My kingdom for a bowl of macaroni !

I am on a diet…again. A couple of years ago I actually lost about thirty pounds. No one noticed that I had lost an ounce until I hit the twenty-five pound mark and then the remarks started raining down on me.

“Wow, you look great, what have you been doing?”
“Wow, I have never seen you in blue jeans; you look like a different person.”
“The Atkins diet huh… I may have to look into that…”

I ended up hitting what we fat dieting people call a plateau. I was stuck at two hundred and twelve pounds and could not budge from it no matter how closely I stuck to the Atkins plan. Luckily I got sick as a dog during my Christmas vacation and dropped another six pounds. It only took fourteen days of sleep deprivation and starvation to knock me off my plateau. What at bargain! Two hundred and six pounds was only six pounds away from two hundred, and I had not weighed two hundred in fifteen years. I could see the light at the end of the diet tunnel. I was so close to two hundred that I could feel the tongue of my belt slipping into a new notch… but something happened; I just stopped caring. I had gone five months with just the minimal amount of carbs and in case you don’t know there is nothing that satisfies like good ole carbs. I craved cake, pizza, sandwiches and the forbidden fruit of the Atkins plan…pasta. My first bite of Spaghetti was like taking a hit of crack…all those pleasure chemicals dumping from my brain in one big rush. A roast beef sandwich was like angel dust and carrot cake was like pure Chinese heroin. It was not long before my old habits quickly replaced my new good one and the weight piled back on me like icing.

Two years later I am back at my old weight and then some. I am trying to take the good things that I learned from the Atkins diet and add in some fruit. I actually joined weight- watchers, which operates by making you feel guilty with weekly ten dollar weigh-ins. All I can say is that it works. Last week I did not loose a pound and I almost burst out into tears during post weigh-in grocery shopping. What a girly man! I don’t know for sure but maybe I should cut guzzling beer out of my diet. How do people get through life without a cold one waiting on them at the end of the day? Are there people out there that really don’t drink? Without beer I might actually have to deal with a few things and that just sounds like no fun at all. Funny how I never thought that I would have a weight problem; I was always so skinny in high school. Being fat really humbles you. I think that everyone should have to be fat at least one time in their lives…it is something that you never forget.

P.S. I have been dieting for four weeks now and I have barely lost five pounds. It is going to be a slow ride to my ideal weight. My kingdom for a bowl of macaroni!