Dancing with Food

Weight loss is a dance with food and eating habits. You resolve to lose weight, change your ways – lose a few pounds then your body screams to grab it back.  I WANT THAT FAT says the body, starved for real nutrition.   HEY NOT SO FAST as the pounds and inches melt away and a skinnier you emerges from folds of flesh, and whoa, there’s my ribcage! I knew I had ribs.  And not the BBQ kind. And there’s my waistline.  WOW! Somehow, deep inside the double XL, it managed to survive.

How did I get so overweight? I carried my weight well, people said, disbeleiving that I weighed 205 pounds.  And so I got away with it.

10 weeks into this weight-loss thing and I got on the scales this morning and voila – 181! 181! Wow! That’s 24 pounds. So the tape measure comes out and I measure everywhere, even my neck, and I’m down a whopping 37 inches, including an inch off my neck. AN INCH OFF MY NECK! WAS I REALLY THAT FAT?  How can you store fat on your neck?

And so – this evening I eat. First evening in a long while that I’m snacking. First a bag of BBQ whey thins – these high protein crispy things that take up the spot of a salty snack.

Then about a dozen organic strawberries.

Then an Isa Delight chocolate.

Okay, so there’s nothing wrong with any of that. But then my friend comes in with a bag of fruit from the organic market and hands me a pint of the absolutely most beautiful raspberries.

Oh, okay – nothing wrong with a few raspberries.  But hey wait a minute didn’t I just eat strawberries?  Isn’t there something about quantity of food, as much as quality of food, that packs the pounds on?

Then I see his bag of organic cheddar popcorn…just because it says organic all over the bag doesn’t make it healthy.  4 handfuls of cheddar popcorn later…my hand is now in the raisin jar.

THE RAISIN JAR!? How the hell did my hand find it’s way into that?

And so the dance continues. Tomorrow I’ll fast. Yes, I won’t eat. I’ll just drink the magic elixir that comes with my 30-day cleanse and weight-loss kit and eat the little whey tablets they call chewables, and drink water, and at some point, about 6 ounces of my home made ginger-lavender kombucha, just to keep the gut’n’brain bacteria healthy.

And after about 36 hours of not eating, I’ll get that magic energy and incredible clarity of mind that comes with fasting.

And my body practices and learns this new dance step called intermittent fasting. It’s the latest weight-loss fad. Is it a fad, or is it maybe the real thing?