Happy Halloween!  Yet another sugar holiday.

This past weekend, I and my teammates competed in a chili cook-off.  We didn’t win anything, but it was loads of fun.  And for the most part, I got around pretty well, despite having to stand and walk on concrete, which is a real challenge for arthritis.  Still, I feel like I did well, and my endurance was up, as well.

Every year that we’ve been involved, there has been lots of picture-taking and silliness, because the cook-off is always around Halloween.  This year, one of my cohorts-in-crime brought inflatable hair for the women to wear.  Two foot tall inflatable hair isn’t exactly an easy thing to wear, especially outside!  Still, we took pics.

When I saw the pics, I cringed.  In my mind, I’m doing well with this effort, and my brain pictures me as being much more physically balanced than those photos do.  I look at them, and my first thought is that I’ve thrown away the last seven months, because I don’t look a bit different.  It’s that defeatist attitude; the one that derails me with the absolutely nonsensical idea that being frustrated with the way I look or what I weigh should result in not sticking to a diet program.

What the heck?  It’s totally illogical.  My brain tells me to just give it up because I’m still a fatty, but what does that solve?  Were I to give in, I’d stay a fatty, or become more of one.  It’s an idiotic response to something I need to view as feedback.  I know, without photographic proof, that what I’m doing is working.  Why do a couple of photos make me feel like it’s all been a lie?  Like I haven’t been trying hard enough if I still look like crap?

I’m still on the straight and narrow, because logic is luckily in control and while I emotionally feel punched in the gut by the photos, I know mentally that the input my ego is trying to push at me is wrong.  I can understand frustration, but the result of frustration should be determination to see it through, not just tossing in the towel.

I will continue to fight the good fight, but I really do need to work on how my brain processes seeing photos of myself.  These emotions that want to derail me cannot win.