Failure, Thy Name is Girl Scouts

I came across this quote from Martha Beck in a recent issue of O Magazine: “The difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is that successful people fail more.” It really struck home because I think of my writing journey and how it took a whole lot of failures before I hit the success track, and how even that track hasn’t been without its failures along the way. But then this morning, I was reading about a woman who made this incredible weight loss journey and it got me thinking about how we try and fail at weight loss all the time.

Like most people, I make that same resolution every January 1 to take off those stubborn twenty pounds, or thirty, or whatever has crept up over the winter on top of the ten or fifteen I already needed to lose (and after I had my son, it was more like 70, a few years back), but then I get partway through the journey, and start self-sabotaging. I blame it on the Girl Scouts. They start selling those damned cookies in February around here. How am I supposed to stick to my diet when they are RINGING MY DOORBELL, COOKIES IN HAND???

It’s easy enough to skip the cookie aisle in the grocery store, or to avoid cookies if you don’t have them in your house already (you can’t eat what you don’t have) but when that little pixie-faced Brownie shows up at your door in sub-zero winter temps, begging you to buy just one box of Peanut Butter Patties because her troop really wants to go to Six Flags this summer...

Diet failure is inevitable.

So I read Lynn Haradlson’s weight loss journey today (she was on CNN and Oprah) and thought about all the times I had tried and failed, tried and failed. She, too, had done the same thing over the years to lose weight. Then one day she was trying to climb some stairs (19 of them to be exact) and it was too hard. That was when she decided that was IT. She was DONE. She would do this, Girl Scout cookies be damned, and stick to it. For years, actually, because she lost 168 pounds, which doesn’t happen overnight (though we all wish it could!). She did it the old-fashioned way, too.

If she can do it, then what am I whining about? Okay, I really do love Girl Scout cookies. In fact, I love cookies of all kinds. And Valentine’s Day is days away, and celery sticks in a box just doesn’t say I love you the same as chocolates. Whoa...whining again. I guess I better just re-read Lynn’s blog for inspiration. But wait--

My doorbell’s ringing. And yes, there’s a little girl in a green uniform with a wagon full of bright-colored boxes waiting outside. Temptation, thy name is Girl Scouts. ;-)

Shirley

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