Cheating Has a New Face
This morning I weighed in at 206.50 pounds, bringing my total weight loss to 44.50 pounds. I am 6.5 pounds away from my next goal-a big one, of breaking 200. If this site has the capacity to play brass bands and shoot fireworks, be assured that I will find a way to bring them to that post.
I haven't had a "1" as the first digit in my weight since I was 3 months pregnant. Before that, I'd never even gotten close to the big Deuce. Well, okay, 'close' is a relative term, I suppose, since I'm 'close' to dropping down below it now. The last time I gained weight, I topped out at 194, which, at the time, sent me hiding behind untucked t-shirts and ill-fitting jeans. I blushed and shuffled my way through the largest ring on the racks, a 16, and I vowed that I would never see that number again. I was almost right, in that I got big enough to consider a Misses 16 to be an unattainable goal-something that happened to me pre-pregnancy. I've quashed that forever, since while I am not yet a 16, I can see it from here. If I wanted to cheat it, I could say I've made it already. I own a pair of black jeans in Size 16 Misses. But they're stretch, and so that doesn't count. It only counts if the denim doesn't give, doesn't share space with spandex, and looks the same on the hangar as off.
Speaking of cheating, I had lunch with a good friend today and she wanted to know what I missed, being on this diet. My answer surprised me. Not for what I'd given up--that was easy. I'd given up all form of sweets. I've always been a sweet freak. My brother and I used to go on what we called 'sugar attacks', pooling our meager monies, usually in the form of change, and raid the Convenient Food Mart or the Fisher's Big Wheel at the end of his paper route. We'd buy every conceivable fat-laden foodstuff and then shovel it into our mouths as we walked (or, sometimes if the shopping took too long, ran) back home, always with a dinner awaiting us, always with an unspoken rule that we had to eat.
There was no meal-skipping at my house, no declaring that we weren't hungry, no leaving the table unless we had cleaned our plates, even as teenagers. I got into a lot of trouble growing up, and most of it was over food that I didn't want to eat. I hid it in empty milk cartons and torn grocery bags (back then they were paper and leaked like a mutha), or dropped it back into its stovetop container, or, on one particularly desperate occasion, on the basement steps. I always got caught, often had to eat the food anyway, cold, disgusting, and now covered in who-knows-what from the trash.
I spent a lot of time sitting at an empty kitchen table, staring down food that I couldn't even bring to my mouth without gagging, and yet, somehow, had to get all the way down my gullet. My brother somehow never had the issue that I did. Whether he suffered as he ate Mom's barely edible fare, I don't know (her version of vegetable soup was to boil 2 or 3 cans of Veg-All in plain water until the whole house smelled of dirty sponge, let it simmer for a day and then serve it with a threatening, 'you'd better keep eating-there's enough for 5 days'.), but he always ate and I rarely had his company while I sat, devising schemes to keep me from eating.
I managed to make it through those years, and it's a wonder really that I even managed to make it to a normal body weight. I had such an aversion to food that I could barely eat. For most of my college career, I would leave the table long before I was satisfied, and I didn't eat a vegetable voluntarily until my sophomore year in college when my boyfriend Howard took me to a Chinese restaurant and encouraged me to try the Moo Goo Gai Pan. I couldn't believe a vegetable could crunch. And it had taste! A convert was born.
It was likely a combination of the inedible fare from my home years and my insatiable sweet tooth that was egged on by the secrecy of securing the illicit goodies that created my weight problem in later years. Once I made enough money to buy food on my own, and once I got my own place, my whole kitchen turned into a Sugar Attack. I had sweet food all the time, any time I wanted it. Interestingly, though my pantry always had something naughty, I never ate any of it in front of others. To the watchful public, I was still the vegetable hocking Lean Meat Lady who only ate things that came holistically from the ground or had Lite/Low-Fat on the labels. I couldn't explain my weight gains, and I didn't try. I just had slower metabolism, I offered, or I wasn't getting as much exercise anymore. I didn't live on a campus, and I wasn't inside city limits anymore. I drove all the time, and driving didn't burn as many calories as walking. See? Easy to figure. I'm okay with my size 12 skirts. The Junk Food Junkie lived on.
