Fitness, Food, and Failure

Me and my favorite food: cake

I haven't changed the foods I eat or the way I eat since around 7th grade and there is a serious problem with that. In 8th grade, my math teacher had us keep a food journal for one month in order to see what we ate, count calories, and work in Excel. I realized at that time that I ate mostly candy and Little Debbie snack cakes Monday - Friday, and ate everything on the weekends: huge breakfasts, elevensies, lunches of epic portions, mid-afternoon snacks, mom-cooked southern dinners, 10 p.m. hunger pain trips to the fridge, and then a quick midnight snack before finally brushing my teeth and holding my stomach as I fell asleep. Now, 13 years later, not much has changed - except my weight.

I remained relatively the same size and weight from high school through college and maybe my first year or so out of college. But now, I'm developing back rolls and I have Jigglypuff thighs. I've always been active - marching in the colorguard and dancing Flamenco in high school, jogging and cheerleading in college. Now, I walk 40 minutes each way to work and back and jog on the weekends, and I'm still gaining weight. My incredible deductive reasoning skills have lead me to believe that it must be the foods I'm consuming that are contributing to my recent (and quick) weight gain. So what do I eat?

I typically eat two rolls of mentos per day and I often skip breakfast and lunch, instead selecting a bag of Lays potato chips. Once or twice a week, I'll walk to Sweetgreen or Cosi for lunch, but that's the exception. Dinner nowadays is usually either fast food or whatever I have on hand in my kitchen that pairs nicely with two glasses of red. What I'm eating is apparently canceling out any exercise I'm doing. Well, my lack of dietary restrictions coupled with my slowing metabolism is probably a factor somewhere in there too.

I eat slowly, get full quickly, and walk briskly. Surely weight loss should be in there somewhere?

Baggy tanks hide the stomach pudge

Since it's not, I think I need a new course of action to keep my expanding waistline at bay. I feel like most of the thin people who are also over the age of 25 eat purposefully. However, I can't see myself as one of those women who nibbles an OMG Omega salad at lunch and counts calories and turns down cake at the end of dinner at Olive Garden. Since I do have a fairly long-standing candy addiction, maybe just cutting all candy out for a month might yield enough of a significant result that it'll help me kick the habit for good? My teeth would certainly thank me.

Perhaps I should just splurge on lots of brightly colored fruits and green, leafy vegetables and pray that I eat them before they rot on my counters. Buy a scale, look at the number when I step on and proceed to cry out a few pounds in despair. Join the military and let them confiscate my contraband and whip me into shape. Lie about a medical condition and get liposuction.

Maybe I should just put little notes on my refrigerator, cabinets, and wallet that simply say "Eat. Less. Food." Are there too many choices in this great country of ours or am I just greedy and gluttonous? I do suppose that there are worse problems than having too many options of yummy food to eat, but it is a problem nonetheless.

To be continued as I continue to figure out exactly what I like to eat, what I should eat, how to lose weight and more importantly maintain a weight I'm comfortable at, and where all these things intersect.