The following is a paraphrase of the events of last night:
Lala: “These cookies have too many calories for me to have one.”
Me: “I can make them half the calories, if you like.” *breaks a cookie in half*
Lala: *Eyes me with exasperation, then takes half the cookie. After eating half of that, she hands the rest back to me*
Me: “One-quarter the calories. Even better!”
I think when you tell someone that you’re giving up sweets for a month, and they offer to “take the bullet for you” by eating the sweets that you’re giving up so that you’ll be less tempted, you should point out to them that you’ll also be refraining from drinking drain cleaner for that month . . .
It could have been worse though, because I was only helping support other people in their goals; there was no personal pressure on me aside from that.
Funny thing is because there was no personal pressure on me, and never has been when it comes to diets, the only time I’ve discussed diets here is when I’ve been poking fun at my reactions to dieting. I’ve never specifically spelled out that for lasting weight loss, you generally need to go the long haul of lifestyle change, and this almost always includes diet and exercise. I consider this such a basic knowledge fact that I’ve never felt the need to spell it out.
For what it’s worth, and it’s not worth much, I’ve seen how tough it can be to lose weight, though I’ve only personally experienced the hardships obliquely and/or second-hand. You see (and I’m saying this only because Lala gave me her specific permission to do so), over the past two years or so, I’ve watched Lala struggle as she has lost and kept off over one hundred pounds, and the main purpose of the recent temporary restrictive diet we all went on was to help get her over a sticking point on her weight loss goals, and nothing more. I never mentioned that because I didn’t consider it relevant to mention before now.
I’m super proud of her though, which I consider supremely relevant to mention, and I’m happy I’ve been able to have been there for her as much as I have been able. If this means I have to suffer the occasional discomfort from joining her on a diet, and, in the process, earn the scorn of a troll who knows not that of which it speaks when it comes to me, I can live with that.
Happily.
As I said yesterday, I recently had my first real trolling attempt here. I assure you that my disdainful response was quite genuine, as was my amusement, but so also were my thanks, because I woke up to a busy day with no idea what I was going to write about, so it was nice to have a topic delivered to me on a platter like that. It did get me thinking though . . .
(And let me be clear that this isn’t for the troll, despite its lovely follow-up message, though I have no particular objections if they decide to read this and join the adult human race because of it. That would be up the them though; I don’t have time to try to change trolls.)
I would like to think that anyone with basic reading comprehension skills would be able to understand that when I described myself as having “suffered,” I was being facetious, but the truth of the matter is I did suffer somewhat in supporting my girls in their diet. I did so willingly, if not always happily, and I’d put the discomfort level about on par with going to see a doctor about a stomach ache and having to sit in the waiting room past your scheduled appointment time . . . for about two weeks.
As the old saying goes, worse things happen at sea every day, but fun it was not.
“So . . . did a lot of people at your family reunion comment on your weight loss?” I asked Lala.
“No,” she answered. “Most people didn’t say anything at all about it.”
“How could that be?” I asked, thinking about how much *I* had suffered on the diet she and L’s mother had undertaken partially in preparation for this reunion.
“Most people there hadn’t seen me since I was five,” she explained.
Since I wasn’t feeling all that well last night, I went ahead and pre-wrote today’s entry under the theory that I might feel even worse today.
The good news is I don’t feel that bad yet.
The bad news is the operative word in the good news is “yet.”
The worse news is when I looked at what I wrote last night, I thought, “Why did I think that was funny?!”
In my defense, you might recall that last week I mentioned I was going on a diet to help support my girls in their diet. If that sounds familiar to you, it might be because a few years ago I made exactly the same mistake did the same thing and felt terrible at this point then too.
Let the chronicle of my descent into madness begin!
Um . . . again!
(I have really got to get over this “doing something because a girl asked me to” habit of mine.)
The way I see it, you can either be on a diet or you can meet me at the pub. You can’t do both, it’s simply not done.
Glancing back over the archives for Candles & Curses, sometimes I fear that since I became a father that the bulk of my entries have become variations on “I’m really, really tired.”
I want you to know that’s about to change.
To show my support for my girls, next week I’m going on a diet.
Candles & Curses 