Tale of a Packet Litterer

Every day for the passed 365 days.....give or take a few.....I have opened my little white packets and mixed, stirred, soaked and shaked. Those little packets have been the answer to all my prayers.....except for the fact that there is a litter bug in my house.

I leave the kitchen only to return to find ripped open white packets littering the counter. There are cocoa packets, shake packets, oatmeal packets. What the heck? Whose doing all this? It's making for extra work for me! I have to collect all the open packets.....sometimes 3 at a time and toss them into the trash. One of these days I'm going to catch whoever it is that keeps messing up the kitchen and have a word with them!

It gets worse. While looking for my sunglasses in the the drink holder of my little blue Honda I found a wrapper. It was a wrapper for a caramel bar. This litter bug was following me around! I've got a case of a litter bug stalker!

At work, in my desk, I've found Splenda packets. The culprit must be someone who is very close to me....someone who I work with! I see these packets in the garbage in the coffee room and even in my classroom! How dare they? I'm determined to get to the bottom of this and with all this weight melting off my once over weight body it will be easier to track them down! They can run, but they cannot hide!

Once I even found an opened packet wrapper in my teaching bag! Yup! Right there in the front pocket of my “Crazy Music Lady” yellow bag was an opened packet......not even a trace of powder left. I looked for chocolaty finger prints so I could identify the culprit, but the litter bug was careful to not leave any!

I was dealing with a cool character. What was I going to do?

“I'm so tired of picking up after you!” Hubby complained one day. “You leave these packets all over the place!”

“Who? Me?” I gazed at Hubby who was holding up a strawberry shake packet. I tried to look as innocent as one could look while sipping on a strawberry shake.

Then I scanned the kitchen counter taking in all the packet carcasses.....I had found my packet stalker......how could I have known? She's got a terrific disguise! She's lost so much weight that she doesn't even look recognizable to me! 

**This was from several years ago when I lost a significant amount of weight on the Medifast program.** 

It's a Weighty Issue

I don't even own a scale. I used to, but I think it was broken because it never told me the right numbers! I was addicted to it at one time. I'd weigh myself morning, noon and night and sometimes more often. I always expected the numbers to be less or at least the same as the last weigh-in. When I started putting on weight, weighing myself became too painful. Why would I put myself through that? Why was I torturing myself? So I threw out the scale and haven't owned one since.

 

In Grade 3, Mrs. Mossman's class, someone came in with a scale.....the public health nurse maybe? I'm not sure. All the kids had to be weighed. I don't know why and probably as a kid I didn't really care. I do remember my number being more than others in the class even if it was in that silly metric stuff. I recall feeling bad and not understanding why. At an early age I was already associating the scale and weight with bad emotions.

 

I had tried to diet through out the years, but it wasn't until I was in Grade 12 that I took off a significant amount of weight. Of course, I wanted to look good for graduation. I probably lost 20 pounds and I gained self esteem, but there was always the comparison to others girls in my grade. I realize now that probably every girl there felt the exact same as I did.

 

Some people might say "oh, your mother must have been really weight conscious to make you feel this way." Honestly, that wasn't it. I never remember my Mom obsessing over her weight - sure she wanted to look nice, but.....no, she didn't influence me in that way. Mom was a great role model. She provided healthy meals and loads of support.

 

When I was in my 20's and took off some more weight I became really obsessed with the scale. Every trip to the bathroom required a weigh-in. Here is what I know now. I WAS what I was striving for all that time. I WAS slim, normal, pretty and everything I thought I wasn't. I know this now because when I look back at pictures of me I think "what did I have to complain about ?" I feel remorse for that person and I wish I could tell her what I know now.

 

I have spent lot's of time forgetting, ignoring, and stuffing the feelings down. I have wasted lot's of time not doing anything. Not doing anything has gotten me where I am now. Or, maybe, doing to much has gotten me here. At any rate, after not weighing myself for 10 years, I now have to face my demons and hop on the scale. On the Medifast program I have to weigh once a week - AND I don't even own a scale.

 

I fought it. I fought it hard. I don't want to weigh myself. I don't want to be attached to a number. I don't want to be obsessed again. But if this is what I must do to be healthy, to lose the weight once and for all then.....well, I guess I have to. CHANGE. So today, if you need me I won't be at home. I'll be at Walmart testing out the scales.

Size Zero

Here is a link to an article about Dawn Porter. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6335077.stm

Dawn Porter is a pretty, stylish and average looking person. For reserch for this article she decided that over the course of 8 weeks she would do what ever she had to do to become a size 0. She never made it to the size 0 of her dreams because doctors begged her to stop. She lost 17 pounds and 50% of her body fat. She was also making her self ill. 

People told her that she looked terrific. Dawn had mixed signals in her brain. She knew what she was doing was dangerous and she felt horrible, but at the same time it seemed that she was more socially acceptable. The more she obsessed over these things the more depressed she was about herself. 

There was another lady on tv who was a size 0. She survived on breath mints....BREATH MINTS! Oh My God! She had a heart attack at age 29. Now she is a curvy girl in a size 18 and loving life. Now she is healthy.

Today on the radio, talk show hosts were talking about doctors now taking your waist measurements in an effort to make people lose weight. Now, I don't know about everyone else, but if my doctor pulls out a measuring tape, I'm gone. Out Of There! How demeaning is that going to be? Do they think we are stupid? Do they think that we don't know that it's unhealthy to be overweight? I don't think health professionals really understand what a struggle this is. 

I am not a size 0.....but oh, ya there is a 0 in my size! They said a healthy waist size for a female is 31 inches. Okay, so that's not me either. But if I had my wish I certainly wouldn't be built this way. 

I have been struggling all my life with my body image and size. When I was growing up there wasn't such a big deal about being a certain size. I just wanted to be thin. I wanted to have an easier time finding clothes that fit. The trouble was, and of course I didn't realize this until many years later, was that I was thin. I actually was all that time what I was striving for. Also, after working in retail I found out that most clothing manufacturers do not create clothes for womens bodies. And all this time making us feel badly about it.

In my efforts to curve my appetite I've lost sight of what real health is. I've done the SlimFast, the low fat, the bingeing, Atkins, Medifast and even just the Canada Food Guide. Now I just want to be healthy. I want to be active in my life. Yes, walking into a store and being able to purchase something not plus-sized is a dream. Most of all I want to be happy with my uniform - with what God gave me. I want to look in the mirror and like what I see no matter what. It's a work in progress.

My uniform right now is a little lumpy and sometimes it jiggles, but my husband loves me just the way I am. I'm trying to eat healthy foods. I don't drink [okey, maybe if it's been an especially bad day I will]. I don't smoke or do drugs [never have never will]. I'm trying to love myself. I'm trying to find a happy medium. I am not trying to be a zero. A zero is a big nothing and why would I ever want to be that? I am something and I love myself way too much to let anyone convince me otherwise.