"and I think that I sometimes might have wished
for something more than to be a size six."
14 October 2003 - 6:02pm
and so it begins again.
i have stopped eating sugar. so far it has been about 18 hours. 18 hours down, a long long time to go.
this 'life style' change is one i have made before. as a senior in college, i gave up all refined sugar, white flour and related products. my hairdresser got me onto the idea, and i read several books that convinced me sugar was evil. so i got rid of it all, and i lost 35 pounds in 4 months.
i still think sugar is very bad, but i also love it very much. and the sugar-free lifestyle was hard to maintain once i had graduated from college and was a broke 'adult' working at a coffee shop offering free pastries to its employees. i swear there was at least a month after college where all i ate was hot dogs, potato salad (leftovers a friend's mother had given me), and pastries. it was a slow process, but over time i completely gave up on not eating sugar.
which led me to the point i am at now. i've been going to weight watchers for almost a year and i have lost 8 pounds. i try to follow the program, i really do. but then someone brings a brownie or a cake or a donut by, and i eat it. i cannot stop myself from 'indulging.' sometimes i can moderate it, but usually not by very much.
even when i was 'being good' during this past year, i was consuming at least half my points in low fat sweets. the being good part was staying in my point range. but i did it with cake and cookies and ice cream. and when i'm not being good, well, it looks something like this monday: bagel with cream cheese and jelly, 2 reeses peanut butter cups, a cheese danish, an 'orange drink,' a bottle of lemonade, 2 pieces of angel food cake, 5 merengue cookies, 6 pan fried dumplings, a box of mike n' ikes, and 2 bowls of ice cream. that's the sum total of what i ate yesterday (oh, and a bag of chips). that is an example of someone who is totally out of control.
at WW they often say that you have to know what your own limits are, know what you are capable of. i think i've known for a long time that i'm not capable of eating sugar in moderation; but i don't want to let go of it, so i just ignore that knowledge. i keep telling myself, 'this week, i'll eat right and i'll only have one sweetie treatie a day.' but even the thought of 'just one' sends me into a panic. i think i feel the way alcoholics feel about liquor and the way smokers feel about cigarettes. i always have to know i can have it, and i am always plotting my next feeding.
i'm really scared that i won't be able to do this. that i'll fail. again. that i'll succumb to temptation and then it will all fall apart. that i'll then tell myself that 'it doesn't matter' and i'll do it again 'later.' but when is later? i'm more than half way through my 27th year. i'm a full grown up. i still imagine myself as trim in all my fantasies, but i don't like the way i look in photos or in the mirror. but what if i'm not strong enough to make such a huge life change? what if i don't have the will-power and determination? i mean, i've failed every other time, why will it be different now?
the truth is, i don't know. i don't know, and i'm really scared. i don't know how i'll do tomorrow or the next day. i don't know what i'll do about halloween, and i can't even think about Thanksgiving, Christmas, my birthday. i don't know if anything will really seem as worthwhile or make me as happy as sugar based products do.
because the sad truth is, when it comes down to it, there is always a point where i would rather just have a piece of cake than do whatever else i'm doing. i might be out with my friends, drinking, having fun, but at some point i'll get tired and i'll just want to be at home or at a diner or somewhere that will allow me to sit and eat something sweet and bready. i sometimes wonder about other people because most of them don't seem to have this reaction, this willingness at some point to trade it all for a piece of cake.
when i think about what always satisfies me, what i always can rely on to calm me, soothe me, make me happy, it's desserts. cake, donuts, chocolate, ice cream, cookies, candy, pie. these words read to me the same way fulfillment, comfort, happiness, contentment, enjoyment read. i get really excited just seeing all those words together. a Thiebaud painting can actually make me salivate.
and i know there is something going fundamentally wrong here. i know it should not be this way. but it's a purely rational understanding. i don't feel it. i don't feel why. as i take this first step away from my own special addiction, i honestly can't say what will make it worthwhile. what will be better than eating a chocolate iced cupcake at three in the morning.
i know there are things i want. i want to wear whatever clothes suit me and look the way i want to in them. i want to shop in stores i can't shop in now. i want the confidence i sometimes feel lacking. i want to not have to worry if i'm over the weight limit for a ride, a small plane. i want seats to never feel snug. i want to not avoid any situation where anyone might think of picking me up. i want to feel like i look as good as all of my friends when we go out.
i've wanted all of these things for awhile, along with my better health, my higher level of energy, my ability to improve my life through my own hard work. they are all the reasons i joined weight watchers and joined a gym. but obviously, they haven't been enough.
because when it comes down to it, as much as i want these things, i don't want them as much as that piece of baklava in the kitchen or that black and white cookie from the coffee shop across the street. the former things are ideas and ideals, the latter are a compulsion, a need.
but i know that need is false. and here's what finally made me think, 'i just have to do this thing.'... my friend Kristen quit smoking a year ago. she went from smoking a pack a day or more to not smoking at all. she got the patch and then the gum and she quit. at first she didn't go out to parties because she knew she couldn't drink without smoking. at first, she didn't drink coffee for the same reason. she was bitchy; she was miserable. but she did it. and i have been so impressed by and proud of her. she was someone i could never invision as a nonsmoker. no one could. and i've seen so many smokers quit for awhile and then fall back into it. but Kristen managed to stick it out. she managed to make a really positive and hard change.
and then, about a month ago, she started smoking again. she's dating a guy that no one thinks is the best thing for her, and the latest reason is because he smokes, and, as a result, she is smoking again too. we were talking about it on saturday night, and she said that at first it was just a drag off his cigarettes and then bumming his cigarettes when they were out and then, eventually, buying her own pack. she said she kept buying packs, smoking a few, and then throwing the pack out. she has been struggling with it. the conversation on saturday started because she was chewing the gum again. friday night, she had thrown out the most recent pack and the new lighter and had bought the gum. she was chewing it like crazy all weekend.
we talked about it a lot, and i told her that she just had to keep working at it. that she had done something unbelievably hard and that just because she had slipped did not mean she had failed. i told her i had all the faith in her that she could continue to beat this thing. and we talked about how it's the hardest thing she has to do about how she has to be conscious of it constantly. but how she knows it's important and worth the hard-ness of it.
i didn't make the connection at the moment, but it didn't take me long. sugar was my cigarette. i'm almost sure that Kristen probably couldn't imagine anything in the world she'd want more than a cigarette when she quit. but she did it anyway. and she's still struggling, but she's winning. and as an outsider who has never smoked, it's so obvious to me how worth it her struggle is. but it's obvious because i don't know what it's like to need and crave that cigarette more than anything else in your life. but i do know that need.
and i realized that if my desire to have dessert, to eat candy, to 'indulge' is the same impulse as Kristen's desire to smoke a cigarette, then it doesn't matter if i can't envision anything better than cake. it doesn't matter if i don't see it. the problem is there. it's as bad for me as smoking a pack a day.
so that's what i saw, and now i'm going to make this change, even though i don't know how to get through the days doing it. i guess just one day at a time. still, easier said than done.
oh but there was one thing i thought of that i wanted to be slimmer and healthier for, that i can't really do now, that would be worth it, and that is to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. i have wanted to climb it since i was a little girl. there wasn't time on this trip to Africa, but even if there had been, there was no way i was in any kind of shape to do that. and even if i can go through life without wearing silver hot pants, i don't think i can get through life not being able to do something i've always wanted to because of my weight and my lack of healthful in-shape-ness. so on the days i can't remember why else, i'm going to try and tell myself that this is the reason i'm doing it all: the summit of Kilimanjaro.