I can't remember my last sugar attack, but I know it wasn't too far away from the start of this weight loss. I don't remember what I ate, but I can tell you that I ate until I was uncomfortable, and possibly until I was sick. I can also tell you that whatever I ate, I did it alone. I snuck a candy bar into the groceries and then scarfed it down on the drive home, tossing the package out the window and risking a littering fine rather than get caught with the wrapper. I faked a need for something at the drug store and stashed a bag of something chocolate and miniature into my knapsack, then spent the evening creeping upstairs, unwrapping them in silence (this takes talent!) and then swallowing a mouthful of Listerine before returning downstairs, so my stealth activity went unnoticed. It's entirely possible that I made a batch of Break & Bake chocolate chip cookies and then ate them all, 3 at a time and layered with peanut butter, throwing out the single-use cookie sheet I'd bought so I could bend it up and hide it in the bottom of the recycle bin, and not have to worry about cleaning the cookie sheet and having my housemate wonder why it was drying in the dish rack.
Those days are gone now. With the exception of a single, small handful of plain M&Ms about a month in, I haven't cheated. I don't eat refined sugar any more, and, what's amazing and wonderful, is that I don't want it. The fat and calories (and WW points) aren't worth the excursion, I know I'll feel woozy and sick afterwards, and I realize that whatever issues or problems I thought these foods solved was a mirage. They didn't solve anything. Eating them didn't soften anything (except maybe my butt). Abandoning them has liberated me. I am free from my sugar addiction. I am alone in the house almost every afternoon, and I don't snack. I don't even have to avoid the pantry: I am free of it. I might have a sugar problem still, but my sugar problem does not have me.
"Cheating" now consists of a nonfat yogurt at the end of dinner, and even this is to replace the good bacteria that the penicillan has murdered (I had strep last week). I don't even eat the WW ice cream or desserts. I could, but I don't bother. What for? They only serve to remind me of a past life, a time when food controlled me and I bowed to its alluring forces. No more. I am not that woman. That woman struggled with sweets. This woman does not.
View both victory and defeat as the imposters they are. I have not defeated sugar. I don't hate it. I am indifferent to it. I gave it up, but I don't miss it.
How about that?
I haven't had a "1" as the first digit in my weight since I was 3 months pregnant. Before that, I'd never even gotten close to the big Deuce. Well, okay, 'close' is a relative term, I suppose, since I'm 'close' to dropping down below it now. The last time I gained weight, I topped out at 194, which, at the time, sent me hiding behind untucked t-shirts and ill-fitting jeans. I blushed and shuffled my way through the largest ring on the racks, a 16, and I vowed that I would never see that number again. I was almost right, in that I got big enough to consider a Misses 16 to be an unattainable goal-something that happened to me pre-pregnancy. I've quashed that forever, since while I am not yet a 16, I can see it from here. If I wanted to cheat it, I could say I've made it already. I own a pair of black jeans in Size 16 Misses. But they're stretch, and so that doesn't count. It only counts if the denim doesn't give, doesn't share space with spandex, and looks the same on the hangar as off.
Speaking of cheating, I had lunch with a good friend today and she wanted to know what I missed, being on this diet. My answer surprised me. Not for what I'd given up--that was easy. I'd given up all form of sweets. I've always been a sweet freak. My brother and I used to go on what we called 'sugar attacks', pooling our meager monies, usually in the form of change, and raid the Convenient Food Mart or the Fisher's Big Wheel at the end of his paper route. We'd buy every conceivable fat-laden foodstuff and then shovel it into our mouths as we walked (or, sometimes if the shopping took too long, ran) back home, always with a dinner awaiting us, always with an unspoken rule that we had to eat.
There was no meal-skipping at my house, no declaring that we weren't hungry, no leaving the table unless we had cleaned our plates, even as teenagers. I got into a lot of trouble growing up, and most of it was over food that I didn't want to eat. I hid it in empty milk cartons and torn grocery bags (back then they were paper and leaked like a mutha), or dropped it back into its stovetop container, or, on one particularly desperate occasion, on the basement steps. I always got caught, often had to eat the food anyway, cold, disgusting, and now covered in who-knows-what from the trash.
