Weekly weigh-in: Ashamed of myself

Last week's weight: 169.8
This week's weight: 172.2
Difference: +2.4
Total weight lost since January 2010: 99.6

I'm ashamed. There's really no other way to describe how I feel about the choices I made this week. I struggled so hard last week and the scale rewarded me. And I started this week off doing fairly well. I cooked healthy dinners and desserts last weekend and I had high hopes.

By Tuesday (remember, my weight-loss week starts on Fridays), though, I was slowly giving in to temptations. For dinner that night, I had Chinese food and bought a bag of pretzels. OK. That wasn't so bad and I could have recovered or at least posted only a slight gain this week.

But then Wednesday came. I ate a lot of the pretzels and chocolate chip cookies. Then a stressful phone call about a family situation Wednesday night was the last straw. I bought Cheez Doodles on the way home from work and ate half the bag.

Instead of putting it behind me, I ate the rest of the Cheez Doodles for breakfast Thursday. Then I had more Chinese food. And lots of Oreo cookies. I simply couldn't stop eating bad foods. I went to bed Thursday night mad at myself, but mostly just disappointed.

I'm frustrated that nearly three years into this journey I'm still not able to control these binge eating episodes. It's one thing to go out to dinner with friends and splurge on something I wouldn't normally eat. Or to occasionally enjoy a decadent dessert or a few slices of pizza. But to mindlessly inhale pretzels or Cheez Doodles or cookies is not acceptable.

So why'd I do it? I don't know. There are any number of reasons -- stress, being too restrictive the week before, hormones, food addiction, etc. I want to understand it, but I also don't believe in making excuses. I know what foods I should eat and what foods I shouldn't eat. I could have stuck with the low-fat pretzels and probably been OK. Or I could have bought fruit or veggies instead. More importantly, I didn't eat any of these foods because I was hungry.

And the result is that I gained back nearly everything I worked so hard to lose last week. As you know, part of this journey is about learning to move past these types of setbacks. So today is the start of a new week. My Weight Watchers points calculator has been reset. I'm going to do my best to track everything I eat this week, to exercise regularly and to make smarter choices. I can already tell that it won't be easy, but I know I can do it. I just can't give up.