Post Image When you start changing your lifestyle, you inevitably encounter many "firsts". Some of them are good (first pound lost, first triumph over temptation) and some are not so good (the first "turtle" week, the first experience with "fiber faarrttssss"). I had a "first" last night that I'm going to blab about.

It involved a very hungry me, making dinner. I wandered into the pantry to get items for my health-full dinner and was attacked by the Horrible Hungries. If you don't know who they are, don't worry, you will soon enough. They are powerful and they show up the first day that you forget to plan your snacks! I'm ashamed to report that their ambush was successful...mostly. I downed two fudge-smothered mashmallow-graham cookies (I had one, then realised the package stated the serving size was "2 cookies" and thought...well it would be easier to just enter the info in my tracker right off the package rather than having to divide by two...and atethe other half of the "serving") and immediately needed something salty. I didn't want chips. I didn't want pretzles. My eye was only for the croutons...yes, the unopened bag of onion and garlic croutons.

My saving grace, as I desperately crammed crunchy, fat-laden morsels into my mouth, was that I glanced at the nutritional information on the back of the package and I counted two servings of six as I crunched away.

You might be thinking "Aww, that's a terrible "first" to have, honey" but, that's not the "first" I'm getting at. I'm thankful that it is the first time I've had my collective tushy kicked by the Horrible Hungries while On Plan, but you and I both know that the real challenge isn't fighting off the HH's. The real challenge is putting your food folly in the durn tracker and telling the whole, dirty truth!

As I sat in front of my computer last night, tallying up the day, most of my healthy, nutritious choices were already entered and accounted for. Most of them (remember, I'm a planner) had been entered at the beginnig of the week when I worked out what was for dinner each night and what my lunch choices would be. It was getting down to the bottom and that little tracking section labeled "Anytime".

And I wanted to lie.

Lie to myself, to my Fairy Weight Watcher, to my husband and my son and my mother and my boss...and I could have. But the one person we can never lie to is the scale; the dirty rat; the tattletale who ALWAYS tells the truth.

And the truth: I had made several unwise food choices that day that caused me to go over my dailies and use a couple weeklies, but I was still On Plan. I was still on my way to another loss at the end of the week. I could still do it. Yet the temptation to cheat a little and tally up a perfect 38-point day was present and demanding satisfaction.

I didn't give in, and that was no small victory. I'm not going to do Weight Watchers the same way I did "Gaining Weight": ostrich-style. Sticking my head in the perverbial sand doesn't make the croutons melt from my thighs. It also doesn't help me learn what to put in my mouth and what to put in the trash or leave on the shelf instead.

That food tracker has become one with my conscience. I can't lie to myself, therefore I can't lie to the tracker. Fairy Weight Watcher knows all, anyway so what's the use. The first time I have a gain or a "turtle", I want to be able to look back at my Truthful Food Tracker and find those croutons! My newest "rule" is this: if it is going to show up on the scale as either a loss or a gain or anything else, it had better show up on my durn tracker! No exceptions!