Half the time, when I go off plan I end up eating stuff I don't even like, that doesn't even taste good. Have you noticed that? You get in some kind of a tizzy *having* to eat, sometimes it is about a certain food or a particular flavor you're after. If you're stuck at home without *that food* have you ever just started eating crap that you weren't even wanting in the first place? I recall a time when all I really wanted was a Hostess Lemon Pie. I HAD to have it, I could not get it out of my mind. But since I was trying to lose weight I refused to let myself get in the car and drive out JUST to get that stupid pie (and besides, whenever I *did* make a "run" for one stupid food I wanted but didn't need/shouldn't have, I'd get this irrational fear that I'd get in a car accident and be killed or run someone over or one of my kids would be hurt, all because I made this irrational spur-of-the-moment food run). So instead of the pie I'd start opening all the cabinets, trying to find something *like pie* which sometimes was as far fetched as a tortilla fried in butter with cinnamon sugar on it, or maybe 6 pieces of buttered toast. I'd eat and eat and never feel like I was *done.* Or one time I wanted potato chips SO bad but I'd promised myself I wouldn't go buy chips, so I ended up standing in front of the fridge stuffing my mouth full of Swiss cheese slices that didn't even taste very good. Or another time when I wanted Oreos but ended up eating so many salted cashews that I was nauseous. And I kept eating them well *after* I knew I didn't want them. What the heck is up with that? Why does a person binge on toast or nuts or cheese that they don't even WANT?
I wish I knew. Some days I really wonder what is going on with myself. Today was a *perfect* on plan eating day until evening when I was tired and stressed out and just felt like eating. I was pacing the kitchen. I didn't know what I wanted. I kept telling myself to get out of the kitchen, and then I'd leave and go back ten minutes later. I was digging in the cabinets and the fridge. I was feeling like I might lose it. "WHY did I start back on this weight loss business instead of waiting til January 1st like everyone else?? I could have been eating cookies right now, and ice cream, and subs..." Totally irrational, I tell ya. I grabbed the last Greek yogurt... one with honey and vanilla in it, opened it, took one bite and then threw it out. I peeled a cold pepperoni off a leftover slice of pizza in the fridge, started to eat that single pepperoni but then my senses overcame me and I spit it out. Walked out of the kitchen, then back. "I shoulda waited!" I forgot, for a moment, all about the pain and the weight and how I'd probably weigh 200 pounds by the New Year if I'd kept it up. I forgot about how last week, I was just DYING for red velvet cake, DYING I tell you. I don't even really LIKE red velvet cake. What is it anyway, some kind of dilute chocolate cake loaded with red dye? It's gross, but I like the *idea* of it. I like the *thought* of liking it, because it is "special" and other people like it and it is fancy. So I want to like it, so I crave it. And I ended up, last week, at the grocery store bakery alone one day, staring hard at the 6-pack of Red Velvet cupcakes on the shelf. I *knew* if I bought them I'd eat them all. I went over and asked the bakery kid if he would sell me ONE Red Velvet Cupcake. He looked at me like I was nuts. "I don't even know how much that would be!" he said, "We don't have singles!" I think he saw the crushed look on my face because he suddenly decided to open the 6-pack, take one out and wrap it for me and sell it to me for 83 cents. I went home, I unwrapped that cupcake and took a bite. What the heck? It was not even good! It didn't taste special at all. It was just a dumb, fluffy, dilute chocolate cake loaded with red dye, which I already knew. I knew I never liked it, but I kept eating it, every bite telling myself that the *next* bite would be the good one, where I'd swoon into Red Velvet Fantasyland and get what I was looking for from that cupcake. It never happened, but I ate it anyway.
And so tonight as I swarmed the kitchen looking for... for what? I dunno, for that elusive *something*... I thought, "gee, I want some Red Velvet Cake. I should go to a bakery, a really GREAT bakery where cupcakes are $5, and buy one..." and then I thought, "this is the stupidest thing ever. I DON'T LIKE RED VELVET CAKE!!" And then as I looked through the cabinets one last time, I moved aside the bananas and saw a baggie with a dried up, lonely old butterscotch cookie in it. A cookie I didn't even like when they were freshly baked... a cookie that a pack of teenagers and a 5-year-old didn't even want. And I took that thing out of the bag and ate it, stale crumbs falling all over. It was dry and disgusting. WHY? I don't get it, but then, I was done.
So, one good day and one bad cookie. Progress, I guess.
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