A 45-year-old fat man trying to find his inner skinny dude.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Food Porn

Is it eating more or the little rotating staircase that kicks my ass?  Either way, I'm down a bit.  Yesterday was a BIG day.  HUGE.  In terms of eating, anyway.  I would not call it a binge, because it was not driven by emotion.  Rather, I just gave myself a day away from the obsession.  Pizza with my stepson figured into it.

Speaking of emotion, however, because I often do.  This has been a pretty challenging week.  The biggest deal to me is that one of my dogs--the first dog I ever had as an adult, in fact--has bladder cancer.  He's a goner.  He's on chemo pills which are supposed to stop the progress of the disease.  The vet says that will buy him four to six months of good quality of life.  (Reading between the lines, I assume this means the pills will not actually arrest the disease process.)

This is the kind of situation that would historically throw me off the rails.  What I've found, though, is that I have mostly not been interested in eating when I've been upset about this dog.  In fact, there have been instances in which I could barely bring myself to eat because I was sad about him.  I consider this the zen miracle. 

I guess that my  eating habits have really become habits.  Friday, someone brought doughnuts into the office.  I like to go look.  I consider looking at the goodies food porn.  But Friday I was in a state--overtired, overwrought--and I thought, fuck it.  So I went to look, with every intention of taking at least one doughnut back to my desk.  But I was unmoved.  Nothing there looked that good.  Don't get me wrong--they were fine-looking doughnuts.  I just didn't care.  Apparently, the porn quality to them was plenty satisfying for me.

So there it is--movement of a sort.  I can be sad without eating.  Who knew?  I hope that it will apply in all areas of my life at some point--stress, boredom, whatever.  Maybe it already does.

2 comments:

  1. Skip, I'm so sorry about your dog. I know how painful this is - when my cat died, it was worse than when my father died! I know that might sound bad, but it's a reflection on how much I loved my cat, not on how little I loved my father. That was the worst day of my entire life, no contest. Take care of yourself and love yourself, because this is a terribly difficult time to get through. I'm so glad you are able to deal with grief without harming yourself - that's not easy to do.

    xoxo

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  2. Thanks so much. You're very kind. I totally understand the dad v. cat thing. This dog has taken great care of me, and I can't stand any of this. Today I did my best to overeat, and I did, some, but it's just not compelling for me the way it once was. (The dog gets any damn thing he wants.)

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