Forget "Hungry"

Current weight: 285

Weight Watchers has a new ad campaign that is really cute. In it, hunger is personified by a fuzzy orange guy who might just create some uncomfortable copyright conversations with the Warner Bros. people over their Big Red Monster except that he is small and orange. The idea is that they will help you fight "Hunger." Well, I have some news for the folks at Weight Watchers: hunger is not the problem. If I was only eating because I was hungry, I would not be so fat. Hunger is a physiological response. The problem is psychological. Boredom, stress, obsession, these are the culprits. I can just imagine the cute little guys they'd come up with to represent these and slap around in their commercials.

Stress is a big one for me. I am a huge stress eater, and I have an often-stressful job. One where people tend to drop off goodies all the time for the staff. How am I supposed to defend myself against an onslaught of doughnuts, cookies, cakes, and pizza (a particular downfall)? As Murphy's Law clearly dictates, the minute you go on a diet (or a dietary re-training, as my hubby and I sometimes call it), people will throw free goodies at you and they will open a Dunkin Donuts in your town for the first time in over ten years. No, really, I just discovered that they did open a Dunkin Donuts here, and I am such a sucker for the sugared raised donuts from there. I prefer them to Krispy Kreme. And recently at work there was free pizza for everyone. I actually was good, went off alone to eat lunch, and as fate would have it, there on TV was a luscious Pizza Hut commercial. I felt beset at every turn. But I managed to persevere.

Society is not geared toward being helpful to those of us who need help with our food issues. Try late night TV. Don't the fast food commercials make you wanna grab your keys and drive through the wall in the side of the kitchen at McDonald's so you can bury your face in a basket of fresh fries? Try shopping healthier at the grocery store. You will see a palpable increase in your bill. The high cal foods are cheaper and easier to make and market. Billboards, special occasions, radio programs sponsored by local restaurants, local festivals with funnel cake and greasy food stands... all conspire to remind us of what we are supposed to deny ourselves.

The temptation to stay in doors and sequester yourself from the world is huge! But part of the process is supposed to be learning how to exist in this fatty world, how to find something in yourself that is worth more than that temporary satisfaction of french fries, so that you will be able to maintain once you reach your goal. And I am here to say, it is possible. I have seen it done, though not necessarily easily, by my mother. She still struggles, even though her appetite has whittled itself down to a tiny version of its former self. She loves to tell me that when it comes to ice cream (a weakness of mine also), she figures she might as well just literally rub it on each hip and wear it around, because that is where it will end up. I always laugh, envisioning her with soaking wet vanilla-coated jeans traipsing through the grocery store. Sometimes the image is even disturbing enough to stop me from grabbing the ice cream. But not often.

So what is the answer? Well, we are our own answer. Food is not the enemy, it is our executioner. We are worth more than the McDonald's fries. I can envision how happy I would be being able to shop for clothes in a regular-size section, where they keep the really pretty stuff that I crave, and that makes me feel like I can do this. It is not always the balm to soothe my deprived soul, but it works well enough. I want to be able to breathe better after climbing flights of stairs. I want to not have to worry about the spectre of diabetes that runs in my family. I want to be around long enough to see the next generation take over messing up the world from us. I have much more trouble to cause. And when it comes to self-destruction, I am so capable of doing that in so many better and more fun ways!