Onwards and upwards December 15, 2007
I’m tired. And cranky. And dying to shove my mouth full of every kind of junk food imaginable. But, so far, I’m resisting. Kind of. I downed two Hersheys kisses this morning. And took out a sugar cookie this afternoon. Those little kisses tempted me, cried out to me from their little basket on my coworker’s desk. That cookie taunted me until I caved. Really, they did! Okay, maybe not. The sad thing is that, once again, I’m not sure that I wanted wanted them. Though that cookie was REALLY good. So I’ll give it atleast one and a half wanteds. Instead, I fell victim to the “it’s there, so I should eat it” mentality. Which is really one of the worst mentalities there is. “What happened to the dozen doughnuts that were here?” “They were here, so I ate them” “And the danishes?” “Also here” “And the table they were sitting on?” “Yep. That too.” It just doesn’t make any logical sense. Then again, I don’t think there is such thing as logic when chocolate is involved. I am proud of myself that I ate a good lunch though- leftover stir-fry and a baked potato. Have I ever mentioned how much I love baked potatoes?
See, I guess here’s where some of my back story comes in. I was the fat kid. Not just a fat kid, but the one fat kid that every kid made fun of. The sounds of fake thunderthigh noises still haunt me. Except that, I played sports, I ate right, but I was the fat kid. Doctor kept telling my mom I’d grow into it. (How do you grow into being fat? Like it’s somehow going to suit you at some point? Don’t you just grow into being more fat?) But, sure enough, summer in between 6th and 7th grade, I grew into it- I grew six inches over the course of a summer. Oops! Even then I wasn’t skinny, but I was fit. And because of that, I grew into a pretty healthy mentality. When other girls were thinking of themselves as fat or skinny, I was thinking of how I could outsprint almost every girl in my soccer league. When I hit highschool, I got into weight lifting and turned into a gym rat. My body was not an object of desire, or a sex symbol. It was a finely tuned machine that could snowboard, stop almost any shot, and leg press with the best of them. (What I wouldn’t give for that now!) Things chugged along swimmingly until my second year of college. I slipped and fell on my back. (I wish I could say it was doing something cool. But no. I was taken out by a ketchup spill on slick tile. How lame is that? Gotta think of a better story than that…)Now, I’d injured my back several times before, but this one was a doozy. Gym time disappeared when I couldn’t get off the couch for two weeks. When I could finally get off the couch, I could hardly move. Luckily flipflops were in style ’cause Lord knows I wasn’t tying my shoes. Needless to say, this whole thing packed on a few pounds. But, it damaged a lot more than my waist line. See, it’s easy to get your self esteem from how strong your body is, when your body is strong. When you can’t pick your feet up off the ground, much less any sort of weight, it’s a lot harder. And that’s when I turned to pretty. My self esteem started coming from my looks, and not my strength (Can’t do that now!). So, my senior year in college, I decided that the whole weight thing was getting in the way of pretty. So I started the SouthBeach diet. I went from 165 in November to 148 in May. And that’s the lowest I’ve been since. See, SB and I don’t really work out well. I’m part Irish, which means I love potatoes, part Italian, so I’m genetically engineered to like pasta, part French, so I love pastry, part English.. wait. British food is gross. But you get my drift here. It wasn’t that low carb food was awful. I just couldn’t live that way. I mean, they wanted me to blend cauliflower and half and half and pretend it was mashed potatoes. That, dear friends, is wrong. Sick and wrong. And that’s what sent me jumping off the wagon.
Now I know I’m not sitting in XL sweatpants because of potatoes. I’m sitting here 5 sizes bigger and 50 pounds heavier because I’m lazy, and because it never occurred to me to find an eating style that suited me. *Cue inspirational music* Until now. So, yes, I had a cookie. That’s cool. I had ONE. (Despite the overwhelming desire to throw myself on the pile with reckless abandon and eat until I passed out) I also had a baked potato. Because carbs are not the devil. They’re my friends. My peeps. My homies. And more importantly, they’re delicious. So I’m taking it easy, knowing that I’m going to have to keep up with this for life.
But, there’s good news. So far the scale approves. I started off on Sunday at 194. The scale is currently 191.5. Woohoo! Excuse me while I happy dance. Now, I know, it’s water weight. But, I like my bubble just the way it is, no bursting required. Besides, after a steady weight gain, I’ll take any weight loss- water or not!
