Since the break-up (two and half months ago) I have lost a whopping 16 pounds. Honestly if this is the kind of progress I make after a break-up, I should be doing it more often. I kid. But seriously, this is the silver lining to my life right now: getting a major grip on all things food and exercise related.
It occurred to me yesterday while driving home with my sisters, some classic movies and a tub of dead sea mud mask, that I have never felt better about myself. Maybe it’s all this independence and re-considering what I thought I knew about love, life and weight loss. But like my skin felt after I washed my face after 20 minutes caked in mud, I feel entirely revitalized and shiny new.
Despite all my 5-mile a day and sugar-free challenges, I am far from perfect and have had my slip-ups this summer where I caved and just had to have a glass of white wine with friends. And again, I am not that concerned. Real life works that way and unlike “The Biggest Loser” Ranch it isn’t free from wine and temptations and sugar. And obviously, we have established I enjoy sugar, quite a lot.
The other day I was recalling how far I’ve truly come when I remembered a bit of a chocolate mishap from my youth.
It was the day after Easter and I had a sandwich baggie full of chocolate goodies ready to be devoured. This was just the extra. I am fairly certain I had already wreaked havoc on the basket itself. I was sitting atop my bed unwrapping candy and popping one after another into my mouth. Honestly, I don’t know if the effort of gobbling up chocolate became exhaustive or if I’d had a long day, but I then fell asleep.
The next morning I rolled to the side of my bed to get up and saw brown smears all over my sheets as my jaw dropped in horror. My first thought upon seeing these unsightly brown smudges on my sheets wasn’t that I had fallen asleep in Easter candy, no, it was that I had unknowingly shit the bed. At 23 years old. Without knowing it. Oh yes, did I mention that the chocolate mishap of my youth was at 23 years old not 5?
I very begrudgingly lowered my face and nose to the brown smears to detect if, indeed, I was a disgusting invalid who had pooped her bed in her senior year of college with no alcohol involved whatsoever.
Chocolate. The brown smudges smelled like chocolate, not feces. This is when I discovered multiple wrappers strewn about the sheet s and tucked under the covers, along with the sandwich baggie with a few leftover pieces of chocolate that were smushed and melted in their wrappers.
I had only fallen asleep mid-snarfing down chocolate not pooped the bed! Dear God, what a relief!
Except I had fallen asleep eating candy. Bag fulls. In my bed. So much so that I woke up in my own brown-melted-could-be-poop-but-actually-candy-mess. That seemed problematic.
It was on the heels of this somewhat embarrassing but totally hilarious memory that I realized, yes, I am a changed woman. In the years since my 23rd Easter, I have yet to eat so much chocolate that I put myself in a candied stupor to which I don’t even remember what happened the next morning.
At least I have come that far.
Not only that, but the Cassandra of my youth would definitely eat so much candy she had slight dementia over it the next day. And she certainly wouldn’t have attempted to consume kale in a smoothie or decide on a whim to participate in a 5K in two weeks when she hadn’t ran all summer long. I can say comfortably that the me of today (while still largely a work in progress) is sage enough to know that bags full of chocolate in bed are pretty much a bad idea, always. And that any goal, no matter how lofty or insane, could probably be accomplished with a little bit of … dare I say it … planning.
So, while I continually strive to fight the sugar demons and battle the bulge I can comfortably accept that the changes I am making are something to be proud of because they are not who I was yesterday or the year before. If I feel this good now, I can only imagine that by the time I reach 30 I am going to be like a fine wine, just getting better and better with each year behind me.
-Cassandra
