How is it that my family comes to visit and it seems that as soon as they step off the plane I gain weight? Without any changes at all in my diet. I am attributing it to stress, subconscious stress. My subconscious says, "Your family is here, there could be possible altercations, you will once again be reduced to the 'baby' and decisions will be made for you, and by spending so much time with your parents you will no doubt become witness to their inevitable bickering and criticism of each other's driving skills…"
I could go on and on. We are one of those families that celebrates everything with food; our world revolves around it. Someone has a birthday we eat, someone has a baby we eat, someone dies, more with the eating. I think my body's cell composition just automatically senses that family is in town, there will be food involved and the expansion begins.
Hence, the automatic tightening of jeans and new scary numbers on the scale. Thank God, this particular trip only cost me three pounds; one time after two weeks in Hawaii with my family it was more like ten! My goal this week is to eliminate those three evil pounds and continue to strive toward a healthier, lighter me.
The problem here, as aforementioned above: I love food. If you put pretty much anything in front of me I'm game. Worse yet, the husband also shares my affinity for food. You know, I would be perfectly happy with a turkey sandwich for dinner, but "oh no!" the man has to have a full meal including: meat, starch, veggie and most times dessert and no matter how many times I try to explain that corn and carrots cannot be counted as "veggies," many nights we end up eating double starches.
One of the great things about being unemployed at the moment is the fact that I am in complete control of my diet during the day and I'm not tempted to go out to lunch and consume an insane amount of calories, as I was prone to do in the past. Of course, this doesn't always mean that I make the best choices, and I have noticed a disturbing pattern in the type of food I am consuming at home.
Leftover pizza for breakfast? Why not? Small bowl of ice cream for lunch? Sure. Fishsticks and grapes for dinner (what am I, in 3rd grade?). This state of affairs is sad. In an attempt to monitor what is going on in my body more closely, I have now downloaded a nifty App for my cell phone that allows me to enter items and count my calories. Now whether or not I remember to enter every single item I consume is the question…I mean really, aren't moon pies mainly made of air anyway?
Currently busting out of her "skinny" jeans,
The Unemployed Housewife
This article appears in Feb 24 – Mar 2, 2010.