Building the Perfect Beast

I realized a few weeks ago that I have become one of “those people”. By “those people” I mean someone who constantly counts calories and thinks about what they are eating. Or what they are going to eat. What they want to eat. My mind is overtaken entirely too much with food. Not that it wasn’t a lot like that before, but it feels worse now. 

For years I said I didn’t want to count calories, or do a plan like Weight Watchers where you count points, because I didn’t want to have to put that much thought into what I was eating. Then I educated myself – after all those years of admittedly very deliberate denial – and realized I was never going to lose weight if I didn’t pay more attention to what and how much I was eating. My whole life has been a struggle with weight and while my health problems are certainly small in comparison to what many people are juggling, they are still quite real for me and now I realize I’ve created a monster.

Every morning The Monster wakes up. Usually around 10am, but definitely before 11. I can feel it moving around inside me. Slowly at first, but gaining strength as the minutes tick by. tick tock. tick tock “Feed me. Feed me. I’m hungry!!”

I eat breakfast every morning. Every morning. It is confusing when people say they aren’t hungry in the morning and skip breakfast. Those words don’t even register with me. I wake up and while I can’t eat immediately or early in the morning (anything prior to about 7am makes me queasy), I have to eat breakfast by 9am. Between my stomach loudly protesting the lack of food and the genuine craving to break my fast, well, it would get ugly if I didn’t have something to eat.

Meal prep has become my Sunday afternoon routine. If I want to eat during the week, I have to get it prepped or cooked on Sundays and that includes breakfast prep. I’m pretty basic during the work week, eating peanut butter overnight oats with banana sliced on top every day. I never want it on the weekends, but I crave it on weekdays. In the past, it’s been very filling and kept me going until lunchtime. That is, until I realized I had The Monster to deal with.

The Monster starts moving around and telling me it’s time to eat again mid-morning. I try to fight it, believing perhaps it’s all in my head, but after about an hour (ok, sometimes after 5 minutes…I can be pretty weak) I have to give in. Maybe a small handful of almonds. Another piece of fruit. Although some days the only thing that satisfies me is a small bag of chips or a granola bar. Drinking water does nothing to curb my appetite, though I wish it did. I must drink a gallon a day as it is, but I do try calming The Monster down with water sometimes, just in case I’m really thirsty and not hungry.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with a snack now and then, but once I start, it’s painfully hard to stop. If I can even stop at all. I used to mindlessly eat and I’m much better at not doing that now, but some days (most days, lately) I simply cannot stop eating. I try to stop to give my body a chance to feel full, but that doesn’t help and if I don’t get whatever it is I am craving then it gets worse. The Monster starts thrashing around inside me, refusing to settle down.

So I keep fighting against The Monster (maybe I’ll name it Grover, in homage to The Monster at the End of This Book - *spoiler alert* Grover is the monster at the end of the book…). Every day. I’m sure it’s easy for someone to shrug it off and say “Just stop eating so much!” or “You can control your urges!”, but unless you have ever had to fight with your weight, unless you’ve ever been overweight and desperately wanted to lose some of it, then you don’t know what you are talking about. It’s like telling someone you understand what they are feeling due to the loss of a parent, but both of your parents are still alive. You don’t get it, you won’t get it, you simply CAN’T get it. Because you haven’t been there. And let’s be really real here. Everyone’s experience is different, so even if you have lost a parent, you still don’t know how I felt when my mother died and even if you have had to fight to lose weight, you still don’t know how I feel or how I’ve fought to drop some pounds. Our experiences are different.

I’ve gained 6 pounds in the past few months and while I want to blame The Monster, I have to blame me. I created this monster and I continue to quite literally feed it. If I keep doing that, it’ll never leave. Sure, 6 pounds might not seem like a lot, but I fought to lose those 40 and I fight to maintain. Do I eat a lot of cake? Absolutely! I love cake and I’m not giving it up, but I was eating a lot of cake while I was losing those 40 pounds. If I can’t find a way to maintain the loss without giving up the things I enjoy then I have to regroup and figure out a new plan of attack. A life full of celery sticks and baked fish isn’t one I am interested in.

Now I’ll try to make peace with The Monster and think of it more as Grover. I always liked Grover. He was silly and goofy and fun and I like to think I’m at least 2 out of the 3 of those things (the jury is usually out on whether or not I'm fun). Maybe if The Monster and I can make friends we can work together to literally feed my body the nutrients that it needs to function and (hopefully) thrive, but also know when to stop. I’ve never been good at stopping. Maybe that’s the next lesson to work on.