Outcome: "Win"
Record: 115-9
Streak: Won 2

Summary: I stayed up late last night reading Eva's essay, and because of that, I gave myself another excused morning pages absence. What's crazy is that I woke up on my own, at the proper time, and did them, even though I already excused myself from them. That was one of the most virtuous things I've done since the start of my series.
I finished my 20 week French program today, worked, weighed in at 171, biked, toured the state house for my artist's date, finished my homework for class, cleaned up, ran an errand, filed my taxes, and did some miscellaneous administrative work. I've set myself up fantastically for a great Saturday and Sunday. Remember, ideally, Saturday night is for hardcore reading. Sunday is for hardcore relaxing. It seems that there's nothing that should obstruct either of those activities.
I've often stressed the importance of health (diet, sleep, exercise, rest, etc.) over mental strategies. And while I still think that mental strategies are garbage for the most part, there is one that has worked consistently for me. This is to view my mind as a drama between different characters. There is a reasoning and judging character, and if I mentally commit myself to granting complete sovereignty to that "self", then it helps to move along in a positive direction. For example, when I get pumped up about something, all of my selves are unified in will. The problem with that is that inspiration is fleeting, and soon I'm conflicted--my reasoning, judging self concludes that x action is the best action in order to forward my goals, but some other parts of myself, more viscerally present in my consciousness rebels and has a terrible attitude. So then I basically sign a mental contract with the reasoning mind, and then I can do whatever I want. It's like being scared of doing something and then overcoming it (enough that you can move forward) by just signing up for it, mailing your payment, and then getting scared later, rather than let your fear present the possibility of not doing the thing. So in my mental drama, there's the whining self that wants the raspberry mocha. My reaction is not to battle with that self, but just to let it be, and calmly hand the scepter to the reasoning self, which knows that I'm on a diet (and making progress), and which knows the steps that need to be taken in order to get there (those steps don't include a mocha at the moment). So basically I say, "all right fine, throw your fit. You're just making it harder on yourself, because yo, you're going to do it, one way or another. Do you want to drag yourself through pain in order to do it? Or do you want to embrace the inevitable, thus rendering it more pleasant? Whatever, you can do whatever you want, because really it doesn't matter in the end."
Perhaps my strategy sounds lame, but for whatever reason, it has worked well for me. Maybe another way to explain it is to draw a parallel with the experience that Dan and I had with vegetarianism, which was that we made the commitment, and after that point, it wasn't hard at all. It wasn't even an option. It didn't feel like deprivation, it was just the way it was. Well this is like that, except there's another self that whines and carries on constantly about the choice, but the key is that your better half has made a commitment analogous to the vegetarian commitment, which is iron clad. Acknowledge your weak, asshole self, don't get freaked out when its voice creeps into your consciousness, just basically let it stand in the corner and throw it's tantrum. It kind of quiets down after a while once it figures out that it's not going to get what it wants (I've noticed that on individual points, if I let myself slide a few times, it gets immensely more difficult to ignore the voice).