do it for you

Today I hung out with my grandma who is doing Weight Watchers. She’s in good shape, but just wants to maintain her health. She talked to me about it and I decided I wanted to do it. Kinda. 

We went to BJ’s and got Boca burgers and yogurts and Nutragrain waffles for waffle-turkey sausage breakfast sandwiches (4 points). When she went to the bathroom in the store, I stood nearby, looking at the fridge case of decorated cakes and reflecting that $20.95 wasn’t all that much for a buttercream marble sheetcake and I could probably buy it and eat the whole thing myself. The craving passed in about as much time as it takes a cigarette craving—10-15 minutes. I had forgotten about it, but for 3 minutes the pull was incredible. Just because I knew that I wasn’t supposed to have it.

Grandma says I should do it for me, but I disagree. Sriracha-slathered Boca burgers on wheat sandwich thins and 0 points for all fruits and vegetables is not something I would pick. That sounds like a prescription. That sounds like treatment. Treat maybe being the key word there. 

I eat quite healthfully. Brown rice that takes 50 minutes to cook, kale, chard, lentils, stir fry, skinless chicken breast… I know fiber, soluble fiber, carbs, glycemic index, types of fat, quality of protein… I eat like a hippie. I eat like a fucking yogi half the time.

But then, I also binge. I binge on Honey Buns from the dollar store (tons of saturated fat and palm oil, but no trans fats), Aldi German/Swiss chocolate, broken Panera cookies rejected by the Food Pantry and set in a bowl in my agency (I ziplock bag ‘em and take them home), obscure clearance dark chocolate Italian wafers. My binges are garbage. 

I remember this short-lived show on FX about an eating support group. The facilitator said something to the effect of “You ate donuts out of the garbage? If my dog did that I would kick him in the face.” I must have been in Jr High or something, but that has always stuck with me. I would never condone kicking a dog in the face, but it touched me the way a painting does in a store or gallery, when you see it once and keep wandering back. It took me somewhere. Maybe it had me looking into the future. 

I don’t know what kind of choices I would have made in the midst of my grave mental illness of youth, presented with a graphic picture of who I am now… trying to defend it. “Well, she’s got wise-woman social capital from mentors out the yin yang. But she doesn’t really have many friends, or like many people, or really think she ever wants to stop binge-eating. In fact, I think all she wants is food. But did I mention the degree and high regard she carries in her field?”

The point of these anecdotes being that I don’t think I would do much for myself, “do it for you” is like a different language. I’ll do it for you, but me? Pff.