“I’ve got it. I’ve got it. I’ve got it. I don’t got it,” says a character in the Albert Brooks film, High Anxiety, carrying and then dropping a heavy trunk repeatedly to the ground, a comical sequence about misjudgment. Just when I think I have a handle on how to work my lifestyle successfully, I drop the giant trunk to a symphony of, “I don’t got it.” Today was one of those days. I stayed within my normal array of foods, but felt a lack of control, a sense of urgency to eat considerably more, and a desire to relieve a discomfort that my old psyche believed food could alleviate. Physically distressed by a minor surgical procedure earlier in the day, I circled around the discomfort searching for an alternative avenue of relief. Yet food eventually rescued me like an emergency vehicle ringing its sirens, racing to my aid and saving me from demise.

Although food comforts with immediate gratification and distraction, it fuels the fire rather than douses the flames. Food battles the hurt, aims to distract the pain, yet eventually causes greater emotional distress. Now observing my behavior post-excessive eating, I note the pain still exists with additional emotions awaiting their turn to be expressed. My disappointment, anxiety, and bloated body, plus additional ailments, plague me, while still in search of physical and mental relief. The ruckus from eating one’s discomfort snowballs into a morphed mess. Even with knowledge, experience, and recognition of these steps in play while occurring, I drop the trunk anyway, waylaying into turmoil I know well and have often overcome. “I got it. I got it. I got it. I don’t got it.”

Part of the process is to dust ourselves off and rally after damage is done, rather than finishing off another ice cream sundae. Stopping the cycle in its tracks with awareness is true victory. Imperative to recognize one’s imperfection, repeal the past, and move along formidably, is to note the lessons for future action. Phone a friend, ask the audience, give yourself a 50:50 chance, or leave well enough alone by walking away with current success; find new ground to begin again immediately. Risk of future failure is unnecessary. Instead learn from mistakes and make new decisions setting present and future victory into motion. Sometimes we got it, sometimes we don’t. Today, “I got it. I got it. I got it. I don’t got it.” The journey continues with “I got it” until “I don’t got it” until one day we simply got it again.