EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN...AND AGAIN...AND AGAIN...
an entry for On Display: "Fresh Start"

17 May 2003

"Do you want a piece of chocolate?" she asked.

"No thanks," I said, not looking up from my desk.

"Are you sure?" she said again.

I looked up and she was waving a bar of Sees milk chocolate at me. My favorite candy.

"No thanks," I said again.

The thing was--I meant it. It wasn't even a temptation. I am in day #3 of "getting back into the groove yet again." After all these years, I really know myself pretty well. It takes me a long time to get my brain set to start a diet, and then the first 2-3 days are critical. If I can make it past the third day, I must have washed the butter/chocolate/potato chip toxins from my body and the cravings aren't as strong.

Sure, a piece of Sees would have been pleasant, but it would have put me back at day #1 again and my departure date for Australia is finally on the (very distant) horizon and now is not the time to have to start that struggle all over again.

I've been talking to myself a lot in the last week. Trying to figure out why I keep sabotaging myself and when I lost the control I was so proud of having built up. When did it all spin out of control?

I don't know. But when On Display chose "Fresh Start" as a topic for this month's collab, I figured it was a sign. I need to write an entry about making a fresh start... and I actually need to make a fresh start.

Part of the problem, I think, is losing the freshness of any sort of a new lifestyle. The first thing I do when starting a new diet/eating plan/lifestyle or whatever euphemism I want to put on it, is I begin to make shopping lists. I have said before I am a compulsive overeater, and I didn't get this way by being able to forget about food.

So what does a food-a-holic do to become more "disciplined" and to begin to live like "normal" people....civilians, as alcoholics call them? Well, I plan meals. Walt always loves it when I start a diet. We never eat so well. I fix well balanced meals. I try out new recipes. I try new foods. We have lots of greens.

It works. The excitement of creating new meals is fun. It fills up those long hours between snacks. It adds spice to your routine. Literally.

But anything gets to be old hat eventually. Comes the day when it just seems too much work to haul out another recipe book and "create." That's when I start sliding back into my staple: "something with chicken in it."

One problem is that most of my "something with chicken in it" recipes are long on starch, short on greens and that's the first step of that long slippery slide into donuts (No, I still haven't eaten a donut. I have not yet "bottomed out"!)

So I decided that the first thing to do in this new fresh start is to get out of the eating rut. I like my daily oatmeal and blueberries, but I can make that in my sleep and so I thought I'd start having a different breakfast for a bit. I've been making omelettes with one egg, some mushrooms, onion, and whatever other veggie I can dust off and then wrapping the thing in a whole wheat flour tortilla. Nice full-of-fiber breakfast.

I have my WeightWatchers 2 point bars for snack and then instead of going down to the supermarket to check out lunch (and come home with a 10 point deli sandwich), I've brought a chicken salad to the office for the last two days, yesterday having it with a container of yogurt and today with a power bar (not Luna).

It's a ploy. But hey--whatever works. I need a fresh start and whatever I can use to kick start the interest, I'll use it.

It must be working. I came home from the office starving, but I put the cover on the butter dish, passed up the bread drawer, and got myself a big can of V-8 juice.