Celebrate Food Times, Come On!

So I have some questions about food and celebrations.

A diet can be hard to follow on most days. Most days you are tempted by many things, like the fluffy whip cream atop the Frappuccino that’s served right before your green tea comes to the counter. Or the swirling, lovely plate of pasta spilling over with bouncy, noodley goodness, making your grilled chicken dish look sad. Or really anything in a Panini format, with melty, crispy, lovely cheese. (Man, I’ve been dieting a while.)

But for me, the temptation is always the worst when there is something to celebrate or something to grieve. I don’t really need to spell this out, but to put a finer point on it, it’s anything from the spectrum of birthday cake to a cookie after a bad day. 

These occasions make avoiding temptation particularly hard because they come with something else that is delicious. Justification. 

“You’re only thirty once.”

“It’s Easter.”

“It’s just a little graduation cake.”

“I deserve this after the day that I’ve had.” 

“It’s a full moon.”

And those excuses have a point. What’s the problem with a little something decadent every once in a while? 

I have a decent-sized family, and we all live about half an hour’s drive from each other. This includes my parents, my two siblings, their spouses, and their children. So birthdays alone take up eleven out of twelve months. Then there are holidays, my anniversary, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day. That’s not counting Monday holiday cook-outs and major life events such as graduations, promotions and big announcements. 

Pepper in the occasional bad days. And soon “every once in a while” turns into “every now and again,” and then eventually to “more often than not.” 

So, it serves to reason that I have to re-think how I handle “special occasions.” I’m really looking at four options here. I can white knuckle it. Have a similar sweet alternative.  Have a small amount of the special food. Or the more likely fourth option: indulge like I used to.  Let’s break down every scenario.

“White knuckling.” I have done this. And I am ok at it. It helps that my family knows my food decisions and doesn’t expect or pressure me to enjoy dessert. But it is still really hard. Sometimes I have to have something obstruct my view of the dessert. I can’t make eye contact with it. Its presence nags in the background of my brain. I’m not gonna lie; making conversation even gets hard. 

So then there is the “sweet alternative.” This usually looks like fruit or a small piece of good dark chocolate and sometimes both. This does distract my mouth and mind a bit. But it’s only a small consolation amid the plunging of forks into fluffy cake or the diving of spoons into gentle mounds of ice cream. (I really have to stop describing food.) 

Then there is the option of” indulging a little”. This isn’t a bad idea. I could keep the portion small and enjoy the little that I have. But when are the “small portion” indulgences too frequent? I mentioned that there are a lot of reasons to indulge. When do I decide indulging is truly justified? Is it the occasion, or the time that has lapsed from the last indulgence? 

I don’t actually have an answer here. But I do know in each of these scenarios, I feel like a loser. I feel like, “What’s wrong with me that I can’t handle this situation? Why I can’t handle eating dessert and looking the way I’m supposed to.” Or “Why  can’t I abstain from dessert without obsessing?” And if I do enjoy dessert I feel like a failure. I just feel like something is wrong with me that, when faced with the simple question of “Dessert?” I don’t have a clear answer.

Will this always be a struggle? Will I ever be able to get through these get-togethers without the anxiety-ridden questions surrounding frosting?

When I started cutting out the cake-eating from these special events, I realized it was one of my favorite parts of the get-together. This paints me in a lovely light, I know. But I love food. The crumb of a well made cake or the joy of a scratch-made frosting warms my heart. I just wish that enjoying the cake wasn’t always mingled with guilt and confusion.

 And I love to bake! Creating, experimenting, the beautiful fluffiness of sugar creamed in butter – am I to no longer create in this way? And if I do continue to express myself in baking, am I not supposed to eat it?

But then again, the struggle with my weight has been life-long. Maybe I need a drastic shift in how I think about the “joys in life” I feel I am entitled to. I don’t know if I am ready for that.

I feel like I need a structure that allows for some small treats but has an electric fence to keep me from going too far.

