I'm so sorry about your kitty, Lynette. Of course give yourself time to grieve the little life.

But all is not lost even if you didn't eat well or exercise. You can start again.

I've been thinking about this a lot, lately. A health plan has to work through whatever else goes on in life, doesn't it? I started thinking about this with regard to PMS, when I get very carb hungry and emotional. This is going to happen every month for however many years I have left--maybe 5 or 6, right? I can't let a predictable thing derail my efforts towards a healthy body every 3 weeks! I can be a little more forgiving of myself, and allow my focus to drift to other things, because I know it's only temporary.

But what about the unpredictable things? If I don't predict that there will be unpredictable things, and figure out how to handle them wrt my eating/exercise ahead of time, I am setting myself up to fail. So during those times when things are going well (no PMS, no crises), I should try to habituate myself to the best habits.

I'm trying to predict what I can do when baseball season begins in earnest starting in February. (I'm president of the league and work basically full time for no pay from February to August.) I can't let my eating and exercise get out of balance during that time. I'm also trying to predict what the effects of dark gray skies will have on my psyche for the next 3 months. I'm taking the boot camp class again so that should help, but what about my eating?

So, grief is a huge burden to bear, and it's understandable that we would get derailed from the plan. But it's only temporary, and if the common thread in the thought process is to always stay near enough to hop back on, there's really no harm done. Just keep going.

Karen