Farm Fresh Delivery has been delivering vegetables to my front door for two months now, and it’s going fairly well. I have yet to trip over a parsnip on the way out the door, and I’ve eaten several good-for-me plants I wouldn’t have otherwise. Yes, I threw out half the bok choy when it started to rot, after telling myself every night I’d do stir-fry for dinner and then popping open a can of soup instead. And I think they sent me a rutabaga instead of a beet last week. But I have been eating most of the fruits and vegetables before they turn slimy, and I’m content to continue the service.

My best discovery so far was how tasty snow peas can be. My roommate has a vegetable steamer and showed me how to cook the snow peas with it. They made for a crunchy snack that I know I would never have made otherwise. Broccoli and cauliflower definitely taste better chopped up fresh instead of defrosted from the frozen foods section. And I’ve eaten a lot more salads since they’ve showered me in baby spinach and radicchio.

Every week, I get a chance to customize my order, but I have avoided scrolling too far down the page because that is where the extra products lay. There are pastries and butters and all sorts of tasty items, but I took my hand off the mouse before exploring too far because I knew no good would come of it. However, I recently learned that Dillman Farm sells pumpkin butter through the site, and I have allowed myself to purchase a jar. I had never heard of pumpkin butter before this winter, but then I received a jar in a gift basket from a family member. I spread it on some bread and fell in love, as if it were the first time I’d eaten ice cream. Mmmmm, it’s like pumpkin pie in a jar. Perhaps this is how those Europeans feel about Nutella. I am eagerly awaiting my next delivery and whatever vegetable surprises lay ahead!

PS – I know I have not written about Beck week three, yet. Teach, can I have an extension on my paper? Thanks!

Previously on PastaQueen.com!

PastaQueen regained fifty pounds during a period of chronic pain and depression, but vowed to lose the weight one more time in 2010. She bought a copy of The Beck Diet Solution, a cognitive therapy program, and is reporting on the results each week. Unfortunately, due to thee days of nausea induced by the H1N1 vaccine, she put off Day 8 of the plan for three days, which ironically is called, “Create time and energy.”

Day 8 – Create time and energy

Once I finally found the time and energy to read this chapter, I was tasked with writing a schedule for when I would exercise and complete other activities necessary for weight loss. As a freelancer, my schedule is pretty flexible, so it wasn’t hard to schedule time to exercise. I also decided I can spend two hours on Saturday or Sunday planning and preparing dinners for the week to get it all over with at once.

Day 9 – Select an exercise plan

I’m going with The 10-Minute Total Body Breakthrough as I blogged about earlier. I’m hesitant to do too much at once in regards to exercise. This is a chronic illness thing. We can’t upset the balance!! My goal most days is to simply maintain an equilibrium. If I can get through a day without feeling like crap, it’s been good day. I don’t have to feel super-duper great, just ok is fine with me. I’m afraid to rock the boat by trying to do too much at once and radically changing my schedule by, say, suddenly training for a marathon.

Of course, exercise is ultimately good for your health and I know it would be beneficial in regards to my illness, so I should stop making excuses and just do it. That’s why I’m starting with a 10-minute plan. It’s better than nothing and doesn’t seem totally overwhelming.

Day 10 – Set a realistic goal

Dr. Beck recommends demands, that your goal be to lose 5 pounds. That’s because 5 pounds is a small, achievable goal which won’t overwhelm you. Once you lose 5 pounds, your goal is to lose another 5 pounds, until you get to a weight you’re happy with.

I understand the reasoning behind this, which is why I set my first weight loss goal to 20 pounds although 50 pounds is my overall goal. So…even though I get what she’s saying, my goal is still to lose 20 pounds, not 5. Sorry, Dr. Beck! To say otherwise would be a lie!

Day 11 – Differentiate between hunger, desire, and cravings

Some of the other days have been pretty easy to do since they’ve only gone over things I already knew, but this one contained some information that made me really think. During the day I had to write down my hunger level on a scale of 1-10 before and after each meal. The exercise was meant to make me focus on whether I was actually hungry or if I simply desired or craved a food. Here’s how each is defined:

Hunger – When you haven’t eaten for many hours and have an empty sensation in your stomach, often accompanied by stomach rumblings.

