Quick! Someone Hide My Scale!

My husband stood still in the kitchen, blinking for a moment or two. He had just asked, innocently if somewhat naively, whether I wanted the last Nutella brownie. Although I give him credit for enjoying shopping, as well as dark chocolate, the truth is: He is not a girl.  How could he have guessed in the nanoseconds after the question left his lips the range of emotions which surged through my frazzled little psyche: overpowering desire for the brownie, guilt for wanting the brownie, worry that I might lose control and put on 5 pounds after eating the brownie (and the ice cream, fudge topping, Reddi Whip, chopped pecans, maraschino cherry, and maybe a small handful of sprinkles, which are all essential accompaniments), shame at my potential lack of self-discipline, stress that I might be transferring the wrong values to my teenage daughters in obsessing over my food intake, and extreme annoyance with myself for most of these thoughts--besides the original one about wanting the brownie. I bravely replied in a choked voice, “Umm...no,” and turned my face to hide my tears. How had I come to this?

Somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 extra pounds ago, I had almost come to terms with my matronly figure, looking like an over-sized pear that was losing the battle with gravity. I laughed right along with Garfield when he said, “I am not overweight; I am undertall.” And the day my sister-in-law and I wedged ourselves side by side into a big tube and bounced along on a lake behind a boat, I confess that I laughed until I cried when we saw what cellulite looks like jiggling at 25 mph! 

At that time, I couldn’t imagine myself ever seriously attempting to lose weight. Dieting is such an unpleasant word--the sound of it is uncomfortably close to the word dying. And frankly after giving birth to four kids, and later hitting middle-age, I was pretty sure that I was stuck--besides the fact that denying myself dreamy desserts or calming carbs while raising a pack of teenagers seemed truly ill-advised. Food is way cheaper than therapy...depending on how one eats. If I felt that I had a choice before me, it was not the choice about how to lose weight, but about the choice to either come to terms with my shape or to be constantly miserable. “Life is too short to not enjoy food,” I told myself. Whenever people would say, “Oh, none for me, thanks. I’m being good,” I wanted to laugh at them. Or slap them. So I just rolled along enjoying myself, with admittedly one or two bad habits: emotional eating, social eating, mental eating, spiritual eating, boredom eating, movie-watching-eating, book-reading-eating, eating to sustain life, eating to enjoy life...there are probably others but you get the idea.

Then one day I received a revelation: The Midnight Dessert Buffet. We had a cruise coming up in a couple of months and I had a flash of brilliance--if I lost 10 pounds in the weeks leading up to the cruise, I could eat as much as I wanted to at the Midnight Dessert Buffet with no harm done! Brilliant! Properly motivated, I can do amazing things. The biggest hurdle to overcome was my emotional eating. But I quickly learned to replace brownies and cookies...and graham crackers and Doritos and popcorn and spoonfuls of peanut butter and spoonfuls of hot fudge topping and spoonfuls of butterscotch caramel topping...with gum, mints, and fingernails. Long story short, I reached my goal and then some. But what did I give up in the process?

When the night of the Midnight Dessert Buffet came along, I didn’t even really want to go. I was having fun with my new size, and my newly found self-discipline (read: Boring-ness). My teenage daughter was disappointed. I also became one of those annoying people no one wants to go to lunch with: “I’ll just have a Caesar salad with light dressing--on the side--and a glass of water. Dessert? [haughty sniff] No thank you.” My lunch friends were disappointed. For many, many months I did not bake any goodies or buy any donuts. My family was disappointed.

Several months after breaking the habit of emotional eating, one day I fairly threw myself off The Wagon. Somehow I got the idea into my little pea brain that if I ate something when stressed, just this once--just to try it--it would be no big deal. Probably wouldn’t even be satisfying. Dead. Wrong. I ate it and felt immediately soothed, calmed, and pacified, wrapped in the comfortable and familiar arms of dark chocolate. It was at this point The Wagon ran over me. It wasn’t long before I began telling myself that a little bit of this or an extra helping of that surely wouldn’t hurt. Now I bounce between More Or Less Completely Out of Control, and More Or Less Completely Boring. 

What is important to me is being physically healthy, and making emotionally sound decisions--which do not include emotional eating. But instead of emotional eating, I find myself obsessing equally over my weight, and when the next meal or snack will be. I vacillate between feeling good about the way I look, and feeling the guilt, worry, shame, stress, and annoyance previously discussed. This is better?!?

I could have been happy as a saggy piece of fruit.