what I would be eating for lunch and stuck to it.  I knew that three chicken tenders at Famous Dave’s is 8 points, and even though there were six on the plate, I only ate three.  Then our schedule got changed and our meeting with my cousins got switched to Saturday night.  That was fine, too.  I had two pieces of pizza and a really yummy snicker-doodle cookie from this fantastic bakery in Lincoln.  Overall, not too bad.

Then we got back to the hotel and it hit the fan.  I decided I wanted a candy bar, and dammit, I was going to have one.  I got sucked into the movie Baby Boom on TV and let my fingers wander to the 100 calorie packs I’d brought with me.  Yeah, I’m not quite sure how many points I consumed.

I got Sunday off to a decent start, as well, but it just got progressively worse as the day went on.  I had Cheerios with skim milk and a slice of toast with Promise butter and a little bit of grape jelly for breakfast.  For lunch, we ended up going to Dairy Queen.  I did okay with a grilled chicken sandwich, but decided I wanted fries.  And sadly, that was followed by an Oreo McFlurry from McDonald’s.  Then we decided to get pizza for dinner when we got back to town.  And that’s where Sunday slid into a free-fall.  I’m sure I consumed more than 70 points in that one day.

I think what happens in these situations is that I figure I’ve already gone off plan, so I might as well have whatever I’ve been craving, but don’t always let myself have.  To just get it out of my system, in a way.

It has only happened a few times and while I’m not sure why I do it, I’ve been lucky in that I’ve been able to get back under control each time.  I haven’t gained tremendously, and over the long run, I’ve been able to continue losing.

I think that is one thing that I’ve learned.  Often, if I binge like that, I end up feeling worse about myself than I did before I binged.  I don’t know why we still binge though.  There’s obviously something that we get from the process, or we wouldn’t continue to do it.  I know the crappy way I feel afterwards certainly isn’t the reward.

I’ve been so fearful of gaining the weight back.  It’s almost as though I’ve felt that if I went off plan that all of the weight I’ve lost would suddenly just reappear.  I think I’ve learned that I can go off plan for a day or two and it won’t all come back.  I can get back on plan and keep losing.  Gaining a pound or two in one week isn’t the end of the world unless I let it be.

We’ll see how horrifying my weigh-in later today will be, though.

On the plus side, I did have two NSVs over the weekend.

The first is that the regular size towel at the hotel actually fit around me!  Hell, I remember when a beach towel barely fit around me.  I actually picked it up, looked at it, said “nah” while shaking my head, and almost put it back down.  But I tried it and it wrapped all the way around!  I about fell over in shock.

The second NSV was when I got home from grocery shopping.  One of my neighbors (who I haven’t talked to in years) actually pulled up in her car as she was driving past and yelled my name.  She said she couldn’t believe how much weight I’d lost and said I looked great.  She said that she had seen me going into the house on several occasions and knew it was my car, but hadn’t been sure it was me.