Sisyphus Rocks!

Of course all my readers are well schooled in the minutiae of Greek Mythology, but for the rare person who fell asleep that day in Mr. Curtis' Mythology class, Sisyphus was a poor tormented soul who outfoxed the God's on more than one occasion and, as the God's truly despise being outfoxed, our man S. was forced to spend all eternity pushing a rock up a hill only to have it roll back down on him right before the crest. Poor Sisyphus. I've been pondering on this of late and it got me thinking about one of my favorite, albeit, seriously cliched expressions. If you keep doing what you've always done, you'll keep getting what you've always gotten.

Seriously, if Sisyphus was really all that and a bag of chips when it came to God-hoaxing, why did it never dawn on him to try something different when it came to rock rolling? I mean why didn't he enlist his friends to help? Or trick them into helping, which was certainly more his style? Why not tunnel through the hill or push it around the base? Granted that would have taken longer, but since gravity and the spitefulness of the punishment were working against him AND he had all eternity to accomplish the task, common sense would suggest - DO SOMETHING ELSE, DUMMY!

And THAT got me thinking about my weight. My 20 plus year battle with my own personal blubber boulder has been one of ground hog day like repetition. Lose it. Find it. Lose it. Find it. Repeat ad nauseum. I've always approached the whole ordeal as simply a function of losing weight. Period. Never once have I attempted to get at and deal with the underlying reasons for why I'm fat in the first place. That's the main push for the pitched battle this time around and its slow going and sort of hit or miss.

One of the things I have to do is rewire how I think about food. What it means. How it makes me feel. I've been trying lately, to really think about what I'm doing when I'm getting ready to put food in my mouth. Am I really hungry? Is it stomach hungry or mouth hungry, because mouth hungry is often thirst. Am I reacting to something, or as I'm finding, to someone. Is what I'm eating the right choice?

I don't want to make it sound like I have some extended windy angst ridden internal dialogue everytime I reach for a carrot stick. Nope, its just a quick gut check to make sure I'm eating healthy and working towards my objectives. My hope is that at some point, practice will take over. That good choices will become ingrained in my muscle memory. That I'll be able to identify the over-eating triggers and behaviors that have held sway over my weight for most of my adult life and DO SOMETHING ELSE and in doing something else, will arrive at a different end point than I have in the past.

Its a daily thing. It requires concious consideration. Its also, kind of a pain in the ass, when all I want is a handful of potato chips as I'm breezing through the kitchen hoping the Fat Fairy doesn't notice me scarfing down the Kettle Chips and slap me with a five pound penalty kick. Its at those moments that I start wondering if this isn't a waste of time exercise, more than a little bit obsessive and start looking in the pantry for a can of rationalization. Can't you just hear the chip bag rustling?

Then today, something really really cool happened.

My husband and I were having a conversation on a serious topic. Not a fight. Not a disagreement. Just a grown up topic kind of conversation. The kind that make you feel tense. Worried. Nervous. Halfway through the conversation I realized I was stress eating! I even said it out loud. It was a unique experience in the dietary history of this girl, let me tell you, but there it was. My brain actually made the connection that I was eating for ALL the wrong reasons and it did it on its own because I seriously paid zero attention to the fact that I'd gotten up from the sofa, waddled into the kitchen and found me a big old plate of comfort.

This is great news in my book. The downside is that before my brain actually kicked in I'd eaten two bowls of pistachios, a scoop of hummus and chips, and some grapes! Its not a perfect synaptical connection yet, but it did happen and I have to believe that if I contiue paying an appropriate amount of attention to my emotional relationship with food, that the changes will come quicker and be more permanent. Again, that my doing different will result in my being different.

I have another challenge coming up this weekend. We have another party to go to. Truthfully, we're only this social in the summer because in the South, its always so damned hot, about all you can do is get together, eat, drink and bitch about how hot it is. This summer is ridicualously hot, so there's even more than normal amounts of getting together, eating, drinking and bitching.

Normally, when we go to a party I'll take an appetizer or two. Why? Because appetizers are my very very favorite things to eat. And there in lies the rub. I'd much rather graze over a table of little yummies than to have one plate of "meal" food. Its a fake out. Nibbles are small bites. Meals are big bites. Problem is, you eat enough nibbles under the guise of "just a bite" and the next thing your know, you're halfway thorugh the bag of corn chips on your way to a full on food stupor.

Enter epiphany here. Why would I keep taking to parties the things that tempt me so and end in my stuffing my face? How about NOT taking those things and taking something else instead? EUREKA! It sounds so simple, it kind of makes me feel like a moron not to have thought of it sooner, but who knew? This party, instead of the wickedly fattening but oh so delicious Cannelini Confit, I'm taking two vegetable side dishes and a mushroom to throw on the grill. I can avoid the snack table because I don't have anything to put on it. I won't even have to go near it! And as for the dessert table...welll.....they aren't really my thing so no biggie there.

Hopefully this little experiment will be such a success that I'll be able to tell that silly Sisyphus to put his rock down and go over the crest of the hill on his own!