I failed.

Yesterday I had good intentions of successfully celebrating BYG ("Befriend Your Gut") Day  and waking up this morning feeling cleansed and renewed.

I failed.  I had one too many whiskey sours last night and ended up making a batch of butterscotch chip cookies for my husband (and "testing" far too many in the process).  When I went to bed, my stomach was bloated and my head was swarming.  I had hot flashes and insomnia most of the night as my digestive system struggled to metabolize all that extra sugar and junk.  I woke up anything but refreshed, cleansed and renewed.

But I woke up with new resolve and a lesson learned:  "If you want to have success and love yourself and be happy and healthy, then avoid behaviors you know will cause the opposite effect."

It's that simple, folks. I learned something from my failure.  And by remembering the lesson all day today, I made today a success.  As nasty as last night was, today was just that good!

When you fail at sticking to your weight-loss regimen, you have three choices:

1.   Berate yourself till you're convinced you are a total loser in life and always will be.
2.   Stop trying and start rationalizing that it's okay to be fat since everyone else is too.
3.   Learn something from the failure and start again.

In my 40 years of weight-loss sagas, I have done all three.  You know as well as I do that the first two do nothing but give you excuses to get fatter.  The third option--learn a lesson and start again--is the only one of value.

Zig Ziglar said it as well as anyone:  "Make failure your teacher, not your undertaker."