Junk Food My Arse – Really!

Ever feel like you’re just a cog in the wheel of the world, and relegated to doing things the same old way, day in and day out?  Ever think that the wheels on the bus really do just keep going round and round?

That’s how it is at times for me.  My boyfriend is one of those tall, lean, super muscular types that has always been athletic and active, and has never had to diet.  Welcome to my nightmare.  I was all set before I met him.  Well, in the health and diet department, at least.  He introduced me to the joys and delicacies of salami from around the globe (which I never would be caught dead eating before), served with fresh baked tuscan bread and olive oil.  Oh, and the incredible wines that we love to drink!

Don’t get me going! I’ll gain weight just typing this. But if I even think the words “diet” or “cut back,” or “slim down,” I may as well just say “fuh-get-abou-dit!” around our house and just eat the stinkin’ salami.  Heck, if he doesn’t mind the rotund little sub-human species that appears before him after a few years of eating like he does, why should I even try?

If you’re new to this blog, welcome.  Enter with caution.  You will get the hard cold truth, the facts about things in life and the world – as discovered and submitted by my crack team of research experts (yeah, right), and hopefully you’ll laugh a little.  Cuz my life is just one big joke. HA!

But you see I’ve been on this quest to get from this:

That’s my left hip / waist up there.

Stretch marks and all.  I have no secrets, I know.

To this:

That’s me on the right. But it doesn’t
really matter.  The red leather pants
are mine as well, and I use to fit in
them just as nicely!

The truth is, I stay fit for ME.  And this is the start of week 2 of my “thin thinking, lean, mean machine” approach to fitting back into my suit.  I started last week as documented on the post I’m a Thin, Light, Lean, Mean Machine – Don’tcha Know?.

I also want to clarify exactly why I am trying to lose weight.  But I won’t do that here. To find out, you’ll have to read this whole thing.  It’s near the end.

Last week I left you with the notion that I have GOT to lose 11 lbs.  I have a business trip coming up and have to fit into my suit!  It’s a brand new, gorgeous suit.  Now comes the good stuff.  HOW I am doing it? I’ll give you a hint:  I am a lifer with that weightloss group you thought was only for old, fat, frumpy women.  Well, guess what?  It’s not, and I’m not.  It’s just smart.  Hello Weight Watchers.  Yep. They’ve saved my life – or at least saved me from having to buy entirely new wardrobes – more than once.  It’s true.  I even go to meetings when I can.  If anyone wants to get details on how I do it, you can go here to see everything I ate, as well as the “before” pictures of both hips, and that suit.  Ich.

I have to say, there is this whole mental thing that happens when I try to eat healthy.

Take the Super Bowl, for instance.  My boyfriend and I were spending time at our house in Moab, Utah. We don’t really know people in Moab.  We planned to watch the game on our own.  My boyfriend knew this was weird for me.  I like people, and I like to be social – especially when there is a big event that everyone gathers together to watch.

So, in the morning of the big game he took me out to breakfast.  Remember – I am watching everything that goes into my body.  So, when our choices were limited to Denny’s or the Steakhouse that serves breakfast, I knew I’d be in trouble.  In L.A. I could go to any number of restaurants – even Mel’s Diner on Sunset – where ordering something like steamed vegetables scrambled with two egg whites would seem commonplace to them.  As a matter of fact, they’d have it on the menu.  I held my breath and thought to myself, “We are not in Kansas any more Dorothy.”  Besides, I knew it might be my only chance to see beyond the walls of our house on Super Bowl Sunday.  So, off we went.

As I looked at the menu, I mentioned how I couldn’t decide if I should eat the amount of food I would normally reserve for lunch, and then have my yummy egg whites and grilled vegetables at lunch. Then it happened: Peer pressure.  Holiday pressure.  Non-dieter pressure.  Pressure from someone who has never dieted in his life.  “Why don’t you just enjoy the day? It’s Super Bowl Sunday! We can grill some great stuff and make some really good Super Bowl style food (translation: junk), and you can start again tomorrow.”  I knew he meant well.  He is so sweet.

I was forced to explain how it really works.

“Realize this,” I began, knowing full-well he knew he was in for a lecture of sorts. “If I live my life like that: eating junk food, or the holiday food of choice, or whatever – every single time there is a holiday, just because there is a holiday, I may as well forget about ever eating healthy, staying thin or living a healthy existence.  Think about it.  There is some occasion every single month, usually several times a month.  Birthdays, client meetings, Super Bowl, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Fourth of July, business lunches, weddings, you name it. I have to decide I am a healthy eater – no matter what the occasion – and only allow myself to eat that stuff, like nachos, when  IIII really want it (emphasis on I).  Sure, it always tastes good, but I have learned that I will never succeed if I live that way.”

