It's Not All About Me

Blogger is down right now, so I'm writing this in an email to myself so I don't lose the thing, plus it's available from any computer. Anyway, enough techno stuff.

I have a few minutes to spare this afternoon to write before I take Mabel to the allergy clinic (I screwed up majorly last week and took her on Friday, only to discover that the clinic's CLOSED Fridays. Add that to my Bad Mother of the Universe resume)

I got really irritable with hubby last night, and I don't know if it's worth the energy to make it an issue or not. He came home from the grocery store with FOUR different bags of chips (potato and tortilla). I immediately hollered at him, saying I was just throwing Christmas junk food out of the house that morning, and here he was dragging in more junk! To further illustrate my point, as we tried to prepare supper, Mabel kept asking if she could eat some chips before the meal.

I did go a little martyr-happy on him and declared, "I swear you're trying to drive me off the deep end. Is your goal to make me fall off the wagon and gain 80 pounds?!?" His response was shock at this suggestion, and later, after I calmed down, I knew why. The chips had nothing whatsoever to do with me. It's well established that chips are not one of my all-time favorite snack/overeat/binge foods (although if I make some of my homemade guacamole a bag of tortilla chips are soon history), they're HIS. He didn't buy all those chips to tempt me, he bought them so HE could eat them (plus one bag in my daughter's favorite flavor).

What to do? I don't want to be one of those harpy wives who polices my husband's food and forbids all junk food from the house. It's my choice to eat healthy, and it's his choice to eat what he wants to. But having all that junk in the house can sure make it more difficult to keep to my new habits.

At the same time, I'm trying to raise my daughter to have a sane relationship with food. I've never banned candy, soda, or fast food, but at the same time I've tried to make them an occasional treat and not a part of her normal diet. So when her father is bringing home four bags of chips at once and stockpiling the endless supply of nutritionally bereft food, it definitely counteracts what I'm trying to do.

I'm not sure where the issue lies. I voiced my unhappiness, but whether it will cause him to alter his behavior is uncertain.

The funny thing is, a few days ago he told me he signed up for some weight loss challenge at his job. I asked him about this during the chip discussion, and his reply was, "It hasn't started yet."

I guess that's what makes me different. I learned that waiting until Monday, or the beginning of the month, or Jan. 1, to start my "diet" just doesn't work for me, or most people, I suspect. The only way I have been able to lose as much weight as I have was to learn that every day is or can be the "first." I figured out that a six or twelve-week diet that has a starting and end point isn't going to help me. I've accepted the fact that I'm going to have to be a mindful eater and an active exerciser for the rest of my life if I don't want to be 300 pounds again.

Having said that, I'm going to wrap this up by giving myself my "props" on my actions this morning. Last night I had what I'll generically describe (don't want to get into Too Much Information territory) as a muscle spasm; at 1 a.m. I was literally writhing in bed with pain. With a little yoga breathing (I learned a few things from my old Rodney Yee DVD) the pain slowly subsided and I got back to sleep. At 5 a.m. my alarm went off and while I did debate a little, by 5:15 I was on the treadmill. I didn't go full throttle; I wound up taking it easy on the treadmill for 20 minutes and then did another "easy" program on the stationary bike for another 20. But hey, that's 40 minutes of moderate exercise a lot of people --myself included not too long ago-- would not have done. So I guess I've been able to ingrain some good things in this stubborn head of mine.