This morning for breakfast I had a fried egg on top of leftover polenta, along with a glass of tomato juice. Then one of the kids asked for some of the whole-wheat coconut banana bread I made yesterday. And before I really thought about it, I had had a second breakfast of two slices of banana bread. Which tasted really good at the time.
But now I am aware that it was a mistake. Not because of guilt, not because "now I'll have to eat less at lunch to make up for it," not because I've incrementally slowed the rate at which I approach my prepregnancy weight — but because my stomach feels uncomfortably full.
I don't like overeating anymore. I mean, I really don't like doing it. Not because of its effects. Just for what it is. I don't like to do it. I get a sort of hangover from it.
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If you'd told me before I changed my eating style that I would feel this way, I wouldn't have believed you. Just look at this post from July 2008:
Will I keep getting hungry between meals, ever? Will I never eat an entire pizza? Will I always ask for the half portion? Will I forget about ever filling up on bread, ever again? Will I roll over in bed when my stomach growls at 3 a.m., saving that appetite for breakfast? Will I throw out the kids' sandwich crusts? Will it start to feel wonderful, instead of worrying, to believe that the eating-till-I'm-stuffed is over?
That is the writing of someone who is frightened by the idea of never eating an entire pizza again. I write now as someone who is relieved by the idea of never eating an entire pizza again. Even by the idea of never having more than, say, a quarter of a pizza at a sitting.
Not only would I not have believed it about myself, frankly, I didn't believe it about other people. If some other person had told me that she felt better when she ate lightly and didn't really want to "splurge" now and again, I would have thought she was either (a) lying or (b) mentally ill, possibly anorexic.
And yet here I am.
Let me give you a measure of how much I mean this. My mom, when she was dying of lung cancer, once told me, "I'm never going to deny myself anything ever again." My mom, she loved her some Coca-Cola and Baby Ruth candy bars. I hope she enjoyed every last one of them. One of the last things I ever did for her was to hold the straw for her while she sipped Coke from a can around her oxygen masks.
But I've been thinking of that comment — "I'm never going to deny myself anything ever again." If I learned I only had a few months to live … I still wouldn't want to eat an entire pizza. I wouldn't want to stuff myself with food, even really tasty food. I guess I might eat a higher proportion of my food from the Deep-Fried Group, but … "not stuffing myself" doesn't feel like a sacrifice, like any kind of self-denial. It's what I want to do now and for the rest of my life. I feel so much more free about it than I did when I ate whatever I "wanted."
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