That's the title of a new book. My friend helped publish it. I read it and recognized alot of things about me in there.
The premise is simple. In order to lose weight, you have to put yourself first. Just as we are advised to do on airplanes when they tell parents to put their oxygen masks on first, then on the child. This is an alien concept to the daughter of a long-suffering Italian mother. Put myself FIRST? I don't know if I can.
Besides, how do you apply this to diets? Take tonight, for example. I microwaved a box of Weight Watchers ravioli. I did not like them. Too much basil, the sauce was like tomato paste straight from the can. The cheese, well I don't know if that was real cheese in there or not. I know Lyn likes these, but I grew up eating only homemade ones so this was a shock to my system.
The rest of the family looked at me as if to say "what are we going to eat"? Seriously, I'm hanging by a thread every time I go into the kitchen and I have to worry about serving a parallel meal to these people. My son, H, wanted broccoli with olive oil and garlic over mezze rigatoni with freshly grated pecorino cheese on top. My husband does not eat that, so I made him French toast (WASPS can eat breakfast food 24 hours a day).
You know those t-shirts that say stupid things like: my Grandpa went to California and all I got was this lousy t-shirt"? Well, I felt like making a shirt for myself that said: "I've been cooking in my kitchen for two hours and all I got were 5 cardboard ravioli".
Dessert was going to be one of those great Weight Watchers ice cream bars (2 points of Heaven), but my husband polished off the box last night. Beautiful.
Since I've retired, I somehow have less time than when I was working. I am going to carve out more time for myself so that I can use it to exercise.
I will do this by saying "no" to some of the volunteer projects I've been sucked into such as organizing plantings for the neighborhood common areas. I picked out the plants at the nursery (3 hours), schlepped them home in my car (tons of dirt spilled, plus a bee got in and almost caused me to drive off the road to avoid being stung), and supervised the placement and planting. All I got out of that project was 4 phone calls from neighbors complaining that the loam smelled foul (it truly did, but the plants look beautiful and the smell wore off after two days, but still, I didn't need this aggravation).
Starting tomorrow, there's a new sherriff in town. I'm getting tougher. No wonder the expression is Lean and Mean.
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Here's the deal. You don't have to drink all the (sugar-free) Kool-Aid WW wants you to drink. Contrary to what WW says, being on a diet or a live-it or whatever you want to call it -- is painful. The food you eat will NOT taste as good or be as filling as "normal people" food. You will suffer. You will be hungry. You will be tempted to stuff bread into your mouth when no one's lokoing...and you will feel bad about all of it.
ReplyDeleteBut, all that suffering will result in a smaller ass, lower bllod pressure and a reduced likelihood of developing diabtes or dying from a stroke. For me, the prospect of smaller clothes is what made me lose weight...
At the end of the day, make no mistake. Losiong weight is not fun. There is never enough food. And the food you do eat will never taste as good as the food you used to eat...