Desire – You eat a big meal and yet still want to eat more.

Craving – You have a strong urge to eat, accompanied by a feel of tension or an unpleasant yearning sensation in your mouth, throat or body.

Focusing on this topic made me realize I sometimes eat out of desire and not real hunger. I also eat because of cravings, but that ain’t no surprise.

Day 12 – Practice hunger tolerance

On this day you were asked to skip lunch, unless you had medical reasons not to. The practice is supposed to show you that hunger may be uncomfortable, but it is not something to fear. Being a bit hungry won’t kill you, so the next time you’re tempted to eat something extra that is outside of your food plan, this exercise is supposed to remind you that you’ll be ok even if you don’t have that extra cookie.

However, when I mentioned on Twitter that I was attempting this, a few people sent me concerned emails, afraid that I was on a crazy, crash diet or that I had suddenly become anorectic. Thank you for your concern, but I assure you that I enjoy eating far too much to start skipping lunch on a regular basis. Besides, when you think of all the people starving in Haiti right now, it doesn’t seem like a big deal to wait a couple hours to eat lunch. I caved after two and a half hours anyway and made myself a peanut butter sandwich. Yum!

Day 13 – Overcome cravings

Dr. Beck reviews some strategies to overcome cravings in this chapter. At the beginning of the text she says:

The more often you wait out your cravings, the less intense and less frequent they’ll be in the future. Eventually, you’ll experience a craving, and, instead of feeling bad, you’ll feel good. You’ll spontaneously say to yourself, “This is great…I’m feeling a craving, but I know I can tolerate it and it’ll go away…It’s great that I’m tolerating it!” Instead of feeling deprived, you’ll feel good—proud, strong, confident, in control. Dieting will get so much easier.

My response to this was, “Bite me, bitch.” I certainly wish it were like that, and maybe after I practice a lot there is a remote possibility it could become like this, but for real y’all, that just sounds like bullshit. Cravings are not fun. Cravings are CRAZY!! My cravings get the worst when I’m having a bad headache day, a headache day that lasts for at least 16 hours of consciousness, meaning I want to eat some ice cream all day. I don’t foresee myself ever feeling great about not eating the ice cream. Instead, I have long 30-minute debates in my head about why I shouldn’t eat the ice cream vs. how much better eating ice cream will make me feel, because it will.

So, uh, Dr. Beck gives you some of the usual advice about cravings, basically that you should step away from the food, drink some water, and try to distract yourself with something else. There are also some mindset techniques where you’re supposed to recognize and label the feeling as a craving, tell yourself it will go away eventually, go over all the reasons you want to lose weight, and ultimately tell yourself there is no choice, you simply can’t indulge the craving.

I’ve tried these techniques 2 or 3 times this month and…they are only moderately helpful. The truth is, when my head hurts, I want some frickin’ ice cream, and the feeling of pain is NOT going away, sorry Dr. B. I’ve tried distracting myself with video games, which is mildly effective, but cravings just suck and I hate them and that’s about it. I just try to keep the bad stuff out of the house because I rarely feel well enough to drive somewhere for my fix when my head hurts.

Day 14 – Plan for tomorrow

For the last day of the week, you’re supposed to write out a plan for what you will eat tomorrow. Like my cats, I already have a fairly predictable feeding pattern. I wrote it out anyway, with a few snacks having an option 1, option 2, and option 3 depending on what I want to eat. My dinner is the most variable part of the day, so I should start planning those out in advance, probably on Sundays.

End of week impressions

At this point in the plan, I’m getting really sick of reading my weight loss advantages list over and over again. I’ve been getting my email reminders to do so and just deleting them. Perhaps I should just cut back to reading it 3 or 4 times a week? I also didn’t find the advice about cravings all that helpful, since it doesn’t seem to account for people who are in chronic pain.

