I am ready to take the final steps in changing my relationship with food. I don’t eat sugar anymore. Or bread or pasta or other grains. I don’t eat in the car anymore; I no longer stop at the Quicktrip to load up on candy for a long journey. Or a short one across town. A spat with my best friend no longer sends me head first into a vat of Haagen Dazs. I can go to the movies now without consuming a large popcorn and M&M’s. A week at my cabin is no longer an excuse to eat junk or an escape from the healthy life I choose to live. Little Debbie doesn’t speak my language anymore, and I pity – not envy – the people tossing her in their carts. I can walk any aisle in the grocery store now and barely give a second glance to the processed, sugar-filled, transfat-laden poison lining the shelves. I can now easily decline the birthday cake at a friend’s party. I can eat just the ham and leave the biscuit. I am comfortable saying, “No thank you,” and not offended when the retort comes back, “What’s wrong with you?” I’ve changed. I have really changed.
And now it is time to finish the job and eliminate the remaining obstacles keeping me from I want. It’s not the fruit, which I sometimes eat a lot of. It’s not the carrots or the sweet potatoes. It’s definitely not the meat or the eggs or the vegetables. And probably not the cream in my coffee or the real butter in my cauliflower mash. It's not the food at all, really. It’s the fairly routine evening “check-out”. The mindless eating, even if it is “paleo.” It’s the grazing after dinner when I’m not even hungry. It’s the almonds that I mindlessly consume while I watch TV and play on the computer. It’s the mixed nuts that I feverishly crunch to tamp down work-related stress. It’s the bag of "trail mix" that I can easily consume on a Friday evening at home. Alone. It’s the last remaining remnants of bad habits formed over a lifetime of using food to cope and escape. Well, I no longer need food to cope, and I no longer need to escape. It’s time to finish the job.
