My Three Biggest Fears About Giving Up Sugar and Flour: Fear #3

FEAR #3. I’M AFRAID OF FAILING.

In my first Bright Line Eating bootcamp, I went 8 weeks without breaking a bright line. And I was terrified the whole time. 

Not terrified that this might not work for me in helping me lose weight. I was terrified that if I broke a single bright line, I would be screwed. It would be impossible to resume. As soon as a single line broke, I’d be worse off.

And of course I did break a line. It was a special occasion. I was over-confident in my sparkling new “strength” and imagined I would just eat a treat “this one night” and then I’d get right back on course. 

And of course I didn’t get right back on course. I was a OK for a day or two and then broke again. And then again. Within a month, I found myself wandering the aisles of the grocery deciding how much NMF I could stuff myself with.

I went 18 months (yes, you read that right, 18 months) resuming and re-breaking, resuming and rebreaking, over and over and over. 

Resuming BLE after a relapse is scary. I couldn’t help but worry “what if” and I was startled at the quantity of food I could put away now. I’ve never been a binger, but my ‘you’ve eaten too much, stop eating and go do something’ button was now gone.

A month into my most recent sobriety, I hit a major holiday and told my husband I was terrified about it. He said to me, “So what? You’ve failed before and there’s always a chance you’ll fail again. You want this.”

He was totally correct. I wanted this. More than anything I’ve ever wanted, I want to be free of my food obsession. And the only thing I had to fear about this upcoming holiday – was fearing this holiday. If I failed, well by golly I’ll just try again. And again. And again. There are people who take 8-9 years of going to AA before sobriety clicks in. If that’s what it takes for me, well, that’s what it will take. There is no way I’m going back to the person I was before. No way am I going to forget how amazing it feels to be sober – to be happy, thin and free.

Failing just means I had the guts to try BLE in the first place. And therefore, I’ve got the guts to try it again.

Failure is always possible. But success is built on failure. If you do a “permission to be human” worksheet, learn from it, talk about it, make a WOOT for what to do next time. If you really want what is on the other side of a crappy relationship with food, then you have learned. You tried … and you learned. The only real failure is not trying in the first place.

Remember Winston Churchill said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”