Cheating

Today I weighed in at a meeting. Down 1.4, which is not as much as I had hoped. It's also for two weeks. I have to remember that in my world, where staying the same is a win, losing is a big deal. I'm down almost 30 pounds since April. There are faster ways to do it, especially when you're as big as I am, but I want something I can live with long term. I want to change my life.

I was up for about an hour last night. When my brain starts working, I sometimes have a hard time getting it to stop. Last night was bad because I thought of something that happened when I was a kid. I was 13 or 14, and it was around a holiday, because my mother's parents were there, too. We'd had a roast beef instead of a turkey, so I'm not sure what the occasion was. Probably Christmas. Anyway, a couple hours after we ate, I was in the basement at our miniature pool table. I had cut off some pieces of the meat for a snack. At some point I was going up to cut off pieces of meat so often I was tired of it, and there was so little of the roast left, that I just took the whole thing down with me and at it while I shot pool. This was probably a six or seven pound roast, half of which had fed five of us plus two grandparents.

My dad looked for the roast later to make some sandwiches--you know, a light dinner. He couldn't find it, asked me where I was. "I ate it," I said. Very sheepish. That created a crisis, embarrassment (me because I was out of control, the folks because I was out of control and they didn't know what to do).

I couldn't possibly have been hungry. I don't know what was going on. Maybe I was bored. Maybe I was agitated about something. I don't even remember what happened after that. But I'm still mortified about it, and I try to think what I would do if I were that kid's parent. In a way, today I am.

Today in the meeting, someone mentioned how weigh-in day functions as a cheat day. I get the concept. I have a lovely, skinny friend who really works at staying thin, and she and her mother have shared the concept of the cheat day since D was little. (D thinks a 600 calorie breakfast is ENORMOUS. Not for me it's not.) Anyway, I understand the concept of a cheat day, but who would I be cheating? Me, right? So why do that? My concept, though, is based on the theory that it's not about the food. It's about need. I have some ideas about the need, but it could be food or anything else that's the object of the need. Mine's food. For other people it's Sailor Jerry's rum. I don't want to cheat myself. I've been doing that my whole life.