Day 2, Blame it on the ....

I thought it would be good to take a step back and look at when and why I ate.  Was I hungry, bored, upset, angry, tired, eating out of habit, or avoiding some other emotion?  The morning started out with beef jerky in the car.  I was so hungry.  I then ate the tuna sandwich that my husband made for my lunch.  Still felt like I was starving.  And THEN I remembered there was a McDonald's on my way to the freeway.  I just wanted to feel satisfied.  As I had done so many other occasions, I stopped at that cursed establishment of convenience. I ordered two sausage burritos.  I ate one burrito and saved the other for lunch as I NEEDED to replace my lunch sandwich. 


So, the day drones on and it gets to be lunch time and I ate my second burrito, another beef jerky stick and a small brownie.  Looking back on it, I ate because it was lunch time, not because I was actually hungry. 


Here is the kicker, I was out on an emergency assignment case and felt nauseated....my brilliant solution - EAT.  Small chili from Wendy's.  "Oh, well, maybe I really was hungry," I thought.  No STUPID!  You are bored and ate out of emotion.  I then thought that it must be that one day out of my monthly cycle... Blame it on the hormones, that is effective avoidance for ya! 


I came home and wanted more than anything to get rid of the stress of my day with Mexican food and a pitcher of margaritas.  But I resisted; I came home and prepared a makeshift stir-fry with bowtie pasta.  I opted for the 64 calorie beer as the beverage.  On the surface, it sounds like I had a victory, right?!  Until I tell you that I had a chocolate chip cookie in the car on my drive home and the only reason I didn't go out for Mexican was that my husband didn't answer his phone when I called him three times on my drive home.


Oh well, Blame it on the.........

Day 1, Ignorance is bliss and I wanted to be happy...

Have you ever had a "WOW" moment? That moment takes your breath away, when you finally SEE what other people see, what other people have told you your entire life. I will tell you, I had that moment on Friday March 26, 2010.

My mother worked for my family physician for 20 years. Well, I should say that the doctor my mother worked for became my family physician because he was too cheap to provide medical insurance for my mother and just thought he could take care of our medical needs. This is great until you need a cavity filled or hospital care...but I digress. Well, this physician moved to Florida to work in his sister's family practice and my mom has been asked to help pack up the office that she helped to establish. So, she gets to my chart and decides that it would be good for me to have my medical record. It was thin, a dozen pages or so, as I was a healthy kid.

I open the chart as if some secret answer is contained within its tattered pages. Over and over within its scant contents I see five letters that make my eyes sting with tears, put a quiver in my lip and make my heart hurt just a little; OBESE. At that one moment I made the decision to get rid of that word in my life. This moment made such an impression that I lost sleep and my brain began to work overtime to create a plan.

Over the next two days I proceeded to eat ramen noodles, hot dogs, pizza, bacon, fried fish, hush puppies, and chocolate chip cookies. Somehow the sting of those five letters had been soothed by very food that helped to create the label. How quickly my motivation was lost in a sea of comfort.

So, that old medical chart did contain a secret answer...The secret was that I was living a lie. I am fat. Not just fat but OBESE. I have said it and have written it for the world to see. I accept it, I embrace it and I will work for the next 365 days to get rid my future of the word OBESE.