Food and Real Regret

I’ve been hanging out with the wrong friends and working with all the wrong people.

I mean, if I had real friends and real co-workers, these people would have tied me to a chair and wired my jaw shut by now.  Or they would at least slap my hand away from the goodies in the break room.  Or if they were really nice, they would put a padlock on the break room door, and make my desk into some sort of consistent treadmill.  (“Keep running, Mere, or your computer is going to turn off!!”)

Today was super-goodies-from-a-happy-client day at the firm.  Banana bread, pound cake, zucchini bread, coconut cake. Tons of it.  Laying dangerously around.  Everytime I walked by the table to fill up my water bottle, there it was. Suddenly, my apple, protein powder and salad looked like compost for lunch.

So, I had a piece of zucchini bread for lunch, justifying that it had vegetables in it.  And then I had banana bread for snack, ignoring the eggs and ridiculous amount of sugar in it.  And then justifying the fact that I won’t be home until after eight-thirty tonight, I figured I needed some coconut cake (hello, dairy!!) to tide me over. That’s correct.  I had three different —okay, fine. I’ll admit it. I also had a piece of pound cake this morning —– four different types of junk today.  Part of the junk which I wore on my right elbow for the last hour, and just now realized.

Hi, I’m Meredith, and I’m a food-a-holic.  Mmmmmm….food.  I like food.  Another negative thing that Oprah and I have in common.

I like healthy food.  I like junk food.  I feel better when I ignore the junk food (duh, who doesn’t), but why can’t I exhibit enough restraint to stay away from it?  With Ironman 70.3 Miami looming in the distance, this weight situation is not funny. I have got to get off 35 pounds. Period.  Why oh why oh why can’t I stop eating? Yes, alot of it is because I am working out hard, and I am hungry.  But the vast majority of it is that I am a blazing, self-destructive jackass.

So, I’m sitting here at work, taking a break, and trying not to think about the food in the kitchen….when I come across a blog about money saving moms or something like that.  (Unrelated to food or triathlon, so I think maybe that will help me get my mind off things.)

Well, turns out that this blog is a blow to the gut.  Anyone who reads SwimBikeMom knows that I have issues with maintaining perspective, valuing the things that really matter, and forgiving myself and others.

So precisely while I’m fretting over the extra 600 (900?) calories in crap I ate today, I find this blog entry:  On December 13, 2011 we were faced with the most difficult decision of our lives:  Did we want the white casket or the brown casket for our twenty-one-month-old son?….”


Ah. There it is. Perspective. 

I read the mother’s recount of the tragic accident where her baby boy was killed. I read her grief and regret, and thought… how unbelievably stupid of me to have grief and regret ….from cake.  


Enough of that garbage.  I am not beating myself up for thinking about “trivial” things like eating junk and feeling icky.  But in reality, I need to beat myself up.  I need to tell myself that I am stupid for being even a second ungrateful, even a minute of “unhappy” or an iota of “miserable.”  I am immeasurably blessed in life, in limb, in house and home.  


I really just want to get the hell out of here and hug my kids.  And eat cake with them.  Forget the rest.