On the bright side, I have been having much longer debates with myself about my cravings, even if I still lose a lot of the time. I’ve been paying much more attention to the eating experiencing too, focusing on what I’m eating and enjoying it as much as I can instead of mindlessly snacking. I’ve also been more mindful of my hunger, reflecting on whether I really need to eat before going to the kitchen. Also, simply following a new plan has kept my mind focused on weight loss in a way it hadn’t been for awhile.

On to week three!

I will be following the Beck Diet Solution for the next six weeks and blogging about it every Monday. I’m actually at the end of week two right now, but I’ll try to catch the blog up with my real time behavior in the next few weeks. The book assigns you one task a day, letting you gradually change your behaviors little by little until you’ve changed the way you think about food and exercise. Dr. Judith Beck says it’s sometimes ok to do two or possibly three days of tasks in one day, just as long as you don’t overload yourself. The book requires that you keep a journal and sometimes write on note cards as part of the program. As I said before, I’ve already got my Hallmark-approved journal ready.

Each week has a theme, and the first week’s theme is “Get Ready: Lay the Groundwork.”

Day 1 – Record the Advantages of Losing Weight

First off, I had to write a list of the reasons I want to lose weight. I’ll be reading the list at least twice a day, every day, as well as during times I feel challenged. I saved my list in Google Documents so I can access it online anywhere. I also uploaded a few pictures of myself at my thinnest to accompany the list.

This idea sounded pretty dopey to me at first, but it has been helpful to keep me focused on what I want to achieve. I’ve been visualizing the moments I want to achieve in my mind instead of just reading the list by rote. For instance, I have to weigh in at the headache clinic I visit every other month, so I visualize myself stepping on the scale there and having the nurse record a lower weight than last month.

To remind myself to read the list, I set up a calendar in Google Calendars just for reminder events. I set this task as a recurring daily event at two different times, and set each event to email me a reminder one minute before the event. I now get an email twice a day reminding me to read my list with a link to the Google Doc included.

Day 2 – Pick Two Reasonable Diets

You’re supposed to pick a primary diet and then have a backup in case the first one doesn’t suit you. I’m doing the South Beach Diet again, and I put The Zone Diet down as my backup because I like its advice about balancing your carb, protein and fat portions during meals, though measuring that out for every meal seems more complicated than I like.

Day 3 – Eat Sitting Down

Dr. Beck recommends that you only eat when sitting down because it forces you to be purposeful while you eat. A lot of dieters sabotage themselves by standing in front of the fridge taking a few nibbles of something or licking the spoon a few too many times while cooking. If you see everything you’re going to eat laid out in front of you, it gives you a better sense of how much you’re actually eating.

I’ve been doing pretty well on this one, though I grabbed a few walnuts from the cupboards to snack on while I was waiting for a meal to heat up in the microwave. I also tend to take one or two bites of food while I’m carrying it from the kitchen to my chair, which seems like borderline ok behavior, though I doubt Dr. Beck would see it that way :)

Day 4 – Give Yourself Credit

A lot of dieters have problems with negative self-talk, so on this day you’re supposed to give yourself credit for things you do right. I don’t consider myself to be a Negative Nancy or a Debbie Downer, so I skipped this day. I already give myself credit.

Day 5 – Eat Slowly and Mindfully

Ugh. This was by far the hardest day of the week. I love to scarf my food, like a human Hoover. I’ve noticed this about myself for many years, but I’ve never really worked to slow down. There was a guy at my old workplace who was the slowest eater I’d ever seen. He’d literally take twice as long to eat his lunch as I did, taking ten minutes to eat a 6 oz. yogurt cup. One day I tried to pace my eating with him, but I cracked after a minute or two. PastaQueen want food now! NOW!!

So, I’ve been sitting down and focusing on savoring every bit because I can’t eat as much as I’d like to (i.e. the entire contents of the Keebler Elves’ bakery tree). There are still some days when I find that I’ve been mindlessly eating a pear in front of the computer or crunching on carrots in front of the TV. I then have to force myself to pay more attention to the eating experience.

