Teaching an Old Dog Some New Tricks

Today is my 40th post -- does that mean I'm approaching middle age? If so, this past week has definitely found me in a mid-life crisis.

I'm just so overwhelmed. It's a busy time at home and work anyway this time of year, and now with all of this house stuff, it makes me feel like I'm getting ready to be swept downstream. I just don't feel like I'm keeping up with anything; probably because I don't know where to begin.

And all of this is really giving me the urges to eat. This afternoon I'm pacing the house, trying to clean up a little here, pack a little there, but I keep drifting off course and getting distracted by this gnawing in my stomach and this revving in my brain. I'm definitely feeling like a caged animal; if I break loose, however, I'm more likely to attack a carton of ice cream than a human.

There's this voice inside of me that's practically begging me to feed it; to soothe the anxieties, to calm my mind and fill my belly. It's an old voice, probably been there most of my life, and it's always been hard to resist her demands.

But there's this other voice now, the new kid on the block, but she'd holding her own with the old timer. She's equally insistent that I don't escape into food; she's pleading with me not to give up and toss away all the hard work I've done. The old voice, like a big St. Bernard, has no intentions of moving and keeps trying to swat away the little Jack Russel terrier that won't leave it alone. But my little terrier, she's a tenacious, stubborn little dog, and she won't back down.

It's hard to get the housework done when you're having a dog fight in your head! I want to eat but I don't want to eat, either. I wish I could turn a hose on these quarreling voices and break them up, but I'm also afraid that if I try to quell this argument, the new voice will give up and go away.

Okay, enough analytical metaphorical gobbledygook. Let's get down to basics, and the Weekend Game Plan.

Saturday night we have to take Hubby's parents out for dinner for their anniversary. Like I've said before, we have to celebrate everything with food in this family, and I don't see any escaping it. Anyway, I have no idea where we're going, so I'm feeling pretty unsure about this impending meal. I don't know if it'll be a buffet or a sit down meal, or if it will be seafood or Italian or something totally different. Unfortunately all I can do is make the best choices I can and try to get in one of those stubborn frames of mind: i.e., "I'll succeed despite all your attempts at sabotaging me!" It can be a bit of an elitist, "I'm better than you" kind of mindset, but sometimes a little attitude of superiority is what it takes to survive when everyone around you is shoveling in their cheesy, creamy, crispy, buttery delights while you're chewing on your salad or steamed veggies.

Despite this one big hazard, the rest of the weekend looks pretty safe. I don't think there are any other meals or events we need to attend. So the rest of the weekend I'm going to try to keep up my weekday food routines as much as possible. Because before you know it, it'll be Thanksgiving, and I'm trying to go into it with as much momentum as possible.

It would be wonderful to wake up Thanksgiving morning at 215 or even lower. But once again, I'm very leery of what tomorrow's weigh in will be. I've done my very best with food and exercise this week, but I haven't seen much movement at all on the scale. Like I said last week, I may just been in a "slow down" period right now (I dread writing down the dreaded P word, which rhymes with chateau). If that's the case, I'm going to just have to put on a pair of blinders and push on through it. There really isn't any other alternative to me.

But, if memory serves me right (sorry, it's a line from the Japanese version of "Iron Chef" that always makes me laugh), last fall when I knocked off 50 pounds(!) between Labor Day and New Year's Eve, my months had a similar trend-- two weeks a month I would lose very slowly, and the other two weeks I'd lose more. Putting it in that perspective, I don't feel so bad, because that means there's good news on the horizon. I'll just have to wait and see.