My mother is the youngest girl of 10 children. Her baby brother died a couple of years ago and other brothers and sisters passed before that so now there only remains my mother, her sister who is one year older and their oldest brother. Additionally, she is at the point of her life where many of her friends and acquaintances are passing away. It's tough and every time she hears about someone else who has been diagnosed with some terrible thing like cancer, I can tell she wants to sweep in and save them so her life does not melt away before her eyes.
The other day in a phone conversation she began to tell me that her sister's husband, who was diagnosed with prostate cancer last June, is refusing to have any treatments for it. He spent some time talking with men who have been through the various surgeries and procedures and decided that he does not want to possibly suffer the consequences.
This terrifies my poor aunt, who can't imagine not having him around after 54 years of marriage. In turn, my mother is upset and terrified for her sister.
While she was talking I'd had a thought go through my head and when she finished I said,
"You know mom, there are still going to be consquences from his choice. Just different ones. There are always consequences from the choices we make."
Over the past couple of weeks I've had a lot of opportunity to think about that very thing as it relates to how I eat. While it's quite possible that I am the victim of some bad genetics, there is also the possibility that I can change the consequences by making different choices.
Mr. Helen and I were in a conversation over the weekend and he said, "Oh you can't have that." I replied to him that in fact, I 'could' have whatever I wanted to, but the consequence of certain choices might be that my cholesterol will not drop and I will have to go on medication. Which I really do not want to do.
As I've negotiated the waters of this new way of eating, I've tried to keep it in the forefront of my mind that every choice I make will have a consequence. For me, right now, I am much more in tune to what my choices will do for my HEALTH as opposed to what they will do for my weight.
For example, on Monday night when Mr. Helen was making some lovely baked cod for dinner, I simply requested that he not use butter on my piece of fish and brush it with a bit of olive oil instead. Hopefully small choices like this will have the consequence of bringing my cholesterol numbers down.
Still, as I confided in a friend recently, even when I did first stage of the South Beach Diet some years ago, which most people say kills their sugar cravings, I never, ever stopped craving carbs and sweets. Never. The minute that first two weeks was over I had a spaghetti dinner with ice cream for dessert.
Thankfully, my doc is allowing me one "free" day a week. She explained that research has been done that shows if individuals partake of saturated fats on just one day, rather than spreading it out over the course of an eating week, it seems to have little to no effect on cholesterol. In other words, it's best to have your cheese-filled, double-stuffed potato with real butter, and Porterhouse steak with butter sauteed mushrooms, and a decadent dessert one time a week, rather than having a teeny bit each day. She also told me whatever you can make at home will still have less saturated fat than almost anything you could buy. I guess all those little goodies you can buy at the grocery store bakery are not made in the healthiest fashion, even if they are freshly baked.
Consequently, one of the choices I have made is to limit my sweets, even if they would 'fit in' calorically or any other way. It doesn't mean I don't want them. I do. Almost every night I think about having just a scoop of ice cream, or one cookie, or one square of chocolate, but right now I am choosing to try to change the consequence of my genetics.
Monday, I was having hungry day for some reason. All day long I just wanted to eat. And pretty much nothing I ate felt satisfying. Even though my head knew darn well I had eaten plenty of food, I sort of felt like my nerves were on edge. When I get like this, sweets seem even more appealing.
Sitting at my desk, minding my own business, two of the managers popped into my office and handed me this, saying, "Thank you for all your hard work for the company!"
That right there is a Chocolate Covered Cake Ball. It's about the size of a golf ball. Can you even begin to guess how badly I wanted to pop that sucker in my mouth? But I happened to be in the midst of a text conversation with
Shelley. So instead I took this photo and sent it to her. Her response? "Are you going to eat it?" (How much do I LOVE that she didn't judge or tell me what to do? She just asked.) Which made me stop and think about it. Was I? Because really, I should be saving this thing for my free day... while I was composing myself and my thoughts, they came back through with this:
That right there? Chocolate Covered Oreos! I was texting Shelley as fast as I could, almost so I could breathe and be rational. Finally I answered her that I would not eat it until at least Wednesday and in fact was going to challenge myself to hold onto it until Saturday. She responded, "You can do that... just put it out of sight."
So, I need to thank Shelley for helping me see that I CAN DO IT. That it's important to me to remember the consequences of the decisions I make.
The treats are out of sight (which sort of helps make them out of mind) for now. And I need to tell the truth: my free day is Saturday. So I won't be having them today. You can hold me to that.