So what do you do? I don’t really have answers here. 

So tell me, what do you do? When is indulging ok? Where are the parameters? 

In short, when and how much cake is ok?

The Comeback Kid

I have walked away from blogging a little bit. I didn’t walk away completely from the overall challenge although there were some diet vacations.

Things got busy. Life got busy, and I just got fatigued by the whole thing. And once you get away it is hard to come back. 

This is true in most projects for me. Once I stop writing it is hard to get back to it. Once I go off my diet it’s hard to stare a salad in the face again. Once I stop working out I feel a little sheepish pulling on my sneakers in the morning, like somehow the sneakers know.

 “Well, well, well, look who thought she would lace us up? Are we gonna go on a little run, Steph? Is that what we’re doing now? You think you can just discard us for weeks, stick us in the corner with your uncomfortable heels? Who by the way are not the brightest pair of pumps at Payless.  Have you ever tried to have a conversation with them? Not exactly a Rhoades Scholars if you catch my drift. You think you can just discard us with Ding Bat Sling Backs over and then just pick up where we left off?!?”  (Those are some sarcastic sneakers)  

I think the problem with coming back is a problem of identity. I am trying to decide which of these actions truly defines me: am I the quitter or am I the one who tries again? Every time I pick up again after taking a break from something, I feel like the quitter merely pretending to be a doer. I feel fake, and somehow I feel like the outside world is watching me and whispering, “She’s not fooling anybody.”

Why do I default to the worse of the two settings? Maybe it’s because it’s easier to walk away. So it feels like what is easier for me to do must be closer to my true self.

I want to be seen as successful. Always going forward, never flinching or wavering in the task I set before myself.

But the truth is, I waver. I am a crazy waverer. I waver so much I would fail multiple sobriety tests. I’m Waver McWaverson. I waver so much people see me and think I’ve just taken a long journey on a swaying ship. I stumble through life on sea legs, the waverer that I am.

I doubt myself. I doubt my choice of workout or diet. I doubt my resolve. I’m afraid. I am afraid to fail and to be seen failing. I think I’m afraid that if I get it wrong and don’t succeed I’ve somehow locked in “a failure” as who I am. 

I overcharge dieting, organizing, and blogging with all these self-defining feelings, so no wonder I come back with a certain amount of anxiety. It feels like facing the music, or more accurately, facing a part of my personality I’m not proud of. 

I feel like there is a debt to be paid. I am coming back and carrying the burden of the past failures. And not only do I have to face my past failures, I also have to face my past successes, because sometimes the shining gems of my past accomplishments seem to accuse me, they have turned into millstones representing all the opportunities I’ve wasted since the times I succeeded.  

So I come back feeling I have to somehow make up for and atone for all the past mistakes. Especially in the area of healthy eating. If I walk away from that, I come back literally bearing the weight.

As I thought over these issue, I came across Philippians 3:13-14.

“But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

This refers to looking forward in our spiritual walk. I’ve always been taught that “forgetting those things” means past failures and success.

I always read this verse taking away the idea that past success don’t count tomorrow. That you can’t rest on your laurels. But in the light of this current issue, I find that the idea of a clean slate, of forgetting all that is behind, both the failures that claim to define me and the successes that demand I don’t put them to waste, is a freeing concept. The idea that I can take my failures not as a cross to bear but as lessons learned.

It is also important to remember what defines me. Christ. His death on the cross that saved my life, and my purpose to glorify God. And that is it. 

And to remember what is the “goal” and the “prize” that I press on towards, which is not to be a size two. Or to stick to the strictest of diets so that I can hold it as a source of pride, but rather to glorify God.  In this situation, I am to glorify God in being a good steward of my body. 

And to put a finer point on it, to be a good steward of my body, today. Just today.  I just have to worry about the choices I make today.  Not absolving for past mistakes, not defining myself with every bite, just doing my best, today.

So shut it up, shoes. It’s time to move forward.

For the record, I’ve lost 27 pounds