Weight Watcher's Diaries Part Twelve
By Carol Daelemans

Week 2012—or at least it feels that way.

I want to eat. I'm tired of not eating. I don't want to eat like a bird and get used to it. I want to stand in front of the fridge and find something good and just eat it. I want to go out to dinner and have appetizers, eat the entire meal placed before me and check out the dessert menu afterward.

I want to eat snacks in the middle of the day and not wonder if this means dinner will have to be smaller. When my husband and girls go running outside because they hear the Ice Cream Man coming, I want to be right behind them. I do not want to order the fruitsicle and pretend I didn't want the chocolate almond bar. I want to do all of this without having to track the points and micro-analyze how many ounces of this and that I ate.

As you may have noticed, I'm feeling a bit defeated by the whole eat right-exercise process this week. I assume "this too shall pass" but who cares about the future when you're smack in the middle of a "down time"?

Cheater, Cheater Cherry Berry Jelly on Toast Eater...
I have a confession to make. I'm learning how to "cheat the system." Right, right. I know. I'm only cheating myself but my cheating looks good on paper. That's the only thing that looks good right now because I figured out if I have one slice of bread for breakfast it's zero points. Two slices is one point. One slice for breakfast and one slice for lunch is two zero point items. Since two times zero is still zero, I use no points on bread this way. Cheating? Yes. Does it feel good? Yep.

Okay and no. To bust this dang plateau, I have to try to eat littler portions and exercise a lot more but I also have to practice not lying to myself. Frankly, I think this might just be the hardest part of the weight loss.

I'm sure that lying to yourself is the number one hurdle everyone faces when they're contemplating making a life change. Soon-to-be-nonsmokers go into the don't-the-smoke-smell-as-they-light-up phase. Unhappy dieters pretend we're happy with our full figures. Of course it's important to be happy with who you are but it's so much easier to pretend to be happy with who you are than to actually be happy with who you are.

I've been very happy with who I am for years now. I can't tell you how much happier I am being the same me with a smaller pants size though. I mean sure, there was more of me to love a few months ago but who wants to love my fat behind? Not a single family member has complained about there being less of me to love.

It's okay and important to be happy with who you are but it's even better to be happy with what you can be and what you should be and what you deserve to be. For me, losing weight and getting healthy is about being better and faster and more able to keep up. It's about being able to catch my little darlings when they run with scissors. It's about being able to cart the 47th load of wash up the stairs without huffing and puffing and listening to my knees snap, crackle and pop like a bowl full of breakfast cereal. It's about making things easier in ways I never even thought possible. I can buy clothes online now without even having to try things on. I ordered a "normal" size large T-shirt to wear to the gym online and guess what? It's too big! I just want everyone to know that.

Okay, so it was a men's large but that doesn't matter. I couldn't wear my husband's size large shirts before I started this. His shirts were way too small for me. I went to put on one of my old gym shirts instead of the new large one I'd ordered and it was a frickin' tent!

Mirror Mirror On the Wall
Despite my teensy toast fest setback, I'm liking what I see in the mirror these days. I refuse to worry about every little pound that comes and goes from my hips but I'm really and truly going to have to reconcile the size I still see myself as to the smaller size I've become. I'm giving the 2x image of my former self the boot in favor of the size I know I'm capable of achieving. I can't eat like a size 2x and reach my goal weight. If I want to be a size 10, I need to eat like a size 10.

At goal weight, I know I'll still be short with broad shoulders and thick legs and I'm more likely to be called "strong" than "petite" but these images are the sorts of things it's important to learn to be happy with, not the size of my jeans compared to my sisters. I'm not at the "sharing clothes" stage with either of them yet. Can't swipe a thing from the 20 something one or the Cooking Thin one either. For now, I'm happy to be able to chase after children running with scissors and catch up to them. Well, at least I can catch them today. They're getting faster more quickly than I'm getting fitter.