I Feel Good

I feel good.

I know everyone hates dieting, and it is EXCRUTIATINGLY hard at times, and you have days (like my wife did yesterday) where you're starving and have a headache and your kids are eating all your diet food and you're ready to raid the pantry and eat anything in sight.

And I know there are long stretches where it feels like you'll never lose weight and dieting sucks and the scale isn't moving and you feel like it's TOTALLY NOT WORTH IT.

And I know there are cheat days when you just couldn't help yourself and you were at that party and boy don't those little meatballs look yummy and pretty soon you've plated up a dessert "sampler" plate with "just a little taste" of everything and by the end you're all "whoa I blew it life is over".

Which is precisely why I need to make this post. I need to remember this feeling, right here, right now. This is the ever-evasive "feeling good about dieting" feeling.

Contrary to popular belief, dieting has its moments. I'm not talking about all those people ranting and raving about how they "did it" and lost hundreds of pounds years ago and kept it off and are now fitness buffs and blah blah blah and how their diets were so easy and great. (Those people make you want to eat a dozen Krispy Kremes and then vomit them up all over them. Incidentally, I want to be one of those people).

No the diet moments are few and far between, but a good weigh-in, the loose clothes, fitting into long lost skinny clothes -- those my friends are the moments we cherish.

But here's another one. Whenever I first start a diet, assuming it's a real diet and not another who-am-I kidding diet, I almost always experience this epiphany of physical well being. Within a few days I can already feel a subtle boost of energy, a little spring in my step. I feel less bloated, less, well...full of food. With evenly spaced, nutritionally balanced meals, my energy level feels less erratic. When meal time arrives, lo and behold: I'm actually really hungry! No sugar highs, food comas, etc. All of those negative consequences of poor eating are real - but over time they become really hard to discern because you get used to them. But cut over to an actual healthy diet, and your body rewards you. Unfortunately, the reward becomes really hard to discern as well, because you get used to it as well. And there's the rub. And for me, it is the evil enabler of relapse: forgetting how crappy you feel when you eat like crap.

So lest I ever forget again, let me emphatically declare this simple truth: eating well makes me feel good. Amen.