Donuts Always Win

Actually, I probably won’t be in trouble so much as she’ll just consider me crazy (again). And most of my family will, too. See, they’re a quiet bunch–for the most part, anyway. Get us together at a hog roast or, as dad and his friend Dann thought in my mid-teenage years, at a square dance, and we may tend to get a bit rowdy but nothing too wild. My family is a low-key group. We do lots of stuff together, and there are lots of reasons to call and ask others to help: building a chimney, putting up a new electric fence, laying a new bathroom floor. But there are some things you just don’t broadcast, some jobs you just don’t ask others to help you with.

Namely, self-improvement projects. No, if you want to fix yourself, you’ve got to do it yourself. Putting together a deck? It’s fine to ask one of the three uncles to help. Need to eat healthier? Screw you, cupcake. You’re on your own.

It is against the law of the family to ask for help with self-based projects because it’s absolutely blasphemous to ask for help unless the job is bigger than yourself. Asking for help is a sign of weakness, of personal failure. Both sides of my family–dad and his large brood of brothers and sister, mom with her smaller but strong-willed sister and nephews–are independent souls. We don’t sit around whining about doing something, we do it. We don’t wait for tomorrow, because today is when we make a difference. We don’t wax poetic about the good old days (except occasionally during holidays) and mourn days gone by.

And we don’t ask for help losing weight. There may be nothing that signifies personal weakness more than asking for help or advice when it comes to getting your eating and exercise under control. How do I know?

Back when Judy Blume was all the rage and I devoured her books like mom’s secret stashes of frozen Girl Scout cookies, at one point I recall my mom, my aunt and my grandma being in TOPS together. TOPS (Taking Off Pounds Sensibly) was a cheaper, less glamorous version of Weight Watchers. Mom et. al. weighed in one night a week (Mondays, I know this because we tagged along since it was in the local library and it granted my nerdy self with a heavenly hour of books each week), celebrated losses, booed gains, and sometimes went out to the Ponderosa buffet as a reward. (I always felt that part was simply hysterical). Mom found her groove at TOPS–she dropped a total of at least 40 pounds as I recall, maybe more. They did silly retreat weekends together and came back with a fresh perspective on eating and exercising that sustained them for weeks at a time. It was like a Free Mason’s club for fat people (there were men, but on a limited basis as I recall). You had to have a secret password and your secret decoder ring could project a scale on the wall if the sunlight hit it at the correct angle. It was no secret that she went but it was a secret what she did once she got there.

Grandma and Aunt N. were also members at the same time. Wouldn’t it be great to have your family, those people you find as your backbone and support at times, join you in a journey for a better body? Not in my family. With three women on the same quest together, it’d make sense that our family gatherings (always centered around food. Always) would have changed, or that they’d talk calorie counts and portion sizes and healthy substitutions.

There was never a veggie tray in sight. In fact, I believe during those years, the dessert section of Grandma’s Easter countertop grew to massive proportions. There were never, ever food discussions that would lead to weight loss for Monday’s check-in. It was almost as if admitting that paying dues to a weight-loss group was failure in and of itself, even though that group helped my mom become a much more confident and beautiful woman (even if she did gain a lot of the weight back over the last twenty years).

The message I picked up? Asking for help for yourself, even if just a listening ear or a thoughtful response, is not acceptable. In fact, if it’s coming from one of the women in our family, the headstrong and independent types upon which genetics I am built, it’s an absolute indication of personal weakness. Personal issues–weight loss, addictions, marital issues, career dissatisfaction–should never see the light of day or fall on the ears of another. It’s all meant to be internalized and dissected from within.

And that’s what brings us back to my post title. When mom finds out I’m broadcasting to the world my shortcomings–the fact that I ate an entire sleeve of Thin Mints on Sunday without so much as a blink of remorse–I’m sure I’ll be in some sort of trouble. Of course, I’ve got an extra box of Thin Mints to subdue her with. And if that doesn’t work, we can always hit the buffet…