Losing it

At two points in my life I was a skinny person. The first was from birth to age 15--I can't take the credit for it, because the thinness was the result of dance lessons, games of tag, and a mother who insisted that we play outside a lot. (A technique which I adopted shortly after my third son was born, and which I am happy to say works wonderfully for soothing frazzled nerves. Unless it's the middle of summer and the thermometer--or as we call it around here: the therMOMeter, because I'm the one who cares enough about it to consult it--is pushing 110 on the porch. In those cases sending the kiddos outside seems more like a evil dictator kind of thing: it's brutal, but it's either that or one of us loses our head.)

The second time--which came after the two-year chub-o-rama I sometimes refer to as "high school"--was the eight years between the start of college and the birth of the first son. For that period I can take the credit. I did it by pushing myself into poverty and by being too scared to learn to drive. The results: I was too poor to eat, and had to walk everywhere. There were times when my budget and travel mode conspired to make me a size 2, but usually I had a job with food services and managed to scrape together enough leftovers to maintain a size 6. (Thank you BYU Food Services for allowing me to remain corporeal throughout my university experience! If we ever get rich there's a big, fat donation check coming your way. I hope you name a cutting board in my honor.)

But ever since the aforementioned birth of said first son, skinny has not been a term I use in my self-descriptions. (I could use all sorts of other terms, though. If I'm feeling decadent it's voluptuous--because the word connotes a certain European disregard for Puritan American morals; blessedly, it also hints at European chocolate, which I can live with. If I'm descriptive it's curvaceous. If I'm being humorous about it it's pleasingly plump--although the only person who could be pleased with this amount of plump is Santa. Most of the time I just say heavy and let it drop like the 2-ton hippo I sometimes feel I resemble.) I haven't had a positive body image since I wore a wedding dress, and I've celebrated eleven anniversaries since that time.

The problem all comes down to on thing: I eat when I'm stressed, bored, nervous, frustrated, or tired. I'm a mom; those emotions happen on a five-minute rotation throughout the day. So weight-loss has been a perennial goal, as well as a consistent disappointment. I want to be thin, but my offspring and my mental state are working against me.

This year, though, I'm really working hard at it. I've eliminated simple carbs--and most days all carbs altogether. I'm eating more veggies, and cutting out all sugar. I've said good-bye to chocolate, chips, bread, crackers, cake, brownies, and everything else I ever enjoyed eating. My life is now sustained by chicken chests, broccoli, soup, and sugar-free Jell-o. (I live for the Jell-o these days.) I am trying sooooooooooooo hard to really do this this time, because I know I have hips somewhere under there. And once upon a time I'm pretty sure I had a waist.

Did I mention that my kids are out to get me? Seriously, I wake up in the morning, totally determined to be the valiant diet woman I know I can empower myself to be. But by the time I walk down the stairs and greet the chaos that is the result of my loving offspring, all I want is a box of chocolate-covered doughnuts and a couple handfuls of M&Ms. Celery was not created to soothe jangled mommy nerves.

I've read that therapists encourage their patients to keep a food journal--writing down everything they eat, and commenting on how they felt at the time of ingestion. Apparently, the idea is to demonstrate the links between over-eating and emotional stress, which can then be dealt with to eliminate the eating problem. I'd love to do this exercise for a therapist. I bet he/she would end up wailing on the floor in pain after reading my food journal. I just want my frustration validated. Is that so wrong?

But since I'm too cheap for a therapist--chocolate-covered cashews are closer to my price range--you, poor sucker, will have to do.

Warning: some portions of the narrative below may be too descriptive for sensitive readers. As always, if you are of a delicate nature, or are simply of an incurably optimistic nature, I advise you to end your reading now. It is not pretty.

7:15 a.m.: ate Snickers bar stashed under mattress. Slightly melted, but still satisfying. Emotional state: exhausted after being up with baby all night and barely falling asleep three minutes before husband cheerfully awoke me with news that child two had decided to learn to make waffles and children three and four were experimenting with syrup recipes.

7:45: ate three left-over waffle trials with two cups of what can only be described as the stickiest substance on earth. Emotional state: totally overwhelmed with the fact that three children + kitchen access = EPA Superfund site.