Day 6 – Find a Diet Coach

Accountability is important, so Dr. Beck recommends you find someone to talk to about your dieting successes and struggles. You have to check in once a week, but you can talk more than that if you wish. I found an Internet friend who agreed to be my coach. I love simple days like this!

Day 7 – Arrange Your Environment

For the final day of the week, you have to arrange your environment so it’s optimal for weight loss. Basically, this meant throwing out any leftover Christmas cookies and asking my roommate to keep her junk food in her room so I wouldn’t see it. Otherwise, I already buy lots of healthy foods, and I’ve got vegetables being delivered right to my door every week, so I’m pretty good. Also, because I work from home, I don’t have to worry about arranging my workplace. The cats never run out and buy a box of Panera bagels like my old boss did.

Conclusion

Week one went pretty well. As the weeks continue, I’ll be building on the things I learned this week and checking to make sure I continue observing these behaviors as I learn new skills. I’ll keep you posted!

The cannoli had no bite marks in its shell, and other than a bit of tomato sauce smeared onto the side, it was in perfect condition. It seemed wrong to let such a fine cannoli go to waste, so I decided to rescue it from its tray outside the hotel room next to mine and give it a home in my stomach. The only obstacle between me and the cannoli was the Shutter Sisters suite, directly across the hall from my room, open all day during the conference I was attending. People came and went from the suite regularly, grabbing free candies and viewing demos of photo editing software. I would have to be discreet, or else I would be caught by any one of a dozen women who knew how to use their digital cameras.

I got my room key out, arranged all my bags on my shoulders carefully, and inserted the key card to open the door. Then I squatted down, reached a long arm out towards the room service tray, snatched the cannoli and bolted into my room. Theft accomplished. Cannoli delicious.

I am a self-confessed cake stealer, so cannoli thieving was probably an inevitable crime to add to my culinary rap sheet. As a way of atoning for my theft, I took a bag of chocolate I had won at one of the vendor booths and placed it on the room service tray as I left for another event. The chocolate was yummy, but I knew if I kept it I would just eat the whole bag and feel bad about it later. When I returned a few hours later, the room service tray was still there, but the chocolate was gone! It appears I was not the only food thief in the Sheraton that night.

It is good to know that if this freelancing thing doesn’t work out and I can’t afford food, all I have to do is roam the hallways of the upscale hotels downtown to scavenge meals off of room service trays. Then on Saturday night, I walked out of my hotel room to see this outside the Shutter Sisters suite:

I let the cookies and wine be. At least I have some restraint.

Last week though, something caught my eye, something so completely WRONG, all caps, font weight bold, kind of wrong, I just had to whip out my camera and photograph it like the pathological blogger that I am.

Would you eat this cookie cake? On the one hand, there are sweet, gooey chocolate chip morsels scattered within the cookie batter. There is creamy frosting coating the entire top. On the other hand, ew, ants. ANTS! For real, ants? Not just ants, but mutant monster ants the size of tarantulas. Who would want to eat an ant, other than an anteater? What’s next, a cake bursting out with marzipan maggots?

And because I know someone will mention it, there is a hilarious blog called Cake Wrecks that specializes in culinary failures like the one above. Check ‘em out!

I have been studying South Beach for the last few weeks and have decided it’s the path I’m going to follow for a while. My question for you is how closely you followed it especially in phase 1. Did you make every meal he tells you to or did you modify based on your likes and dislikes for food? – Kim

One of the reasons I didn’t say what diet I was following in my book is because I don’t want people think there is only one way to lose weight. If you are on a sane, healthy, balanced diet that results in burning more calories than you consume, you will lose weight. There are lots of plans that will get you there and South Beach is only one of them. I like South Beach, but honestly, I don’t care what you’re eating. (Unless you have a Cadbury Crème egg, in which case – Look! Over there! Something shiny! *PastaQueen steals chocolate-creamy goodness and stuffs it in her face.*)

That being said, I’ve gotten several inquiries into what I eat during different phases of the plan, so I’m just going to share some of the foods I munch on when I’m not swiping other people’s chocolate. I have a list of all the meals, snacks and foods I can eat. When I have a food craving, I can refer to the list for ideas. It helps to focus on things I can eat instead of lamenting everything I cannot eat.

