How Much Is It Worth? | The Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans

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Did anyone watch The Biggest Loser last night?  I’m sure a lot of you did.  No worries, I’m not going to rant about a certain contestant here.  I already did that over there, so you can read it if you like.

As aggravating and as mad as I can get at certain people on the Biggest Loser, I can always learn something from the show.  Of COURSE, it is reality TV.  There is no way around it, but if you pay close enough attention to it, and try to separate the inpirational parts from the reality TV parts, then I’ll bet you can learn something, too.  The challenges that they give the contestants are, for the most part, scenarios that the contestants can apply to the real world.  Last week, they closed the kitchen and made them order out every day because there are just some times when you’re going to have to eat out, so learning to eat out in a healthy way is very important.

If you watched the show last night you witnessed a challenge in which the contestants could play a roulette game.  On the wheel were several different dessert items and one golden ticket that gave control to choose teams.  The part I want to talk about is not the golden ticket.  I want to talk about the desserts.  The dessert items included everything from a 100 calorie cupcake to a 1000 calorie piece of cake.  (Okay. I admit here.  Me, the calorie guru was SHOCKED to know that a piece of cake that size had 1000 calories.  I knew it was a lot, but really, that’s like most of my food intake for the day.  Wow.)

The contestants had a choice.  Was taking a chance on having to eat that piece of cake worth it?  If they spun the wheel and that piece of cake hit, was that something they would be able to work off?  Was having the power to choose teams REALLY that worth it to them?  Only one contestant did not participate. (You go Abby!) Luckily, not all of them had to take the chance on eating dessert.

I would like to sit here and tell you that I have sworn of desserts such as cake, and that I never indulge in treats.  But that simply isn’t true.  To say that you’re never going to eat your favorite food items again is just as unrealistic as reality TV is.  There are just certain times that most of us are going to “risk it” and have that piece of cake or that glass of wine or that .   And it isn’t the end of the world if you do indulge.  You just have to work it off.  Or make it a treat rather than the norm.  There was a time in my life when things that should be treats were the norm.  Luckily, I decided to change that.  I will say this, though, when I was still learning the ways of weight loss and still trying to figure things out, I was more like Abby.  To me, having that huge slice of cake just wasn’t worth it.  I knew that at the time, I didn’t have the right tools or knowledge to be able to indulge and to be able to work it off that day or the next or to make it a treat rather than the norm. So, I didn’t indulge.

That’s what you have to ask yourself.  How much is it worth it?  Can you work it off that day or the next?  Are you going to regret indulging later on.  If you answer no to these questions, then your best course of action is to say, “it is not worth it, and I’m not going to have that piece of cake.”

So, the next time you’re faced with that 1000 calorie piece of cake, will you ask yourself, “how much is it worth?”