OUCH

You can prick your finger… (Seven Last Words - wait that’s not right. Seven Dirty Words - Sorry. I’m a musician.)

So every day now I wake up, void, weigh myself I’ve leveled off already? WTF? and then I get out my adorable little glucose monitoring kit and prick myself. Every morning, and several times a day. And watch my blood sugar go up and down, and up and down. It’s almost as tedious as counting calories, but there is an upside. It hurts.

My dinner out last night was a smashing success. We went to a local Irish Pub, because, you know, that’s a great place to get low-cal California-type cuisine. Last time I went there I had two pints of lovely Smithwick’s (if you can’t pronounce it, you shouldn’t be allowed to drink it) with bangers and mash, and felt the Irish part of my heritage - and my belly - swell with pride. This time I had a 92 calorie foofy cocktail and the blackened salmon with veg and spuds. I did not scale Mount Mashed Potato even though the whole glorious, sweeping range sat there majestically on my plate. I had one bite of a foothill for flavor and left the rest. Then, because my friend is obsessed with a local ice cream establishment known as Eskimo King, I had a small soft-serve vanilla ice cream cone with chocolate hard shell, in the middle of a classic summer downpour. On the way back to the car I got drenched, but I protected that ice cream like it was a newborn babe. It was the best thing I’ve ever tasted.

My blood sugar this morning is 117 – still not bad when considering what it was like only a few weeks ago. But I didn’t drop a pound yesterday, and that’s not fair! I give up!

It’s like you’ve got a finger in the dam. The minute you allow yourself one thing “off the list” of approved foods, this insidious little voice begins its malignant whisperings in your ear. That ice cream was so taaaasssssssssssssssty. Look, it barely bumped your blood sugar at all. It’s okay. EAT CAKE NOW!

And that’s just one of a myriad of reasons why losing weight and keeping it off is hard. If losing weight were easy, no one would be fat. I don’t think anyone wants to be fat. Some people are, and they accept that about themselves, and they have good self-esteem and recognize their own beauty (yes, beauty) and live their lives unapologetically. I hate them. When I first saw ads for the TV show Mike and Molly, I got really mad. They get a SHOW? I’m funny, and I’m fat! Why don’t I get a fucking sitcom? (Okay, Melissa McCarthy is sort of my hero…because she’s unbelievably funny. And she’s fat. And she’s beautiful.)

I used to believe that all fat people were fundamentally unhappy. But I’m not sure anymore. I do know that fat people are reminded every day, everywhere they look, that they are Unattractive and Inadequate, and a whole host of other perceptions that have nothing to do with a person’s character or who they really are. America (and perhaps the world) is a society that prizes form over substance, and it’s hard to live in it when every day you’re faced with unattainable standards. I could look like Rihanna. Sure I could. I’m just not trying hard enough.

It’s human nature to want to be attractive to other humans. But this is the big lie of dieting. It should be about health, about caring for this vessel we’re stuck in during our brief time here. The fact that all of a sudden people start treating you differently (and believe me, they do) is not necessarily a good thing. The positive words and support of family and friends are because they love you and they want you to stick around. But when you when lose weight, other people you know applaud you and say you look so good, I can’t believe it and what you hear is my God, you were hideous! Please don’t gain back any weight because then I’ll have to go back to thinking of you like I used to. You know. As Lazy. And Gross.

So there’s some stuff to thin about. HA! I actually just typed ‘thin about’ instead of ‘think about’. Paging Dr. Freud…

Okay, time for coffee.