The South Beach Diet book has a list of foods to avoid and to enjoy during both phases of the diet which I used as my guideline. If you’re going to do this plan, you should really just cough up the cash to buy a copy of the book. You can probably get it cheap at a used book store. I didn’t use any of the recipes in the original book, but I’ve used some in other cookbooks I’ve listed here.

Phase 1

Phase one of South Beach is two weeks of a low-carb diet. It’s meant to curb your carb cravings, but I suspect it’s also there because you lose a lot of (water) weight quickly and get valuable positive reinforcement for your efforts. I only managed to do the suggested two weeks of this once when I started in 2005. I tried it again once in 2008 and lasted about 9 days before I cracked and had an apple. What did I eat when I wasn’t dreaming about fruit?

Light mozzarella sticks

Fish (or as my friend calls them, swimmy meats)

Plain yogurt with artificial sweeteners (I don’t care if my babies have 2 heads)

Omelets (lots and lots of omelettes)

Scrambled eggs

Grilled chicken

Green veggies (Broccoli, green beans, spinach, oh my!)

Stir-fry

Lean Cuisines (one of the only TV dinners I’ve found that has low-cal meals without potatoes, rice, or pasta)

Ricotta-based desserts

Roasted veggies

Cottage cheese (sometimes with tuna and green peppers)

Protein shakes

Phase 2

Phase two adds carbs back in, but you still avoid white flour, white rice, and potatoes. It’s also recommended that you stick to veggies, lean meats and other healthy stuff like that instead of eating a whole loaf of whole-grain bread.

Oatmeal

Sweet potatoes (good in muffins and pancakes)

Whole-grain spaghetti

Flavored light yogurts

Hummus

Fruits (sweet, sweet, fruits!)

Couscous

Brown rice

Sugar-Free Fat-Free pudding

The other traditional tips apply. Prepare food in advance. Have it handy so you don’t have an excuse to eat a candy bar. Eat until you’re full, but don’t pig out. If you have to pig out, try to do it on celery sticks. Losing weight is hard. It’s more than just the food you eat, but hopefully this information will at least help you in that area.

I loved LOVED that you have a book out about losing more than half of yourself and yet you ate. Food. Like real food. Silly huh?

No, it’s not silly. Of course, not everyone is happy to hear that I don’t subsist solely on salads and rice cakes. Last year I posted about eating half a Dairy Queen cake on my birthday and one reader sent me a really angry email. If this blog had a door, she would have slammed it as she stormed off in a rage. The ire ice cream inspires on this blog surprises me. (BTW, I just searched for “Dairy Queen” to find that entry and found 10 entries. Maybe I should change my nickname from PQ to DQ?)

I’m not ashamed to eat food. When I was losing weight, I was hyper-aware of what I was eating and what others were eating. I wondered what people would think of my lunch choices. When I wasn’t wondering that, I wondered what other people thought I was thinking about their choices. I went to lunch with 3 friends one day and they all ordered large burgers with fries and I ordered a small salmon bisque because I’d just eaten and wasn’t hungry. As I stared at the food on our table, I hoped they didn’t think I was judging them for their meal choices. I think women should eat whatever the hell they want to eat and my small soup was not a judgement on their own eating habits.

Eventually I realized that I could never win. If I ordered something healthy, I might be seen as a diet nazi who knows no joy in life because she never eats an Almond Joy bar. If I ordered something decadent, people might think I should not be eating that because I could get fat again. Now I just eat whatever the hell I want to, be it deep-friend cookie dough or a grilled chicken sandwich. Since I had that personal epiphany, I don’t observe what other people are eating that much either, unless I want to ask for a bite off of their plate.

