Friday, May 15, 2009

Everyone Has Their Vices...

Daily Specs:

Attainable Goal: Either get to they Y or the park so Boy Love can play.
Grievance: I have not had the chance to write a blog in almost a week. Boo and Hiss.
Celebration: When I woke up, both boys were still sleeping. Amazing.

I love to eat. I am an eating fool. I am not one of those people that love to eat because I enjoy a well-crafted dish, and I do not eat to appreciate a chef's culinary skill. I eat because I like the feeling of gut-exploding fullness. I will gladly eat a giant bag of fast food just because it is fast, or pile my plate up high with empty calories and spoonfuls of insecurity so I can see myself lick it clean. In high school, I could eat this way because I counteracted it with an excellent metabolism and 3 hours a day of water polo. This is not the case anymore. My slowing metabolism and lack of regulated work-out regime has left me powerless against the calories that I adore. In my battle against food, my ever-growing waistline continues to tell me that I am losing. My clothing sizes have become larger, my shorts have become longer, and I no longer have any interest in letting anyone see more of my legs than they absolutely must.

Most of the time I don't even think about what I am eating. I am too focused on other things. I am lucky to be able to sit down and eat anything after getting the boys fed, changed, and cleaned up. Every once in a while, however, I have a wake-up call. Yesterday was one of those instances.

I was doing my "couch workout", which consists of pumping my breast milk, feeding the baby then burping him, and completing some other small tasks (folding clothes, cleaning coffee table, etc...), but on this day I had to do an unprecedented amount of standing up and sitting down. I would like to believe that humankind to have the ability to stand and sit in this matter, but most of humankind has not tried sitting on my couch. My couch is very comfortable in a way that reminds me of Care Bears lying down on their pillow-y soft clouds. It is a couch that warmly coddles any part of you making contact with it, and you immediately succumb to it's soporific spell, leaving you melting into sleep like an M&M in mouth (not in hand). It makes getting out of the couch a nightmare. I always love watching people get out of the couch. First comes the facial expression that has the pout of a 5-year-old not wanting to leave the park. Next, the loaded and exaggerated sigh of someone about to do something they have no interest in doing. Next, the back-swing; body rocks back with help from arms, sharp intake of breath, and the inaudible plea to the abs to tighten that only shows in a contorted look of agony on the face. Finally, the actual event of leaving the couch which can only be characterized as painful.

I had to do this a number of times yesterday, and I was embarrassed to see my abdominal muscles tremble and tremor under the pressure. After standing a few times, I was convinced that I needed to start seriously working out my abs. There is no way I will be excited about taking classes at the Y again when I know that my stomach will shake uncontrollably at the first sign of strain. So I do my postpartum ab workout that I have been doing, but I try extra hard to isolate the muscles that need attention. After I finish, I am lying there, and my mind immediately goes to food. I want cookies. Or cheesecake. Or a pint of Ben and Jerrys.

Here enters my wake up call. As I stumble to the fridge for some celebratory dessert (every workout deserves a celebration in my book), I catch a glimpse of myself in my mind's mirror. I am overweight, flabby, and continue to eat uncontrollably. I look like the people you see on shows like The Incredible Shrinking Woman. I am on Dr. Phil/Oprah/Tyra type of fix-your-life talk show crying at the audience and having Dr. Phil/Oprah/Tyra asking me if I can admit I have a problem. So I step away from the fridge, turn my back to it, and just stare in the opposite direction. I tell myself, the name of the game is restraint. Restraint. Restraint. So I walk away. This makes me very proud. This morning, however, for breakfast I ate a couple bites of some sort of Reeses cookie bar I had made for Big Love, and my restraint has left the building.

I know I have a problem keeping my eating under control. I was hanging out with Big Love last night, and we got onto the subject of nicotine addictions, and he reminded me that with prayer and the mighty hand of God, people can overcome anything. To this I immediately scoffed, arguing that there are people in the world that don't believe in God, and they are the ones that often turn to man-made help to recover from addiction. He responded with an amazing amount of patience that anyone can turn to God for help, no matter if they believe in Him or not, and that anything conjured by man will not satisfy. He is totally right. Man is not enough. Only God is sufficient. So I need to take my issue of unhealthy and over-indulgent eating to the Lord. Only the Lord can give me the strength to stay healthy. I will not be able to do it by my own will power. I hear that everyone has their vices, and that is likely true. For me, instead of food, I choose for my vice to be prayer. I very much want to change, and I need to turn to the Lord for any sort of change to happen.

2 comments:

  1. i have so much to talk to you about in response to this blog. i will email it to you later though as it is a little too personal to post on here:) i am very proud of you

    ReplyDelete