Stepping on the Scale

It's such an interesting game I play with myself. Like no one else plays it. Holler "Aye" if you do this....

I only record weight when I have lost it, but not when I have gained it. So therefore no updates for a couple days. I must have stepped on that friggen thing about 15 times in the last three days, but it hasn't moved, and in fact goes up and down. By a couple of half pounds, but I am paranoid-- omigod the surgery doesn't work for me, I will never lose the weight, I have to exercise more (I can't under doctor's orders), I have to eat more (which I do), maybe I am stopped up and need to clean out my system, etc etc etc.

So here's the deal-- only on the scale once a week. I don't want to do what I have done in the past and give up or think that going to the bathroom will help, or weighing the first thing in the morning, or whatever other little game I can play with myself.

My first time on Weight Watchers, the night before my first weigh in (I was 15) my gramma asked me what I wanted my last meal to be. I didn't quite understand, but she schooled me in overeating to unbalance the scale-- that night I ate spaghetti-o's, mother's iced oatmeal cookies, frozen snicker's bars, etc. I went to WW the next afternoon with my father and weighed somewhere in the range of 280-250-- somewhere like that. 15 years old, people. 15. Yes, 5'9", and I am about 100 pounds from that weight, but fer chrissakes, 15.

I was too busy unbalancing the scale during my teenaged years to focus on anything but a gay boyfriend.

I learned most of my terrible food habits from the women in my life. My Aunt Patty apologized (herself being a WLS'er) for teaching me to eat frosting out of the can, Aunt Susie for getting stoned with me in college and eating out way through cakes and lasagnas, sausages and cookies. The lady down the street let me sneak cookies from the cabinet, my mother teaching me to have dinner but to leave the leftovers out, "just in case" you were hungry later.

When I was home during recovery-- the first night my folks had steak, as they always do on Saturday. I liked the smell, but was barely drinking back my protein shake. But then-- she left the leftovers out. I asked them to please put them away. I don;t mind the dinner and the smells, but leaving the leftovers out-- c'mon. Just give the bottle to the drunk, whydon'tcha.

What I would like to do is give my nieces and nephew, and hopefully children, the good habits. Eat when you are hungry, drink when you are thirsty, If you want the cookie, have ONE cookie-- not an apple in front of mom, and sneak the sleeve of cookies into my room for later. No hiding while eating. No fast eating. Sit at the friggen table, turn off the tv. If leftovers happen, but them away. No easy pickins.

And only step on the scale once a week.