The Struggle

Diets are hard. Anyone who knows me knows that I am in a constant state of flux, both physically and mentally, when it comes to dieting. I have 3 different phases. In each phase, I talk to myself a little differently:

Phase A: Life is too short to worry about diets! Eat it all!! And then eat your friends' alls! And then eat all the alls of the strangers around you who couldn't finish theirs!!

Phase B: That is too many alls...

Phase C: You're a monster.

Phase A is fun. I am an unstoppable force of eat.  There isn't a single hight-fructose corn syrup drop that I don't like. Doritos! Snickers! Ben and Jerry's! Yes, please 12 day old brownie that I found on the floor! You're still good!

As each day of Phase A passes, my food standards drop lower and lower. It starts off with gourmet treats and ends with Chips-Ahoy. And then drops a little lower to the Chips-Ahoy that I threw out because I didn't want to eat it, but still ate it out of the garbage 10 minutes later anyway. Then just a speck lower to the hiding of $1 per bag gummy bears in the wine drawer, where no one would ever look for them.

After a week or two of this, I move on to phase B. Where it takes double the amount of time to reverse the damage I had done before. I want to be on a diet, but I also want to eat cupcakes everyday. So, I take it slow. I do things like Weight Watchers. I know it works for a lot of people, but it doesn't work for someone that hypothetically eats "26 points" of Cape Cod chips a day...which is me. It's not hypothetical. It's me.

 Other times, I toy around with replicating my teenage diet- a time in my life where I didn't need to overthink any of it too much. I exercised and generally ate healthy, and that was effective. The Teenage Laura Diet Plan, sadly, requires a great deal of lying on my end; as I have to continuously tell myself that my metabolism is the same- 11 years, countless french fries, and 20,000 shots of vodka later.

Between the Cape Cod Chips and the metabolism, I really don't get anywhere. I am unhappy with my body at that point, but I am super happy during the 2-3 hours per day I spend shoveling food into my mouth. At least I have that.

This brings me to Phase C, where I discover I am a monster. I am not saying I am a monster in size. I am saying I am a monster in personality...because I literally consider attacking children for their last Oreo. When my students bring treats to class, I am not the sweet role-model type that let's them eat whatever they want first. No. I eat it all first. And they get nothing second. I once ate 2 full-sized donuts within my first 10 minutes of class because I had taken a chocolate glaze one without noticing that there was a crushed peanut one, and I didn't want anyone to take it. For the excruciating 4 minutes between donut 1 and donut 2, I didn't make any eye contact with my students so that I could keep a watchful eye on my donut.

Once I start to realize who I have become, I have no other choice but to change my ways- for the sake of the children. I am currently Phase C-ing the shit out of my life right now, so your kids are safe. But eventually I will snap, and every low quality snack better watch its back.

The struggle is real,
LD