an existential keekah

Eh gahds… I’ve gone back on the diet and exercise wagon again… because my WAIST is getting bigger… again. It’s always shocking when your pants and skirts get tighter at the waist and you think to yourself, “no c’mon! I’m not eating that much.”

Until you start that diet (fine, fine way of life) and start writing down everything you put in your mouth and assigning point values to it. Ah Weight Watchers, that new way of life. Then you can’t deny that you are, in fact, eating that much. Every chip and every cookie (or in my case, every breakfast burrito and pasta dish) you want to eat suddenly represents another point that won’t be available to you for the rest of the week.

You start remembering what real hunger feels like, as the stretch between LUNCH and DINNER seems like days instead of hours. But then you realize that hunger feels better than the heartburn you get after gorging yourself. You recognize that feeling satiated after a normal-sized meal feels bettter than the stuffed feeling you get after overdosing on pasta or pizza or carnitas smothered in green chili.

Inside a battle begins – enjoyment of your not stuffed feeling over the taste of all your old familiars. You realize just what food obsession really means as you have fantasies over peanut butter kisses and fettuccini alfredo – Totino’s frozen combination pizzas and Cheetos – your favorite breakfast burritos with a side of refried beans. And even if you enjoy a daily salad with some kind of protein at lunch, you start to resent that salad and its meager offerings of grass and veggies. Even if it is good for you.

I remember one time I was listening to this annoying healthy chick from California talk about food, and she actually said, “I eat to live, not live to eat.” And I loathed her… felt deep dislike for her and her skinny, tanned body. I imagined her spiked and roasting over a fire… which is just not a healthy image to have. Cause you know its just this much too close to cannibilism.

So, right. Here I am. Trying to remember what it felt like to be thinner, healthier than I have ever felt in my life, which was about two and half years ago. I am trying to ignore those voices in my head that are saying, “You ate in moderation, it is a governmental conspiracy that has you gaining weight, not the Mexican food you crave daily. Mexican food is healthy!”

I try to ignore how yummy those freshly made chocolate frosted raised donuts look at my local grocery store. I even tell myself someday, SOMEDAY I will learn how to eat in moderation and keep eating in moderation, so I can eat whatever I want and not have to stick to certain foods like I have to do now.

Someday. (sigh)

Right now, I really want a chocolate-frosted donut.