November 22, 2002
10:20pm - Part 2

Day one of the diet down.  I actually did OK.  Got in lots of fluids, stayed to all protein except for a half cup of soup and a half cup of potatoes at lunch.  Also had a quarter slice of sourdough bread.  Not perfect, but if you go by Carb Addicts Diet rather than Atkins, it was perfect!  I balanced out the carbs with LOTS of green salad and turkey.  I REALLY wanted some pumpkin pie (Lordy, it looked so good!), but I made it through.  I'm hungry now and will probably get another bit of steak in a while, but I'm fairly stable.  The Hydroxycut worked well and I can feel that I'm going to be able to sleep (already drowsy), so that's good.  Taking full dosage worried me a bit since I'm very susceptible to speeding out.  I felt very comfortable, just didn't have cravings or over-hunger.  One day down.  A year or so to go.

I was thinking about when my attachment to food really began and like for most people, it was in childhood.  As a bit of backstory, my whole family is really large.  My mom, dad and two brothers all have weighed over 300 pounds.  My dad is dead now (Yep, from arterial deposits blocking the old heart doors.  That man could really eat!).  My mother is losing weight as she gets older, after having two knees replaced due to her weight (I don't want to wait that long).  Both of my brothers are still really big from what I hear.  

I started taking care of my mom's family, meaning my dad and two brothers and her, when I was ten and my mom went into the hospital for her second or third (don't remember which).  It pretty much sucked.  She'd taught me to cook over the past few years and when it reached the point that she was chronically in surgery, recovering for surgery or in bed needing surgery, the care of the family fell to me.  I don't think it was designed that way (if it was, I'm gonna be PISSED), but it's how it ended up.  Poor mom really needed the attention her hypochondria provided and evidently, Dr Padgett needed the insurance money.  He once laughed that he was going to install a zipper in her abdomen next surgery.  So I'd get up in the morning, get something out of the freezer for dinner, get out the door for school, come home from school, do homework, take a swipe at cleaning the house, make dinner, take care of my brothers, then go to bed and do it again.  No one was ever particularly grateful.  I was just doing what was expected of me.  I'm not saying any of this for sympathy (although taking care of people for the past 30 years or so should definitely warrant a massage or something), but to set the stage for what was to come next. 

The School Cafeteria.  Ironic, isn't it?  A place so closely synonymous with the worst food on earth started my dependence on it for comfort.  You had to understand this cafeteria, though.  I went to Pleasant Ridge Elementary School, which was a wonderful little primary school that started out with grades 1-5 and between my 5th and 6th grades, included a 6th grade (prior to this, 6th graders were bussed out of town to the dreaded Wayland Elementary School for the year before Middle School) by turning the 4th and 5th grade classes into two 4th, 5th and 6th grade classes.  The good news is that I got to keep my faaaaavorite teacher, Judy Ward, for 6th grade as well.  It was odd having three grades in one class, but somehow, they made it work without a hitch (not a hitch that we saw, anyway).  

But I digress.  Each grade in Pleasant Ridge Elementary had about 20 kids.  I remember the group that I started first grade with (no kindergarten there!) had 13 boys and 7 girls.  It didn't really change until 5th grade when Elizabeth Lane (the first black family in our town) and Laura P. Quizon, Jr (the first Filipino family) moved in.  Since there was one boy and one girl, the ratio didn't really shift much.  :-)  What is amazing about the school is that the cafeteria workers, Mrs Wilma Stone, Mrs Arlene Reagan and Mrs Hoover, were the most incredible cooks ever to set foot on this earth.  They didn't make any of the prefab foods that are so well associated with school food.  We got home cooked, delicious meals about 99% of the time.  The only real slacker meals were when we'd get a slice of pineapple, a huge pile of potato chips and our choice of either 2 pimento cheese sammichs or 2 peanut butter on crackers sammichs (on double saltines, all passed around by two lucky kids in big plastic tubs).  Yum. That began a lifelong affection for institution peanut butter.  I just love it.  That's right.  The thick, dry, gubment peanut butter.  Mmmmm.  

Other than the peanut butter, pimento cheese days, the meals were always incredible.  Delicious meat loaf with homemade mashed potatoes.  Homemade chicken pot pie.  Homemade chili.  Homemade chicken soup.  Homemade fried chicken.  The most delicious yeast rolls you would ever, ever put in your mouth.  Homemade corn bread.  Every day, they would make a little extras and you'd get to go back for seconds.  It was always Mrs Hoover who got to announce what the extras would be.  Usually it was, "Extras in bread and butter."  My god it was good.  I am positive the food was laced with high grade heroin.

The thing was that when I went home, it sucked.  My brothers were unruly because Mom was seldom available and Dad was working.  I had work to do above and beyond and no means to escape other than biking down the little general store a quarter mile or so from the house or way over the hill to see my friend, Susie (about 2 miles).  Other than that, I was landlocked.  School sucked.  The kids made fun of me and made fun of my clothes and made fun of my name and just about anything else they could find.  I had only one friend all through grade school, Charlene Greer, who was two years younger than I was, so didn't really come along until about 4th grade.  I recently made contact with her again and she's now a successful psychologist.  I clearly remember the day in 8TH GRADE when Charlene told me she was going to be a psychologist.  She sure did it.  So in the middle of home sucking and school sucking and having basically (Dr Phil rears his bald head) "no soft place to fall," the half hour of lunch was just *sigh* dreamy.  I got to eat by myself.  We had these long fold up tables with benches attached (didn't everyone?) and we could sit anywhere we wanted.  Only two classes ate at a time, so it was pretty roomy.  I could sit by myself and eat a meal I didn't cook...a delicious meal I didn't cook.  It filled me.  It nurtured me.  It warmed me.  It satisfied me.  It was absolutely glorious.  

So that, I'm certain, is where it all began.  Food hasn't let me down since and is still my buddy.  I'm going to work through this as best as I can because I know I need to lost weight, but my heart isn't in it.  I'll do it anyway, again, because it needs to happen and I know I'm in as safe a place to do it as I am likely to be for a while.  

I'll keep you posted for a while.  I hope it doesn't suck as much as it did when I got to Middle School and got a taste of "real" school cafeteria food.  Ew!  Don't know if Mrs Stone, Mrs Reagan or Mrs Hoover are still alive, but if they were, I'd probably empty my checking account if they'd just cook me one meal.  

Have a great weekend!!