You may have heard that my senior dog, Annabelle, passed away recently.

She was diagnosed with cancer earlier this spring, and her prognosis was very grim.

With the right meds, she hung in there for about three weeks after her diagnosis.

But there finally came a day when she wouldn’t eat.

And even though she’s always been a love bug, she wasn’t interested in affection, wanted to be alone, and ignored me and my ex-husband, Miles (we shared custody of her).

We paid a service to come to Miles’ house and put her to sleep, but a couple weeks before she died, I hired my long-time videographer, Aaron, to drive down and take some footage for an Annabelle documentary. It turned out beautifully. (Go here if you want to see it.)

The same day Annabelle died, I had a party I wanted to attend (the one I told you about in a different post…the one that looked like it was catered by Willy Wonka).

Part of me didn’t want to go, but part of me did, so I went.

Staying out of all that crap food would have been tough anyway. Fresh grief on my heart only made it harder.

Even so, I did it. I stayed on track. Not even ONE bite.

Grief is one of those emotions that makes most people wanna go face down in “comfort foods.”

Believe me, I get it. Late last year, that’s what I did after I lost my bodybuilding coach and a bunch of other crap happened all at once. (If you were on my Throwing It All Away workshop, you know the whole story.)

Fast-forward to losing Annabelle this year, and this time I stayed on track.

Here’s what I want you to get from this.

Even if you’ve screwed up a million times on Code Red (or anything in life, really), that doesn’t mean you always will.

Just because you did it before doesn’t mean you have to do it again.

YOU are the one who decides whether you repeat a past experience or do it right this time.

Remember that if you’re beating yourself up about bad choices or scared to do Code Red again because you expect to fail, okay?