I am too busy. Too busy to eat anything but Sausage Egg McMuffins from McDonald’s.
That’s really only a half truth. Yes, I’m too busy and yes, it’s always easier to swing in and get all-day breakfast and a dollar Diet Coke from the clown than it is go home and gnaw on the wilted celery in my fridge.
But the other half…the other half of my dirty food phase must be acknowledged out loud.
I start out every single day with the same mentality. Today. Today I am going to have a protein shake and take salad or an apple and celery and roasted turkey for lunch. I will then have a healthy afternoon snack, a sensible dinner and voila. Skinny by June.
So I do. I have a protein shake. I take a sensible lunch. In fact, even when I forget said lunch I spend the $3.25 to buy a sensible lunch from the cafeteria at whatever school I’m babysitting for.
But when the bell rings something goes off in my brain. Something that says, “You need cookies. Or french fries. You deserve them. You work so hard, you’re at the gym every other day, you’ve got the calories to spare. It will make you happy…”
Still, my resolve holds. Still, I don’t get into the upcoming turn lane on the drive home, the path that takes me past those golden, glowing arches. And then…
“You know, when the zombies come you will never have McDonald’s again…” and just like that my blinker is on, I’m swerving to merge and frantically racing to the drive through. Like I owe it to myself to have one more apple pie.
It’s funny, I’m so busy that the prepper inside me hasn’t had any time the last two months to work on toilet cloth or canning. There’s no time and I feel like my list of goals is pretty much finished (except the Hike a Mountain and Learn to Build a Fire in the Rain While the Children Cry goals, but I feel like they’re more in the category of OTJ training).
And so for the past few months I have thwarted every step forward by treating myself to food, glorious food. I’m gluttonous. I’m miserable. I hate myself 12 minutes after I’m done eating that hot fudge sunday and wondering what in the heck is the matter with me? And of course, once you break hearts with sugar the day is done. Free falling, all the way until bedtime.
So, thanks to wonderful, supportive sisters and really awesome girlfriends, not to mention my lovely mama, I’m hitting it HARD tomorrow. This is planned. I’ve got my food prepped and portioned, guzzled my last Diet Coke for the next two months, and come sunup this girl is going to find herself free of guilt and free of McDonald’s.
I’m hungry for hungry. Is that even a thing? I’m declaring it. It’s a thing. Sure, someday when my wheat runs out I’m going to look back at this stupid summer and roll my eyes that I worried about eating too much food. But I don’t care, the eating is making me miserable.
Because in actuality, food is temporal. This silly, insignificant fear is playing me like a fiddle and I’m eating out of the palm of its hand. All this eating is fogging up my radar and keeping me from seeing the bigger picture that has nothing to do with what size my jeans are, and everything to do with letting go of things like Jack in the Box potato wedges and Frosty’s. No more stuffed crust pizza from Little Caesars, not for me.
The world will come or go, one more large fry isn’t going to make it more tolerable.
For once, it’s not about a number on the scale or how many bra fat rolls I can count this week (okay, the bra chub is bugging me just a little), it’s really about letting go of this nonsensical urge to Eat Stupid Food Before I Die.
And I will succeed. My determination is like steel when I get to this point (approximately once every 2.4 years) and I can’t wait to dust off my self-discipline and dig into a big, lovely bag of celery sticks.
No Ranch necessary.