236.5 lbs...Numbers Don't Lie, but they do cuss...

Numbers don’t lie. But then again, they don’t tell you that you look fat in THOSE pants.

I felt like a child left unsupervised this weekend. Like a toddler you leave in the kitchen for 5 minutes, you come back and your white walls are now coated with tiny brown handprints. You HOPE that it was the chocolate cookie he was eating.

Well, I am that toddler. I don’t work Fridays, so that pristine office condition, where you just bring to work the stuff you need to be eating and you’re sequestered with files, computer, paper cuts and just your pre-measured grub, is not there AT ALL. Friday morning, I woke up and realized that the world was my cookie…I mean oyster. And that wasn't good. My first weekend as a born-again eater and it didn't go very well. Maybe I need to be re-baptized in fat free jello (although I think chocolate is easier to wrestle in).

There was the night at my friend's for dinner on Friday. It was a good way to learn how to control myself under different situations. What do you do when someone is cooking for you? Do you bring your own food, do you make sure you are able to pick what you want to eat there? Is it rude to ask what they're serving? Well, my usual old way is to make like a vacuum and suck it all up before it even has a change to plume up heat smoke. Maybe even start eating it before it actually has a chance to be fully placed in front of me like a hungry bulldog. You know, I love when people cook for me. I'm such a push over on that stuff, since I get so bored standing over a stove. I might be 25% male since the way to my heart is through my stomach. I love it so much that I liken to somebody giving me a part of their liver to save my life (no bacon and liver please...). It's such a joy to me that I would pick having a chef over somebody that can do my taxes, massage my aching back and fix my car all in the same afternoon. Hey, did I tell you yet how much I love somebody to cook for me??? (possible suitors please take note).

So, she was serving steak, wow it was good, along with bread, potatoes and salad. I got a little frisky with the bread, I molested it big time, eating some before dinner, waiting for her to turn her head so I can get my grubby hands on another piece, hoping she thought it was just taking me a long time to chew ONE piece and was not actually the 2nd piece I helped myself to, The loaf might now have a restraining order out on me as of tonight. The butter was staring at me and I have to eat it to make it stop. The butter's buddy sour cream was whispering was complaining that it lost it's friend, so I had to help it out so they could be reunited.

Looking back on that dinner, it was ok. I realized that there were plenty of things I could have done better. What those totally are, I'm not sure. Are you? What could have made it better?

Maybe the steak didn't need any sauce, it was awesome as is. What could I have put on the potatoe? Should I have ignored it completely or maybe just use it as a hand warmer, forgetting all the juicy goodness just inside it's rough exterior?

Friday didn't seem so bad of course when Saturday night rolled in like a cozy summer breeze and I made my vacation stay at Pizza Hut. Warm and toasty, 4 pieces deep. I had another dinner at a somebody else's house! What was I thinking?? He even brought out a little platter of vegies. I think at that time, after smelling the pizza, that the vegies would have to have been hidden in cheese for me to notice too much.

Ultimately, I learned that I'm still human. I could choose to be angry and brow beat myself, but the fact of the matter is, the way my body feels today, Sunday "the day after" is punishment enough. After over a week of eating good, feeling good and seeing some progress, feeling so sluggish and weighted down isn't quite sitting as comfortable as it used to be. Two meals, two days out of the rest of my life, is just a couple pages out of a really good book that I had to go back and read again. The rest of the book is still there to enjoy.

You can move ahead too. You may have had a setback or two or five! But, it's not over, you can still make a difference. I know that there's the last moment, the one that got away, but that means there's the NEXT moment. That's the one we need to concentrate and be excited by.

Back to the scale.

A friend told me not to weigh everyday, but for me, the numbers staring up at me like 3 digit beady eyes are my friend, whether they’re more than I would like or less. It tells me if I’m on the right path for me. Having a false sense of security that I’m getting smaller may be worse. Some people just can feel when they’re gaining or losing weight. But, if you have a life lived habit of eating whether you’re hungry or not, makes you numb to what’s happening just below the belt until you look for your favorite jeans and they’ve run off with the circus. It reminds me of a story I heard once of a lady who was at her son’s wedding. I saw her and she was a big’n. One of those women who can give you a squeezing hug and you can feel the after effects a month later. She was wearing an antique pin and hugging people all day ecstatic that her son finally found somebody who can take him out of the house, no doubt. As the festivities wore down and out, she felt about the same – down and out. She was out of breath and really tired. Come to find out later, that the long sharp pin in her antique jewelry and stabbed her in the chest and deflated a lung! MY GOD! But, for people who don’t realize they have gained weight until they become what would be deemed enough to feed a cannibal’s family for a month, this is about right.

Some of us, big girls, not all, but some of us - have a habit of ignoring stuff and disengaging ourselves from what is below our neck, hence I can’t see my shoes…or pants…or shirt buttons…

So, if weighing in on the scale everyday helps keep you insanely sane, then so be it. Just don’t get one that talks back to you. No one should hear that much bad language.