I started a diet immediately after my doctor’s appointment last week, mostly because the appointment included me being weighed. I saw the number and decided that was enough. I used to drink between two and four Pepsis a day, now it is one. I force myself to walk around the house for 15 to 20 minutes a day if I know I won’t be leaving the house. Baby steps, everything happens in baby steps.
I started looking at these really skinny people in the movies I watch and, while I know I will never be really skinny, I have developed a genuine curiosity as to what it would be like if I was relatively thin. Once again, I am not sure thin is a word that would ever apply to me, but I did say relatively thin. And I am trying for it now. I think it is the combination of the genuine fear that I could develop some serious diseases if I don’t lose weight, the realization that my knees would probably stop hurting so much if they didn’t have so much of me to carry around and this curiosity as to what it would be like to be a few pant sizes smaller. I’ve never had this curiosity before. Maybe it will work for me.
Don’t get me wrong. This sudden overwhelming feeling of wanting to experience what it is like to be something I have never been is not enough to keep the Pepsi out of my hand. Going down to one Pepsi a day is all will power. Please refrain from reminding how wonderful my results would be if I stopped drinking Pepsi completely. I am well aware of that and really sick of hearing it. The problem with diet and health food fanatics is that they have no idea what it means to be addicted to sugar and junk food.
Or maybe they do. Maybe the diet fanatic in your life is a regular Richard Simmons who fought back all of those urges, dropped 100-plus pounds, and now stays active to keep it off. Yaaayy! Good for you! Now leave me alone. I hate that more than anything else. Losing weight, believe it or not, is a personal experience. And it is a personal experience that can easily be ruined by people insisting on making it their business when, in reality, it is none of their business at all.
Aside from my cynicism, I have other hurdles coming up as well. Halloween is a problem because of the easy access to Kit Kat bars. Actually, Halloween is merely used as an excuse to eat candy and not really a directive to eat candy. I allow myself one day a week to have whatever I want, and that one day during Halloween week could be Halloween itself. There, I neutralized the urge to eat candy just because it was Halloween. I win that round.
About a month after Halloween is Thanksgiving and the beautiful, wonderful holidays. These, unfortunately, are a mandate when it comes to eating. I am way too old to change my habits now, and I fear that the holidays may be the undoing of me. The wife makes Thanksgiving dinner and, every year, it is perfect. I must eat, and I must eat until moving becomes optional. That has been my tradition as long as I can remember because, as you probably figured, my mom can cook too.
After Thanksgiving is the Christmas season and Christmas cookies. Girl Scout cookies are nice, the occasional batch of chocolate chip cookies is a treat, but there is nothing to compare to Christmas cookies, especially the ones made by my wife. Right around the first week of December, she will start making cookies, I will eat them and then Dr. Junke will remind me that I gained some weight over the holidays. It is a cycle I am afraid I cannot break.
So what is the moral of this story? I think it is that some habits are easier to break just so long as you don’t start trying to break those habits just a month or two before the holidays start. Because when it comes to the holidays, those habits are nearly impossible for me to break.
George N. Root III is a Lockport resident. His columns appear every Wednesday. Send comments to georgeroot@verizon.net.
