Being fat is a handicap, as real as being blind, deaf, or crippled. The ugly difference is that we fat people live constantly with the hideous knowledge that it’s our fault. Worse yet, we know we could correct it. We can literally “eat ourselves well.” No blind person can do that. As a result, we live in a horrid, know-we-can-fix-it-but-not-doing-anything-about-it existence, some where between a hope for a better future and a miserable now.
I feel like the character Robert Frost writes of in his immortal poem, “The Road Not Taken.” I also have two roads before me. One is the well-worn road of obesity. Eat, eat, eat. Show no self-control, no discipline. Just look at the millions of fat feet traveling it daily. That road is an eight-lane, fully paved highway.
But today, I will repeat Frost’s line, “And I? I took the one less traveled by.” The unmarked road. The vague path, with bushes encroaching and weeds springing up in the middle, but still, the road that leads to a thinner me, a happier life. My weight alone is enough to make deep ruts in this unmarked road, so, hopefully, it will be easier for others to follow.
My muscles are sore this morning from extensive exercise yesterday. Isn’t that wonderful? I ache all over. Isn’t that grand? As soon as I am through writing, I will do my exercises for today. In a few days, the aches will be gone, and I’ll feel like Jane Fonda. (Okay, so it might take me a few weeks to feel like Jane!)
Last night Allen took me out to dinner. I fooled myself into thinking I could handle an all-you-can-eat salad bar. Who am I kidding? “All-I-can-eat” is never a diet meal. I ate enough to last a week! When I was completely stuffed, I shoveled in some chocolate pudding. Feeling horribly guilty over the outrageous amount I had just consumed, I committed to Allen (but over my already empty plate), “I never want to come here again! It’s too hard to come to an all-you-can-eat place and eat only what I should.”
I must work to get this if-it’s-all-you-can-eat-then-I-have-to-eat-a-ton-to-get-my-money’s-worth syndrome out of my head. I must replace it with my own motto: The less I eat, the more I lose.