I spent a lot of time sitting at an empty kitchen table, staring down food that I couldn't even bring to my mouth without gagging, and yet, somehow, had to get all the way down my gullet. My brother somehow never had the issue that I did. Whether he suffered as he ate Mom's barely edible fare, I don't know (her version of vegetable soup was to boil 2 or 3 cans of Veg-All in plain water until the whole house smelled of dirty sponge, let it simmer for a day and then serve it with a threatening, 'you'd better keep eating-there's enough for 5 days'.), but he always ate and I rarely had his company while I sat, devising schemes to keep me from eating.
I managed to make it through those years, and it's a wonder really that I even managed to make it to a normal body weight. I had such an aversion to food that I could barely eat. For most of my college career, I would leave the table long before I was satisfied, and I didn't eat a vegetable voluntarily until my sophomore year in college when my boyfriend Howard took me to a Chinese restaurant and encouraged me to try the Moo Goo Gai Pan. I couldn't believe a vegetable could crunch. And it had taste! A convert was born.
It was likely a combination of the inedible fare from my home years and my insatiable sweet tooth that was egged on by the secrecy of securing the illicit goodies that created my weight problem in later years. Once I made enough money to buy food on my own, and once I got my own place, my whole kitchen turned into a Sugar Attack. I had sweet food all the time, any time I wanted it. Interestingly, though my pantry always had something naughty, I never ate any of it in front of others. To the watchful public, I was still the vegetable hocking Lean Meat Lady who only ate things that came holistically from the ground or had Lite/Low-Fat on the labels. I couldn't explain my weight gains, and I didn't try. I just had slower metabolism, I offered, or I wasn't getting as much exercise anymore. I didn't live on a campus, and I wasn't inside city limits anymore. I drove all the time, and driving didn't burn as many calories as walking. See? Easy to figure. I'm okay with my size 12 skirts. The Junk Food Junkie lived on.
I can't remember my last sugar attack, but I know it wasn't too far away from the start of this weight loss. I don't remember what I ate, but I can tell you that I ate until I was uncomfortable, and possibly until I was sick. I can also tell you that whatever I ate, I did it alone. I snuck a candy bar into the groceries and then scarfed it down on the drive home, tossing the package out the window and risking a littering fine rather than get caught with the wrapper. I faked a need for something at the drug store and stashed a bag of something chocolate and miniature into my knapsack, then spent the evening creeping upstairs, unwrapping them in silence (this takes talent!) and then swallowing a mouthful of Listerine before returning downstairs, so my stealth activity went unnoticed. It's entirely possible that I made a batch of Break & Bake chocolate chip cookies and then ate them all, 3 at a time and layered with peanut butter, throwing out the single-use cookie sheet I'd bought so I could bend it up and hide it in the bottom of the recycle bin, and not have to worry about cleaning the cookie sheet and having my housemate wonder why it was drying in the dish rack.
Those days are gone now. With the exception of a single, small handful of plain M&Ms about a month in, I haven't cheated. I don't eat refined sugar any more, and, what's amazing and wonderful, is that I don't want it. The fat and calories (and WW points) aren't worth the excursion, I know I'll feel woozy and sick afterwards, and I realize that whatever issues or problems I thought these foods solved was a mirage. They didn't solve anything. Eating them didn't soften anything (except maybe my butt). Abandoning them has liberated me. I am free from my sugar addiction. I am alone in the house almost every afternoon, and I don't snack. I don't even have to avoid the pantry: I am free of it. I might have a sugar problem still, but my sugar problem does not have me.
"Cheating" now consists of a nonfat yogurt at the end of dinner, and even this is to replace the good bacteria that the penicillan has murdered (I had strep last week). I don't even eat the WW ice cream or desserts. I could, but I don't bother. What for? They only serve to remind me of a past life, a time when food controlled me and I bowed to its alluring forces. No more. I am not that woman. That woman struggled with sweets. This woman does not.
View both victory and defeat as the imposters they are. I have not defeated sugar. I don't hate it. I am indifferent to it. I gave it up, but I don't miss it.
How about that?
posted by Former Fat Girl Gone Skinny | 6:47 PM
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