He quickly agreed.  Poor guy.

But he ordered the “lumberjack” which consisted of two sausage links, two strips of bacon, a slice of ham, two eggs, hashbrowns (the processed kind), two pancakes with butter, and an order of white toast with butter (and jelly, of course).  Talk about will power.  Mine, I mean.  Come to think of it, I didn’t even flinch. I didn’t even realize I’d taken an inventory of his meal until just this moment.

I ate oatmeal with splenda.  Yum.

I didn’t really crave anything on his plate.  I wasn’t jealous or wishing I could have pancakes.  I’ve also learned that all of those decadent, yummy, fattening foods are always around.  They will find me, believe you me, no matter where I go or how much weight I lose.  But I tried to remember the last time I ate and ordered whatever I wanted from the breakfast menu at Denny’s.  If I tried to remember that two or three years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to recall.  I would have laughed and thought with a distant memory of that greasy taste in my mouth, how it must have been in high school or something. But the sad thing is, as I looked at my boyfriend’s entire table of food, I realized I’d just ordered the lumberjack myself about two months ago. This is why I am here now, trying to lose 11 lbs.

How easy it is to slip into the land of “I can eat whatever I want and still look fabulous” mentality.  I decided a few years back, and I am quickly regaining that resolve, that I will always have to work at being thin and fit, and that’s just it.  If I decide I have earned the option of looking frumpy after reaching seventy, then I will cross that bridge, as they say.  But even that thinking gets you in trouble.  I can just see it.  With that mentality, I’ll reach my seventieth birthday and head straight for the market to buy myself all the favorite foods I’ve kept myself from eating: pizza, manicotti, filet mignon with real butter, giant baked potatoes with real butter and real sour cream, nachos with beans and ground beef and cheese smothered all over them, enchiladas, with cheese and sour cream, and oh so much more.  I’ll decide that my three-times-a-week yoga class can now be replaced with baking days. I’ll bake my delicious Russian Tea Cakes (all butter), my chocolate chip pecan cookies that have Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate in them, and my fudge and peanut brittles, and every other kind of decadent sweet I can think of.  I’ll say it’s because I’m older now, and I’ve earned the right to bake food for my kids and grandkids (if I ever have them).  But in reality, I’ll be eating most of it myself, because hey – I earned it.

So, I’ve decided to plan to go out like Audrey or Katherine Hepburn.  Slender, lovely, and full of style.  That’s my plan anyhow, morbid and narcissistic as it sounds to speak of how I want to look when I die.  It’s more about how I want to live.  When I get older, I don’t want to lose my breath trying to lift my sausage thighs up the stairs, or to bend down and pick something up.  But I’m so young and so far from being that age, you say? Well, now is the time to set patterns and lay the ground-work for how it with be then.

So NOW is the time – okay, last week was my NOW – but I have begun. 

Here are my results after week 1:
Start Date:  Thursday January 31, 2007
Height: 5′ 5″
Goal: 125 lbs
Beginning weight:  136 lbs
Weight after week 1:  132.5 lbs (02.07.08)
Net Loss or other:  – 3.5  WOO HOO!!!

Now as to the reason I am on a quest to lose weight, and even more important, why I feel compelled to explain it again?  Well, some of you out there are wondering (I know this, because I am clairvoyant) what in the world I am doing trying to lose weight.  You think I’m as thin as I need to be, and I thank you for the good thoughts toward me.

My response? Only I know where I need to be.  I am not, nor have I ever been anorexic.  You will see this when you take a look at what I eat in a week!  I vowed long ago to never let my weight get to the point where others decide it’s time for me to lose it.  By then, it’s so far gone, it’s extremely difficult.  I know.  It happened to me after I gave birth to my youngest son.  Oh – about six years after.  It was way past my time then, and took several weeks and months of hard work and dedication to get to where I wanted to be.  I will not let that happen again.  I know the signs.  It happens slowly.  Five pounds in a year, or so.  But it doesn’t stop until you get tough on yourself and reign things in.  So, I’m doing it.  End of story.  But again, thanks for caring!

I’m on my way to a renewed me.  What about you?  What are you doing to get healthy this year?

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Blog content copyright 2008, LISA JEY DAVIS a.k.a. Ms. Cheevious.