The greatest weakness interfering with me sticking perfectly to my diet is stress.  One humdinger of a crazy day followed by passing a candy machine on campus and there I go, falling into temptation.

I went a full MONTH without a single glitch or binge.  A month of eating on my diet, feeling really really good, and losing a lovely bunch of pounds. Then in one fell swoop, I ate two chocolate bars. In one sitting like a greedy little glutton, I scarfed down those two chocolate goodies. I didn’t even eat them slow enough to enjoy them.

This may seem like a silly thing to some but to me, this is a major failure.  Odds are very good that this week there will be NO weight loss no matter how perfectly I stay on the diet the entire rest of the week.  This is discouraging, and being discouraged makes it harder to stick to the diet through this rough patch.

Emotional support is what I need.  Support that encourages and shores up the weakness in me. Support that is there to sympathize with my momentary weakness and fall, yet be busily building me up to hold the line until the weight loss gets going again.

I’m feeling down as I write this.  I bombed big time tonight. I ate stuff that is in no way on my diet, nor even healthy.  It tasted good but it feels emotionally bad because I am so committed to sticking to my diet and this failure really feels terrible.

Prayer and hope are antidotes for this discouragement. God wills for me to fulfill my vocation, and so the help is present in my life if only I reach out and grasp the gift.  I failed to reach out today, but today isn’t the entire story. I begin again tonight and tomorrow is a new day.

Dear Lord, please forgive me for failing to stay on my diet, for eating junk that is bad for my health and thus undermines my vocation. Please help me to be strong and stay on my diet even when a fall like this destroys the weight loss for the whole week. Please help others who struggle with this same problem to conquer. Thank You for the grace to stick to the goal. +Amen.