Saturday, August 14, 2010

If I'm not hungry, why do I want to eat?


I daydream of donuts.






I'm haunted by pizza, cheese steak sandwiches, onion rings dripping with grease, crispy bags of potato chips, chocolate cakes piled high with frosting -- or skipping the cake and just eating the whole can of frosting, like I used to do.

Hello, welcome to the new normal.  It's just like the old normal, except that now I don't get to eat those things.  A horse of an entirely different color. 

I went to a class yesterday on how to transition to Stage 2 eating, a.k.a. pureed foods, a.k.a. "spin cookery"!  (See?  If you can make fun of it, it's not a total drag).  I won't be making a pizza smoothie anytime soon -- ugh, now THAT just turned me off of pizza -- but I can start having things like pureed meats, potatoes, veggies.  All of which is great, but I have to measure these things out in tablespoon-sized portions. 

Excuzay moi?  Tablespoons?  Last night I had an entire two person serving's worth of instant mashed potatoes.  Admittedly a binge food for me, those just-add-water spuds, but still ... two tablespoons at a time?

Really?

(Dramatic pause here while I re-acquaint myself with the facts of the situation).

I am still 277 pounds.
I just had weight loss surgery.
I have the mind of a person who ate her way to 350 pounds.
I haven't had my first fill yet, so for me there is not enough restriction yet.

What's going to work here?  I'm afraid it might be that bugaboo, that thing I too often find myself fighting tooth and nail:  acceptance.

Acceptance of myself as a person with an "obese mind", full of old habits that will take time to change, and will ONLY change as my behaviors change and time passes.

Acceptance of the necessity of eating what they tell me I need to eat ... no more, no less.  My body is fine with this (like I said, no hunger), it's my mind that needs to get in line with it.

Acceptance of my weight as it is:  at 277, I have not attained the finish line.  My mind is trying to convince me that I've attained an "I can live with this for a while" weight, which is coded crazy talk for "I can eat as I like again so leave me alone with my Chips Ahoy".

No.  This is not a resting place.  It is no time for me to sit on my cinnabons -- er, I mean ass.  (See how it creeps in?)  

I can dream of going back to digging my own grave with a knife and fork (or spork!), but I can do something different today.  For this one day at a time, I can do this.




Nobody ever said this was going to be easy.  If they had, I'd have shot them by now and taken their pocket money to the Twisty Treat.

No comments:

Post a Comment