Dearest Rachel –
After waking up from (and amazingly, going back to, at least for an hour or so before conceding to the day) a dream about having been college buddies with Matsuhito, the future Emperor Meiji (setting the anachronisms aside, the idea that a future Japanese emperor would study abroad when his country was still decidedly closed to the outside world is more than ridiculous enough), and thus being partially responsible for his country’s Westernization, I prepared to go through my usual routine before setting out for the gym. It shouldn’t surprise you that I have to psyche myself up in order to brave the increasing cold, at the very least – admittedly, once I’m there, I’m at least of a mind to get my effort’s worth for having come there in the first place. One of the things, of course, it stepping on the scale; while I may have lost weight simply from keeping my system running, I’m still at my heaviest at the end of the day, and a night’s rest isn’t really going to make that much of a difference.
But the last couple of days have been particularly troubling, as I’ve been getting uncomfortably close to what I had begun to think of as my current ceiling, and yesterday morning actually saw me across it. Unfortunately, this morning was no different; the scale was once again reading two hundred fifteen point five.
Now, in fairness, an hour spent walking my four-and-a-half miles on an inclined treadmill brings me back to a more tolerable two-twelve, but just the fact that I’d touched on (and surpassed) a mark that I’d thought I’d left behind is disconcerting, to say the least. I’d prefer to be moving closer to two-ten – although admittedly, I haven’t been under that mark since I took sick last week. And to think, at that point, I thought I’d gotten away with indulging myself; maybe the effects just hadn’t completely materialized at that point.
Although, perhaps there are other things that I’ve been doing that have had an effect on my progress; little moments of slacking off that, slowly but surely, have started to make themselves felt. Tuesday, while not seeing me eating an entire 14-inch pizza (and I would have had it all to myself; neither of the boys would touch a sausage-and-mushroom pie) did still have me eating a fast food meal, complete with chili fries (which weren’t supposed to be a part of my order; I’d requested a bowl of chili with my sandwich, but the fries came instead. They were kindly willing to provide me with my chili, but you would understand better than even I about not wanting things to go to waste, so you know I couldn’t let them just throw out the fries, even though I probably should have). So to see a reading over two-fifteen yesterday morning didn’t phase me all that much; it was my just dessert, so to speak, of having overindulged slightly the night before.
But last night didn’t seem to have been like that. All I had last night was a slice of leftover pizza from a previous night, and a bowl of pre-made, heat-and-serve soup. I can’t speak for the slice, but the soup wasn’t even four hundred calories. Why should that be putting me over the top for a second day in a row?
Well, as it turns out that wasn’t all I had, honey, as I’m sure you could guess. Soup as a meal isn’t enough by itself. It needs to have a few chips on the plate alongside it. You had a favorite flavor, and so do I; I’d picked up these taco flavored Doritos (which, I’ll be honest, I thought they’d stopped making for a while there – maybe it’s like the McRib or various flavors of Mountain Dew, that they keep bringing back, after constantly threatening to remove it from the shelves forever. Everything’s a limited edition, it would seem; and, I guess that, in the big picture, that’s quite true), and figured I’d have them on the side. It’s not like they cost much in the way of calories; a serving of them is only 150 of them, after all.
The thing is, a typical bag of these chips allegedly contain nine such servings. Now, I can’t speak for all of humanity, but I don’t know anyone personally who takes nine attempts to polish off a bag of these or any other similar chips. Three or four, yes; I’m sure I’ve done so in two, in fact (I won’t admit to going from opening a bag to dumping the last few crumbs down my throat in a single sitting, but I think I might have been able to do it, once or twice upon a time). So, what I consider a “serving” is three times what the makers of the stuff do, and suddenly, a fairly reasonable 150 calories swells to a more dangerous 450-500 or more.
And now I begin to understand why I’m hovering near what I had begun to consider my ceiling, weight-wise.
What’s worse is that the cure is, to my mind, worse than the disease. It’s certainly simple enough; cut these things out of my diet completely. Never buy them, never keep them in the pantry as potential temptation, never eat them again – or at least very rarely. And I’ve nearly done that with certain foods; I’ve been able to cut a lot of fried foods and desserts (such as ice cream, which Daniel doesn’t like anyway) out of my diet. But I have to tell you, honey, I love my chips (and despite the fact that literally no one reading over your shoulder will get this joke, feel free to imagine that being said in a Scottish accent by a pilfering seagull), and I can’t bring myself to cut them out of my diet like so many other things.
It sounds like the sort of thing that might be the basis of a sermon; that one sin one needs to remove from one’s life that one finds impossible to actually do. Even St. Augustine himself wrestled with this; “Lord, make me chaste; but not yet.” We all push the envelope; “how much, how many can I indulge in before I cross the line?” because we can’t quite bring ourselves to give them up. And as a result, I’m literally chipping away at the progress I’ve made thus far.
I’m not really sure what to do about it, though, honey; for now, though, all I can ask of you is that you keep an eye on me, and wish me luck. As usual, I’m going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 