9:30: asked by children two through four simultaneously 1) "how do you do long division again?" 2) why is the toilet leaking all over the floor? 3) Did you know the baby just urped all over the schoolwork? Ate: macaroni and hot dogs left from yesterday's lunch, with a side of turkey and stuffing from last night's dinner.

10:25: explained long division for fourteenth time this morning. Ate: peanut butter and jelly sandwich rejected as snack by daughter.

12:00. Ate healthful lunch of tomato soup and carrot sticks. Go Diet Goddess! Attempted for two hours to get children to eat lunch, have some manners, clean up after selves and take naps, while at same time feeding, soothing, rocking, changing, and entertaining baby. Inhaled dessert of brownies intended for afternoon treats, ice cream unearthed from depths of freezer, and the last 2/3 of the jar of fudge sauce purchased for a family birthday party last year.

4:45: started dinner. Dealt with complaints, suggestions, and "helpful assistance". Ate: Most of what was planned for dinner. Determined to order pizza instead.

8:45. Bathed children, read scriptures, fulfilled three "story" requests, handed out 33 1/3 drinks, ushered daughter to bathroom 14 times, yelled "Go to bed or ELSE!!!" 26 times. Pulled kids out of bed when it was revealed that the "toothbrushing" that had taken place earlier was, in fact, entirely imaginary. Remedial toothbrushing demonstration. Ate: anything I could get my hands on. As best as I can piece together from scraps left on counters and from wrappers in the trash can it was something like three hamburger buns with peanut butter, four pieces of Easter candy stashed for next year, two slices of pizza set aside for lunch tomorrow, an apple--trying to eat healthfully, you know!, two Twinkies from 1979--how they got in the house I neither know no care, and a large Hershey's bar my husband gave me when I screamed "There had better be chocolate in your hands the next time I see you, buster!" It was not my finest hour.

Skinniness is a far, far-off goal.

An open letter to an uncaring Universe

Dear Universe,

We haven't always seen eye to eye, have we? The whole me not ending up 5-foot-10 wasn't quite like the deal we had, and I'm pretty sure there was some unfulfilled obligations on your part regarding the whole "Blondes have more fun" concept. I'd hire me a lawyer if I knew where to send the resulting court-related paperwork.

But this latest shenanigan of yours really takes the cake. Cake . . . yeah, that's the idea.

You see, dear Universe, dear sweet, well-organized-and-yet-cruelly-humorous Universe, I am starving. Unfortunately, perhaps, not literally.

Here's how it all started:
I woke up this morning, according to the rhythms of life which you ordained, and nearly scared myself out of my wits. I had inadvertently looked in the mirror, and saw not the lovely, svelte 25-year-old I am used to seeing, but something hideously distorted. When, O Universe, did I get this old and this fat?

Oh, sure, I may have craved the products of Messrs. Ben and Jerry--your evil minions of all that is yummy--through my first pregnancy, the resulting post-partum period, as well as my son's infancy, toddlerhood, and early childhood. I may have become the best homemade-bread baker in the world--or at least on my street. I may have indulged from time to time in a small snack or thirty of whatever chocolate was lying around the grocery store. (Not that I stole it--I've always been scrupulously honest about my commercial activities. I just bought in bulk. Thank you, Costco--I'm drafting my letter to you next!) I'm willing to admit my part in the current fiasco. But the majority of the blame lies with you, dear Universe.

Did you have to make chocolate and carbs so tasty and broccoli so green? Whose idea was it to make the dressing more enjoyable than the salad it drenches? Why can we send a robot to Mars, but not perfect the no-cal sundae? Seriously, what were you thinking?

And so I have been forced to take action. I have parted from the loves of my fat life: chocolate, bread, anything enjoyable, and have sentenced myself to veggies, chicken chests, and water. Humph! I'm hungry, and it's all your fault. I'm suffering for your sins.

I'm willing to negotiate. I'll stick this out for as long as I can, and in return, you'll remove the calories from cheesecake. We'll call it even. If you have a counter-offer, you know where to find me. And this time it won't be in the snack aisle.

Chubbily but determinedly yours,
Melia