As always, the holiday season seems to go by both excruciatingly slow and insanely fast.
With finals finished, a nice 6 week long break from school stretched out in front of me promising me endless hours of Netflix binging and Christmas decorating, I was a happy girl.
Until. Life happened.
I love Christmas. It's my favorite time of year, everything feels so much cozier and nicer and the sharp edges of life have been covered and dulled by a cute Rudolph tree skirt. This time of year brings out the best in people and although we're all thoroughly exhausted of hearing "I'll be home for Christmas" for the 30 thousandth time (I mean, really how many more people can sing that song and make it into their own "version"), we joyfully turn the volume up and sing along while fighting the holiday shoppers in the mall parking lot.
But, this year was a little less joyful than my past Christmases, I must admit. Not because I'm not still crazy blessed with my amazing friends and family, but because, and I know how dumb this sounds, I had to watch everyone indulging in their favorites.
For Thanksgiving, I had a grilled chicken salad. Last year, I started AND ended the day in sweatpants knowing I was going to be stuffing myself to the gills and there's nothing worse than the threat of your buttons popping off on that nice new sweater you bought simply because you didn't know how to say no to that third piece of pecan pie. For Christmas, instead of making my Aunt Linda's unbelievably delicious sorority potatoes and hogging the whole casserole dish to myself, I had.....wait for it....A grilled chicken salad!
I managed to escape the cookies and pies that seemed to be staring me down over the last four weeks and never once did I cheat or break my resolve, but I'd be lying if I told you that this particular battle wasn't the worst yet. Luckily, I had 6 months under my belt, pun intended, by the time Christmas rolled around and my healthy habits were firmly in place but even then, and I'm not proud of myself for this, I seriously contemplated stealing a 2 year old's piece of chocolate away from him while his mother wasn't looking.
All of this opened my eyes even further to the hold food has on me. And as I've mentioned before, it wasn't just that I wanted the sorority potatoes and chocolate because they're delicious and artery clogging, but also that I wanted to join in with my friends and family and be merry while chugging down egg nog and shoving bowls of warm gooey goodness down my throat. Not being able to eat and drink the same things as them made me feel like an outcast, like I didn't really belong.
I don't care what any health magazine or 2% body fat celebrity trainer says, carbs equal happiness. Nothing will ever make me feel better than having pizza and beer after a long shift at the hospital or drinking wine and eating popcorn while watching the new episode of Scandal.
It's just satisfying as hell to give into my addiction and it sucks BIG TIME to have to fight it all the time.
Now, I'm not saying this is something that happens on a daily basis for me. But in the society we live in, especially during the holidays where almost everyone is breaking their diets, it was a month-long test of exactly how strong my will power is. And thank goodness it ended after a month, because I'm not sure I could have gone on much longer.
In other news, I finally bought some new dress pants! My old ones had been worn for about three years straight and were so baggy on me that I looked like I was wearing parachute pants, and, just a side note here, when I told my friends, family and coworkers that I was going to buy some new pants, every single one of them responded with an exasperated and resounding "Thank God!" - so apparently they were about as sick of seeing me in them as I was in wearing them.
My new pants are about 5 inches too short for me because the store I bought them from didn't have tall, only regular.
So I look like I'm wearing capris in the middle of winter but hey, I didn't want to wait the additional 10 to 15 days it would take for my 6 sizes smaller, length appropriate pants to come in simply because I'm about a foot taller than the rest of the big hipped, big butted, women in Corpus.
Oh. And did I mention that my new pants are 6 sizes smaller??? :) Forgive me for that shameless vanity plug, but I'm pretty proud of myself.
Alas, real life has begun again. School is starting again next week, I'm the lightest and smallest I've been since I was 18 and since it's now the entire world's annual time to jump on the "New Year, New Me" bandwagon for the next 6 weeks or so, the only thing that's staring me in the face at every corner is endless spam emails for 10 bucks off of my gym membership and free samples of kale at Sprouts so....things are looking up. 88 pounds down so far and with my free kale, 100 is just around the corner.
Until next time! ♡
