Floored

Click.
Do you see this woman? She told me something today as I leafed through "Cottage Living" magazine. You see, she was on the inside back flap wanting to sell me Quick Step flooring. Only she wasn't telling me about the floors today. She called me fat. Fat and stupid actually. But I think she meant well.
My weight is creeping in the wrong direction again, up. I started dieting on April 1, 2002 and I would call myself successful. Success for me is measured in days and not pounds at this point. I reached my "goal" weight a few years back which I maintained for a long time motivated by the numbers on the scale and the tag on my jeans. In order to maintain this ideal weight (according to Weight Watcher standards); I had to eat very very little. But I was ok with that because the numbers were pretty. After a while though, I started to wonder if it had been long enough for me to trust myself to eat without counting every calorie and point and even to let my weight settle somewhere healthy even if it wasn't necessarily "ideal." Again, I would call myself successful. Yes, I settled about ten pounds higher than Florine Mark prescribed and so that sort of put me in the Lifetime Member penalty box. I was about one size bigger and decided that it was acceptable. The new challenge is now to be aware and healthy and not take advantage of this new freedom and become a size twenty six again. Or, frankly, a size fourteen. Size fourteen is the cut-off for me personally, the point when I seriously need to lose weight. That's just me; please do not feel that I'm out there hunting for size fourteens to judge overweight.
This remains for me a bit of a tight wire act. I settle in and then start to creep a bit too high. Time to reign it back. I've yet to wake up to that glorious day when I've inadvertently gotten too skinny.
So this woman with the beautiful laminate floor. What drew me to her? Her shoes. Look closely, in the middle of that floor are a pair of black high heeled sandals. I looked at this picture and thought, "My feet would be killing me if I wore those shoes to work." You see, I had assumed the woman had just gotten in from work, kicked off her stilettos and reclined to listen to some smooth jazz floating in a sea of perfect fake hard wood flooring.
And this is what she told me...
Why don't you try something, anything, other than food to unwind with. I have heard this before in terms of taking a walk, working out, scrap booking. All things that seemed a misery to me. After work is my absolute pig-out moment. I don't want to wait for dinner and it's not because I am necessarily so hungry or a piece of fruit or salad would take care of it. It's a method to calm down and relax. Food is my evening cocktail.
And it's having an ugly effect on my own tail.
Now I'm thinking, hmmm. Maybe I too, could quiet down with some music. Maybe I could take a little snooze before making dinner. Maybe I could read for a while. I know that none of this seems like tremendous insight. But this woman with the smooth jazz piano keys floating over her head and her cute little dress looks relaxed and thin.
I don't know. It's just an idea not yet tested. Maybe I need to take a lesson from this person.
Clearly, what has been missing all long in my struggle with food has been...
a laminate floor.