Feeding my addiction

As I was driving to the gas station on my lunch break today, I got to thinking about why dieting never worked for me in the past.  Several reasons came to mind, like that the food was tasteless and boring (after all, a girl can only live on chicken and rice for so long before she goes ape- shit and binges on McDonald's chicken nuggets, right?), but at the end of the day, the only thing I could truly lie the blame on was me.  It's always been me sabotaging myself.

Sure, the food may have been bland, and the results may have not happened on my timetable, but no one held a gun to my head and forced me to make the trip to Mickie D' s.  I did that.  Sure, the old man may have been slightly less than supportive (okay, more than slightly unsupportive) but it's not like he forbid me to eat right and exercise.  

Nope, I gave up all on my own.  And the best reason I can come up with as to why I didn't follow through is because I'm an addict.

An addict, you say?  What could she possibly be addicted to?  Drugs?  Alcohol?  Food, even?

Food, yes.  Drugs and alcohol?  Not even.  But it's more than just a food addiction. I'm addicted to taking the easy way out.  Like so many others, I'm addicted to instant gratification. I want what I want when I want it, which is yesterday.  When I don't see immediate results, I get discouraged.  And what do I turn to in my time of imagined abandonment?  You guessed it.  Food.  The more, the better.  The greasier,the better.  The worse for me, the better.

The bottom line is this: no one can do this for me.  And whether I get laughed at or ridiculed or discouraged shouldn't be a determining factor in whether or not I succeed.  And success, no matter how great or small, shouldn't result in me "rewarding" myself with a binge- fest of fried chicken, chocolate and soda.  It's the equivalent of an alcoholic rewarding themselves with a drinking binge to celebrate a year of sobriety or a drug addict shooting up to celebrate being clean for six months. It doesn't make sense.

Since I started my diet four days ago and my workouts three days ago, I have gone from 198.6 pounds to 194.8 pounds.  Sure, it's water weight (in the form of sweat, most likely) but it's progress, just the same.  It's probably the biggest amount of weight I've lost in the shortest amount of time since I was a teenager.  And I gotta say,it feels empowering.

I watched my co- worker suck down a Pepsi with her lunch today.  Did I drool?  Sure, a little bit.  But that was my outer fatty doing the drooling.  My inner skinny bitch was whispering words of praise and encouragement.