It's So Easy To Slip................

The text for today's brief sermon is take from the gospel according to St Lowell of George, and the mighty Little Feat, Sailin' Shoes album, 1972. (That being said, Good Ol' Neil - with the nearly equally mighty Crazy Horse - provides an alternative text, and asks a very profound question, for those of us who don't mind a spot of language.)

But to stay with the blessed Lowell, 'It's so easy to slip. It's so easy to fall.' How true these words are. How very true.

For truly, brothers and sisters, it is written that the devil is a wicked cunning devil and he sees deep into the frail hearts and yearnings of men with his big, red, cruel and cynical devilly eye, and he strews our paths with tares and briars, and, in my case, an innocent and unassuming bag of salt peanuts.

It happened like this. Back last Saturday, I dragged my son up to visit his grandmother in the benighted Fen Country where she has insisted on living these past thirty-odd years, probably believing it has some redeeming features (in which delusion she is mistaken, by the way). The pilgrim fathers set sail just a few miles up the road, and I bet they were heartily glad to see the back of it. I have never believed they were running away from religious persecution; they were just sick and tired of living (if such it be called) in a dump like Lincolnshire. (Now you know what Thanksgiving's really all about.)

Anyways, when we were up there, we did a supermarket run for my mother, and I picked up a few items to bring back home, including (and this is where the problem started) a couple of 200gm bags of salt peanuts, much appreciated by my slender wife, who has no need of weight loss, and can face a carbohydrate down at 20 paces.

So, this small bag of groceries was sitting on the back seat of the car, along with a bottle of Evian.

I dropped my son off at a railway station just outside London so he could get home back in the city, while I skipped around the M25 prior to heading south down to the coast.

Shortly after Tristan got out, I fancied an innocent swig of life-enhancing luxury French water, and groped behind me for the bottle. Except what do we think my hand landed on instead?

And what do you think I did about it? Of course I did. Not good. Not good at all.

I shalln't say I gave in without a struggle. But I'll not pretend it was like the second Frazier -Ali rematch, either. Look, I thought about it for maybe ten seconds, felt torn, but resolved the dilemma by saying unto myself 'just the one small handful, then.'

How much self-deceit, duplicity, stupidity and hubris can one man pack into six little words? I've dealt before with the words 'just the one' (ie, 'there's no such thing as....'). Walked straight into the lamp-post, didn't I?

200 grams later, I was struggling to answer that rotten question as I eventually took a refreshing sip of cool Alpine water, washed the nutty, salty crumbs from between my teeth.

There was no justification for eating that bag of nuts. None. It was low, dishonest, self-defeating greed. Nothing more. In fact, it sucked.

In the time of this weight loss project, nearly 7 months in and 125lbs down already, this is the dumbest, baddest, downright twatist thing I've done. In the space of about forty miles, I'd consumed 1200 unnecessary calories and 50gms of unwanted carbs, plus I'd deprived the missus of part of her (very) little treat.

And, if I thought that gorging myself would make me feel good, that didn't work, either. I felt bloody lousy about it (still do).

Despite how self-demeaned I felt, somehow, I managed not to knock myself out of ketosis. Somehow, I managed not to see an immediate, irrevocable (and entirely irrational) massive gain when I stepped on the scales the next day. Above all, somehow, I managed not to eat the other bag and say to hell with it, in for a penny...

But, by goodness, I tell you this: I learned a horribly sobering lesson. I learned once again that, just as with any other addiction, it really, really is one day at a time for us food junkies. No matter how well we're sitting on top of the game, rolling along and pleased with the results, a single moment's lack of vigilance and discipline will send us sliding back toward that abyss whence cometh our fat, shame, and discomfort. Remember the Paresh principle: self-discipline, control and motivation. That's what's worked for him, and kept him slim, fit and healthy, all these years, since he decided he was fed up being a lard-arse. And it has to work for me. And it will work for you: promise.

From this minor but nevertheless shattering catastrophe I've learned that I can, and will, fall: I've done it once, and will doubtless do it again. I do not, however, give myself permission to do so.

Of course, short of wearing a full-blown pukka Opus Dei cilice, I don't know how to stop myself, but I've had my awareness heightened, and I'm not sure I appreciate being fallible. No Sir-ee, Bob. OK, it was a small sin in the scheme of things, and I'm a proper drama queen for even mentioning it, let alone dedicating an entire posting to prodding this minor incident with a stick, but the fact is that it gave me a jolt (as did that last link, by the way. Wasn't that a helluva thing? Did you see the 'special items'? Now, tell me that's not sick. Amen.). It forced me to look at myself, and I was far from pleased by what I saw. Seems that I'm only bloody human after all, and that Ol' Neil knew what he was singing about (here in an alternative version). None of which makes me feel any better, when (as Oscar Brown Jnr so memorably put it back in 1961) I still got so terribly long to go....