Leaving the field...

or lessons learned from a freshman football player.

Today my nephew Ryan played the last game of his freshman football season. If this was a Disney movie, his team would have won the day with just enough points not to have made the other team look like a bunch of snotty-nosed 14 year olds. Ahh, Disney.

But, as we all know, this is NOT a Disney movie, so naturally Ryan's team lost. 16 to 6. And at times they really did look like a bunch of snotty-nosed 14 year olds.  They were gawky. There were errors. The ball was thrown WAAAAY over the head of the kid "receiving" it, and, when you could see through the legs of the players on the sidelines, it looked like a pretty dismal game.

But. Our boys put every muscle into this game. They fought hard, they fought with heart. And when the whole thing was over they faced the crowd of family that had turned out to cheer them on and performed their own cheer. They left us with the understanding that they did their best to make us all proud.

It is going to take me a LOOONNNGGGG time to get the extra weight off. I did the Disney thing once. The weight came off like magic, leaving me thin and bewildered as to what to do with that new body. I went through all the stuff that you go through at 14 - hormones, and new love, uncertainty about my place in the world, hormones, feelings of being rejected for not staying the same, and hormones. It frankly was less like becoming the Barbie I had always imagined my thin self to be, and more like morphing into a 41 year old version of a preteen. Not pretty. Not comfortable.

So now I have to fight my way back to thin. And, like Ryan's team I am not going to win every game. I am going to make "I ate the entire box of wheat thins" choices sometimes. But I have the option to lay down and give up without a fight, or I can stand up and give a cheer even when the crowd is disappointed. I can choose to move on, look to another season, and know that at the end of the day I won't be perfect. I will have chosen to give a cheer at the moment that I needed one myself. And I will have done my best.

Comfort food

Something really awful happened yesterday. We found out that my sister Stephanie's boss was killed at Ft. Hood. Stephanie loved this man. He was not just her boss, he was her friend. No words to explain this thing.

When something happens for which there are no words food seems to speak very loudly. I went off plan in a big way. I told myself that I would not weigh this morning, would just jump right back on track and let things settle out on Monday at my self-imposed weigh-in. I didn't keep my promise. I weighed. Up 2 pounds. Well, duh. But it hurts to move backward and so, naturally, and because it always makes things better to repeat bad behavior, I ate a box of reduced fat Wheat Thins and a carton of lowfat cottage cheese to make myself feel better. Yikes!

Part of me is hanging on to being the fat girl. Part of me needs to know it is okay to run to food for comfort, part of me is reassured by the thought that food will always be there, even when I lose someone dear. That is of course, if I live through the diabetes, infections, high blood pressure, and general ill health to survive someone dear, to actually out live them. Highly unlikely if food continues to occupy this role in my life.

So I made a terrible choice at breakfast today. I can take more steps, eat right the rest of the day, make my mind up to continue forward without dwelling on the past. I can. I will.

Signs

As if I needed more impetus to get going on the weight loss, the universe decided to send me a couple of signs.

First, my oven broke.  Not much of a sign you say?  Wrong-o!  I am the baking queen, she of eight types of cookies in one mass session gearing up for Christmas. The gal with dough under every nail. Having no oven, in fall no less, is like having a hand removed.  The one that stuffs home-made goodies into my mouth.  So...having no oven is most definitely a sign that the stars (or at least the kitchen appliances) are aligning favorably for me to eat more healthy.

Then my Disney Days calendar had this to say, below a picture of Monsters, Inc.'s Sully doing push-ups: "Hey, less talk, more pain, marshmallow boy!" Okay, this is more weak but still, even Disney is telling me to work out more.

One day down - good eating, walked over 10,000 steps, and ready to take on tomorrow!  Just, well, my entire life to go. We can do this!

Is it Monday, again?

I do a lot of dieting with my sister. Though there are four of us sisters, plus one in heaven, and a brother we conscripted into the family along the way, it is just the two of us with kids who seem to worry about our weight.  Not that we are the only ones who should be worried mind you.

I call us the wide-angle lens family.  Dad weighed on average about 400 pounds for most of his life. Mom was heavy, and the rest of us range from 75 to 150 pounds overweight.  Except the conscripted brother - I am convinced that genetics really do play some part in this struggle.  Having avoided the Powell genetic pool, my brother remains slim and healthy.  He also eats well and works out.  Go figure.

ANYWAY...my youngest sister and I tend to do a lot of our eating, and dieting, together.  And we are headed out on another foray into weight loss land tomorrow morning.  Weighins at our respective homes, solemn vows of healthy eating and exercizing, accompanied by encouraging phone calls along the way to ensue with the rising MONDAY sun. Yeehaw!

I have no readers at this point, not even family. I may never have readers.  But, if you somehow stumble across this blog you are now a part of my accountability entourage. Melissa is the first, but you are welcome to join too.