However, all of this thinking reminded me of an article I read a couple months ago about how women observe what their friends eat, which affects what they’ll eat. If everyone else is ordering a salad, you’re far less likely to order a double-cheeseburger with fries. However, you’re also much more likely to go home and eat double what you would have because you didn’t have the double-cheeseburger you wanted.

So I’d like to know, do you watch what your friends are eating? And if so, does it affect what you eat? Do you judge them because of it?

I have however been slightly worried about accountability. When I went to San Francisco for the BlogHer convention I told myself, “Eat whatever you want to!” which my brain interpreted as “Gorge yourself!” I tripped a mental switch that made me think I could eat whatever I wanted to as long as I was in California. I found myself wandering around the airport before my midnight flight looking for an ice cream stand because if I had a cone in the west coast terminal it would be ok, but if I stopped for one in Indianapolis it would somehow be “wrong.” The next time I tell myself, “Eat whatever you want to!” please remind me that is a cracked-out idea. I did that last Christmas and thought I’d learned my lesson when I felt like I was going to vomit up the pumpkin roll, brownie, caramel cake and other goodies I’d ingested. I should not be allowed to eat whatever I want to because the world would quickly run out of food.

So, I’d like to not get fat again (and to stop splitting my infinitives), but I’m not going to start weighing in publicly again. Instead I introduce my new accountability tool: The pants factor. I will not buy new pants! Well, I will buy new pants eventually once these get holes or become threadbare, but I will buy them in the same or smaller size. I will not buy BIGGER pants. If they start to get tight, tough cookies, no more cookies for me. The denim cutting into my waist can remind me to eat a salad for lunch instead of going out for Cajun food with my coworkers. I’m surprised my pants aren’t cutting off my circulation right now, but they remain pretty comfortable, if a little tighter than they did before I ate half of San Francisco.

No new pants! That is my motto. Hopefully it will work.

Which brings me back to the idea of food addiction, something I’ve been pondering on and off the past couple months ever since I read that book, Hungry by Allen Zadoff. I’m still not sure what to make of the concept of food addiction, though Zadoff is a firm believer in it. However, reading that book did make me start analyzing my relationship with food more critically.

For instance, I went to a holiday gathering recently for Easter. Immediately after I finished lunch I started thinking, “When are they going to serve the dessert? When are they going to serve the dessert? Is it dessert time yet? I’ll help serve if we can eat it now!” I had run for 60 minutes that morning and purposely eaten a smaller portion of lunch just so I could try some of the brownies and banana crème pie and snickerdoodles. So, I really wanted to dig into the sugar, but I had to wait until everyone else was done with lunch. As I fidgeted on the couch waiting for someone to unwrap the cookies, I wondered if anyone else was getting as crazy waiting for dessert as I was, or if there was some weird mechanism triggered in my brain making me want food more than other people do.

Then, after dessert was finally served, I wasn’t satisfied until I’d tried one of everything. I’d grab a slice of chocolate frosted cake, sit down and eat it. Then a couple minutes went by and I decided I needed to try the cherry cheesecake too. Then another 10 minutes went by and I grabbed some M&M cookies, because if there is a table full of sugar in the room, I can’t stop thinking about it. I vaguely started to wish I had diabetes like one of the other people there, because as sleepy as I feel after eating sweets, I wouldn’t eat as much if it meant I’d literally fall into a cheesecake coma.

At which point, I realized I was psycho.

I don’t want diabetes! Diabetes sucks! I feel like I’m going to barf whenever I have to give blood. If I had to choose between being a cheesecake whore and sticking myself with a needle every couple hours to measure my blood sugar, I’m going to be the dairy slut.

I also noticed that other people tended to graze on the food simply because it was there, sitting a couple feet in front of them, as if sugar has telepathic, mind control abilities that it uses to commit suicide in your stomach. So, I have to wonder if I actually have an addiction or if it’s just human nature to want to eat yummy food the longer you are locked in a room with it. If you’re locked in a room with a foxy member of the opposite sex, you don’t have to be a sex addict to want to jump his/her bones.

