It’s a gorgeous night and it’s been a long day.  Honestly, it’s been a long year and it’s only June but you are determined to have a good time tonight no matter what.  Your girlfriend is having a few ladies over that evening for a few drinks on the deck and some good ole fashioned girl chatter.  You’ve been looking forward to this all week because you always have a good time with your girlfriends; it just stinks that you don’t get to do it too often.  You do a mirror check, yes, you look cute. You didn’t quite make the weight goal that you wanted for the summer but you are not disappointed with the end product—you appreciate the work you’ve done in the gym and the true gift that your body is.   However, that thought immediately brings the evening to mind:  Am I going to have a drink tonight?  This is a huge decision on many fronts because this is the first social function of the summer and can really set the tone for how it goes down all summer long.  Have a good time = success and more nights out.  Have a bad time= turtling like a hermit, growing a beard and living under a board walk somewhere.  Not good.  So the pressure is on.

Jackassery: You stop thinking about it because you think it’s going to make you manic.  You can’t decide and you are stuck between “the one who doesn’t drink” and knowing that alcohol doesn’t make you fat but it absolutely kills your progress and you’re not sure which is more bothersome to you.  So you tell yourself that you’ll decide when you get there.

Tomfoolery: You want to have a good time and you don’t want anything taking away from that including being panicked about what you’re going to do that evening.  You also know you think differently in front of a bunch of women than you do now in the sanity of your bedroom.  You decide to have a glass of wine and you text your girlfriend to hold you to one and no more.  She says sure!

Your girlfriend who is having the soiree is as health conscious as you are but the rest of your girlfriends are not.  You know that they will bring something that meets their taste, too, and that usually comes in the form of chocolate and ice cream—your two major nemeses.  You wrestle with whether you should show up with your own dessert and/or food and draw attention to yourself (and risk being slightly rude) or know that they’ll be plenty good stuff there and just restrain yourself from diving in to the dessert.

Jackassery: You purposely avoid making a decision about whether you are drinking or not but you pack a cooler with a few food items just in case.  You ignore the fact that you have this sort of undercurrent of resentment flowing through you that you 1) have to pack something and 2) have to be around a bunch of junk that’s only going to tempt you.  You also don’t bother to resolve those feelings now while you have them because again, you’ll deal with that when you get there.  To be honest, you’re wondering why you’re going in the first place now because XYZ is going to be there and she always…

Tomfoolery: You think about the night more and text your girlfriend again and you both make a ‘one glass of wine/one trip to the dessert table pact’ with each other.  You know what happens when you have a glass of wine.  The night is warm, the breeze is light, the mood is fun, conversation is good and the wine is kicking in.  If you do not have a plan in mind when they roll out that dessert table, you may show off your plyometric skills by jump squatting on to the table and deadlifting that ice cream into your face with no utensils.  You understand wine and dessert is a bad diet combo.

Everyone shows up on time and the chatter begins.  You’re a little bit tense because now that it’s summer you can see what everyone else has been doing in the gym, too.  You’re trying hard not to compare but your eyeballs are roaming and for a minute there you start to feel insecure and emotional.

Jackassery: You can’t take the tension and you’re aggravated because you’re the only one without a wine glass—so you have one early on just to relax.  Except, you forgot about how good wine makes you feel; much different than that of hard liquor.  You skip getting any food from your cooler because now you feel stupid for bringing it so you leave it behind her couch and get another glass of wine thinking “I’ll just have two” and after that you’ll cut it off.  The breeze is blowing and you’re now glowing—the total life of the get together– and here comes the dessert.  Instead of passing on one because you’ve now had 2 drinks, you say you just to “sample” a bit.  Two desserts and another glass of wine later, you’ve lost all sense of the evening, your diet and your mouth since you just told XYZ she’s so full of herself that…

Tomfoolery: You want a glass of wine but you know what it does to you so you wait until dinner is served.  You and your girlfriend are watching each other to keep each other on the up and up.  You just get situated with your glass when the desserts show up.  You actually decide to share one with your girlfriend because having a drink with sweets makes you crave more so you ease up on how much sweet you have that night.  You feel really good about the night…even after XYZ told everyone how wonderful she is…

At the end of this series I will give a wrap up of all four posts so you have concrete guidelines for the summer, but I will tell you this now:  Wine is usually the weapon of choice for women.  It is a very different high and it becomes more and more exaggerated as you lose weight.  Hard liquor takes time to kick in and when it does, you check out.  Wine is much different, though.  Somehow, it makes us feel like all in life is A-Ok while we keep some of our wits about us.  It is a fantasy in a bottle and in a romantic setting like partying on the deck, it can be beyond intoxicating.  It’s not the sugar in alcohol or the calories of the drink that get us in trouble with our diets, it’s the alcohol itself.  Make sure you know exactly how much you’re going to have *before* you start drinking or you’re going down hard.  Woop woop!

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