Just like the other 78.4379% of the human race I needed to lose more pounds that I will ever readily admit to. Yes, I made that statistic up. Hey if the talking heads can do it, we should all be able to do it. But! Yes, a fat layer covered “but.”
Trina Machacek
When you make things up, you are required to tell the ears around you that you are making stuff up. So me and the 78.4379% of humans need to lose parts of us that have grown bigger than the pants we stuff ourselves into. I am neither happy nor ashamed of that fact. It just is. Of course reading and trying to fit into the official “government weight chart” is something I don’t think anyone I know fits into. Well maybe that 21.5621% of leftover people. OH! Don’t say leftover. Like meatloaf, made into a sandwich. Served with milk and basic plain Lay’s “you can’t eat just one,” potato chips. Swallow your dream and move on Machacek.
I remember telling those who would listen to me, that smoking wasn’t that bad. How could it be? My very young, know it all, brain would use this as my ammunition to why it was okay to smoke. I would sassily say, “If God didn’t want us to enjoy smoking, why did he give us tobacco?” After all, those rich southern tobacco farmers wouldn’t go to such lengths to create smooth, flavorful, smokey “fire sticks” if they would hurt us. Not offer us anything through their tobacco that they knowingly were killing us with. Oh I was so young and full of young stupidity.
Now comes time to change eating habits. My first thing is, along those same lines. HAHA If it is so bad for us, why do we still have the option to eat ice cream? Or double deep fried cheezie potato skins. If we weren’t supposed to enjoy these things, they wouldn’t be SO readily available. Yes, in some ways, I am still that young, wide-eyed hopeful child.
I am not however either young or naive any longer. I now know all about calories and cholesterol and things that go slosh with fat. Sometimes knowledge is not a good, responsible thing. Being grown up does certainly sometimes take the fun out of things. Like eating.
I now find that I have to wean myself off of some amazing goodies. Fried food that drips grease down my chin and onto my t-shirt. I have several grease dotted t-shirts from meals and times of the past.
I have to be like the baby calf and stop at one big, cold glass of milk, over ice to make it almost frozen. When my mouth is screaming: POUR MORE! POUR MORE! My grown-upside now says to stop before my tummy is so full it hurts.
I need to realize that two Oreo cookies is plenty. I don’t need to take a stack as big as my had will hold out to the TV and sit and unscrew one after another after another…
This weaning stuff truly needs to be a personal goal. The accomplishment that shows up not only on the number of the scale, but in the pride of ownership of who we are. Why in the world though, are there candy bars at the checkout counter that get up and dance a jig like a circus of dancing bears, as I am putting my bags of fresh green beans and yet another stalk of celery on the belt?
My friend related to me that she was at the DMV trying to renew her truck license plate. A vanity plate she has had since about 2007. Well apparently, through no fault of anyone, she missed the renewal and lost her plate. She will have to reapply for the plate that she has had and loved for nearly 20 years. So what did she do? She was devastated. On the counter at the DMV was a bowl of candy and without so much as a how do you do, she grabbed a teeny Hershey bar and gobbled it right down. Then she left the office with an extra little bag of M&Ms to help her recover. That is what we do.
You would think as we gain years of maturity, we could learn to wean ourselves from the things that are not the best thing for us. The things we LOVE! Even if I really enjoy fresh vegetables, I will go for the double deep fried cheezie potato skins. Yes, I wean myself. A little bit at a time.
Trina lives in Diamond Valley, north of Eureka, Nevada. She loves to hear from readers. Email her at itybytrina@yahoo.com