After I had tried everything, I reached a point where I wasn’t stuffed, but I was full and I was okay with not eating anything more at the table. Despite any craziness in my thinking earlier, that feeling makes me lean back towards the idea that I do not have a food addiction. There are also times when people leave cookies out at work or at friends houses, and I am perfectly fine not having any. I’m not tempted, I don’t drive myself crazy thinking in circles about it. It’s not a big deal.

When I think about other types of addiction, I think about all the crazy stuff people do for a fix. I think of the movie Traffic where Michael Douglas’s daughter goes from being an upright, little school girl to a crack whore stoned in her pimp’s drug lair. Which makes me wonder, if Ben and Jerry’s ice cream were illegal in the same way that crack is illegal, what would I do to score a fix of Chunky Monkey? Would I whore myself out on the corner and meet a frizzy-haired ex-Girl-Scout leader in a back alley to score a box of Samoas? I can’t picture myself doing any of those things, but if you asked most junkies the same question before they became junkies they probably couldn’t imagine it either. I probably would indulge in some illegal behavior from time to time to score some Oreo ice cream. Does that make me an addict? I don’t think so. However, my relationship with food is definitely a little bit wonky. I’m not sure if I completely understand it or if I ever will. Thankfully, though, I can’t get arrested for pigging out on a box of Thin Mints.

What’s changed? I know I can handle it now. When I was first learning new habits I was worried that any deviation from my plan could knock me off course. I wasn’t ready to knowingly indulge in pies and cookies. It was too early. But I’ve been doing this for awhile now and I know that eating a pumpkin roll and Italian Crème cake and the richest fudge brownie in existence for lunch one day is not going to doom me to a life of obesity. It will make me feel sleepy in the evening. It will cause me to gain a pound or two. And it will definitely make me think, “Woah, I cannot eat like that all the time.” But it’s also a lot of fun. I enjoy eating and I’m never going to apologize for that. There are only 3 or 4 times a year when I am surrounded by so many delicious desserts and treats. I have to take advantage of it when I can.

My philosophy towards the holidays this year has been, “Eat whatever the hell you want and just go run later.” Or as my older brother put it, it’s just easier to lose the weight afterwards than to try to resist. I’ve got to agree with him on that one. Maybe that won’t be true when I’m in my 50′s, but give me two or three weeks here and I’m sure I can get rid of whatever I’ve gained. While it was lots of fun to eat whatever I wanted for the past three days, I sure am relieved that the holiday eating season is now over for me. All that sugar makes me enter an altered state of existence where I feel lethargic and spaced out, almost like I’m on drugs.

I wouldn’t describe my feelings about such indulgences as “guilt.” I felt guilty about stealing a granola bar from the grocery as a child. I felt guilty for not cuddling my guinea pig enough in the years before she died. I felt guilty about damaging my brother’s copy of Catch-22 and trying to stall him until I could buy a replacement copy. The way I feel about eating a lot of food is not guilt. It’s vigilance. It’s something I’m aware of, something I know I need to take care of, but I’m not going to beat myself up over it. It’s the same way I feel when my laundry has piled up and the number of clean panties I have left is serving as a countdown to the point of no return. I just can’t go commando and I’m not going to turn my underwear inside out. Yet, I’ve never felt guilty about not doing my laundry. And I don’t feel guilty about eating a lot on the holidays, not as long as I take care of it later.

The one thing I might do differently next year is to tell myself to limit it to only a couple indulgences. That way I’ll end up eating several indulgences over what I intend to, and end up eating about as much as I’m okay with. It’s like telling someone who is chronically late to be someplace 15 minutes before you really want them to be there so they’ll actually get there on time. This year I told myself to eat whatever I wanted, and holy cow, I really did. I gave myself an inch and took a mile. I doubt anyone in my extended family cares what I eat at those gatherings, but if anyone is monitoring my food intake they must be really confused as to how I can eat like that and lose as much weight as I have. I usually only see them at the holidays and those are one of the few times I eat like a maniac.