Eat No Evil

Cripes, I’m hungry.

I don’t know whether it’s just some evil trick that my body is playing on me, but lately I’m like an orphan in “Oliver!”, singing about food, glorious food. Suddenly, my previously-trained eyes are darting to donut boxes and Spanish-rice specials at work. Yesterday I saw my boss eating a salad that was literally a ranch-dressing soup, and my mouth watered. I don’t even like salad dressing, but all that cheese and all those big hunks of meat just sang to me like the ship-crashing sirens they were. I don’t get this, and I don’t like it. I haven’t been smearing my egg whites with peanut butter or snorting Snickers, and yet my brain has decided to bring back all the desires for the old, make-me-fat-and-keep-me-there “diet”. What in Crisco’s name is going on?

Frankly, I think it’s mostly a backlash from an experiment I conducted a week or so ago, when I ate as if I were on maintenance. I wanted to try it, to show myself that there was nothing to fear about adding a few extra calories in to the daily feast. It was nothing fancy-just an extra apple, a little bit more protein and a smidgen more carbs, plus yogurt with ham (not together!) for my last meal/snack instead of low fat popcorn. I edged my calories up by the WW-recommended 4 POINTS (about 350 calories for those who calculate food values in the regular way) and had 5 or 6 mini-meals instead of my 3 or 4 regular ones. I wound up eating every 2.5 to 3 hours, and while it was exhausting, it was good. I was satisfied all day long, I did not down an entire jar of pickles right before bed, and I managed, at last, to get my fiber count up over that 35 g hump. Glory day.

And a huge mistake. Nothing to fear? Guess again.

I went back to my regular plan the next day. After all, I’m now hovering around the 150 mark, and the big bar is back in place, so I am definitely still in weight loss mode. I ate my normal 3-point breakfast (vs. the 4.5 ‘maintenance’ meal), and felt properly sated at meal’s end.

And then my body decided that it liked the Eating All The Time model so much that it would torture me until I caved and brought it back. I’ve resisted, more or less successfully, but it’s as if a single day of over-feeding has created this beast who will not be quieted with Jazz apples and non-fat yogurt. The Fat Lady emerges yet again. Seriously, somebody just stick Excaliber through that broad and let’s be done with her already.

I am out of practice with being hungry all the time, and now I’m holding hands with the PMS bitch, so pretty soon, poor Howard is going to lose whatever hair he has left, because I’m going to yell it right off of his head. So clearly I must remain on a diet every day for the rest of my life. I'll get used to the hunger, and maybe someday soon, I'll stop dreaming of ice-cream covered everything and peanut butter pie.

I have changed other things too, which probably contributed to all this. I gave up coffee entirely.I managed to wean myself in a way that spared me from the Caffeine Headache, and I thank whatever deities helped me with that one. I’m not sure I could have made it through on just Excedrin Migraine (which has caffeine in it).

Soda left the building as well. One of my WW buddies told me that diet soda contains sodium benzoate which is more or less a poison. Okay, then! All coke-brown, white, purple, and even the High Class root beer, is no more. DS took it well; better than Howard or I, and now we’re all on a strictly water intake. When I’m drooling for Diet Coke, I remind myself that every other creature drinks only water so there’s no real reason to drink anything else, except for pleasure. Ah, pleasure. One of the things I shed along with 101 pounds.

By the way, WW is a big honkin’ bunch of liars by writing that water is the best appetite suppressant. It does all right, and I’m definitely healthier now, but I’m hungrier, too. And while we’re talking about it, ice in water doesn’t help. It just makes my hunger cold, which makes it angry.

I’m glad I made the switch: I don’t have these weird ‘creature crawling across my intestines’ aches anymore, and that is excellent. That was downright scary, and a couple of trips to the doctor yielded nothing but, ‘let’s wait and see’. Yeah, great. Me, whose motto is, “instant gratification takes too long” is going to ‘wait and see’. Good luck with that. But a few changes in diet and the removal of these potent poisons seems to have vamoosed the symptoms. And that's good, because that was most un-fun.

So I gave up the last of my vices, and it's really helped. People want to know what’s new, because now I’m not only thin, but my skin is all glowy and I have muscular definition where once I had only sag. I want to tell them how I’ve changed, but it’s difficult to be heard over my stomach's howl.

I’ve decided to view this as I’ve viewed the other inexplicable things on this journey—as a temporary weirdness, devoid of logic and bound to disappear in such a banal way that I won’t realize it until something else oddball pops up. I mean, my hair is curly now and I can see the veins in my arms-something I’ve never had. Stuff is going on, I have no real control over it, and it defies all deduction. Why worry about something I can’t change?

Gotta go. It’s time to eat.

A the R(avenous)