Most people mark the milestones and memories of their lives in terms of events: first kisses, graduations, job promotions, marriages, births, deaths…the list is as endless as those happenings with which humans associate meaning.
I, on the other hand, measure my days and decades by recalling what diet I was on when something happened. Junior prom, cabbage soup. Wedding, hi carb/low fat . Post pregnancy, low carb/no fat. First job, Slim in 6. Second job: Atkins. Third job: South Beach. Grad school graduation…
You get the idea. If a diet has been created or even hinted about, I’ve been on it. I can’t remember a time after 7th grade, when I was one of two size Ls on the order form for volleyball shorts, that I wasn’t looking for some mystical, magical way to lose weight.
Actually, I can. The last three weeks I’ve been dietless and feeling a strange, unfamiliar longing for food boundaries to break. The boys went to Florida three weeks ago and left me alone to purge my soul with half-a-dozen cream-filled babies from Jolly Pirate. The week after, Vegas. From that point til now, it’s amazing I haven’t gnawed off the finger of some innocent bystander along the way. I need food structure.
I’ve been contemplating going back on the diet wagon. I even know which one I’ll follow (Flat Belly Diet by Prevention, again). I even have thoughts of planned exercise and exertion to help aide my efforts. I just hadn’t figured out that perfect starting point, until this weekend.
I turned 38 on Saturday. That’s pretty close to 40. No, I didn’t realize this until my birthday dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. Somewhere between the end of the Chicken Marsala and the beginning of the Lemon Raspberry cheesecake, my mental gears clicked into action and the subtraction was finished. Every day past 38 is one day closer to 40. Maybe it was something in the Marsala sauce* that sharpened my rusty-dull math skills, but 40 kind of freaks me out. Is that middle age?
Lost in whipped cream mounds (the boy doesn’t eat his. I swear he’s adopted), I decided that I want to hit 40 with a body I’ve never had. Something in a size 10 (or, god forbid, an 8, please.) I’ve never been in single digit sizes, unless you count that brief interlude of time where I started at 6X and ended at ten, bypassing everything in between. I think that was 4th grade, but I digress…
So, long story short, I’m back on the diet wagon. This time, I’m hoping public humiliation, aka blogging, will help shame me into doing what I know I’ve got to do to lose this flab once and for all. If not, Jolly Pirate is on my way home….
*must get that recipe…after diet succeeds, of course
Hi, nice post. I have been thinking about this issue,so thanks for writing. I’ll certainly be coming back to your site.