I remember Joe

Being me is scary!  I remind me of a little boy who was once in my Cub Scout Den.  I’ll call him Joe.  Joe was a good kid.  He wanted to be a good kid and he tried really hard.  The trouble was he had a short memory.   He forgot about every ninety seconds and reverted to his normal curious, rambunctious, very active little self.  People cringed when Joe entered a room and that is how he came to join my troop.

I did what I always do with a group of very young children whose attention is centered on everything except me.  I carried a bag of M&M’s for random reinforcement and stuck to Joe like we were Siamese twins.  He loved me!  His mother loved me!  She said he’d never had a better year, or fit in better with any group of boys.  Two hours of Joe left me feeling totally exhausted.

He just needed constant reminding.  I do too.

My intentions are almost always good.  I understand most concepts and know what is necessary for a good life, but I forget.  I don’t know what some people think when they see a piece of butterscotch cream pie, but I think, “Mmmmmm, that looks sooooo good and I may not see another piece for weeks, months, years!”  Then I gobble down that piece and maybe the whole pie before I remember.  It is the same way with bread, or hot rolls, or cheese, or even baked potatoes with sour cream and chives.

It is not that the food I eat is particularly bad for me, but that something inside of me is broken and doesn’t set off the alarms until I have already indulged!  Thank goodness my weaknesses don’t include alcohol.  I’d be a hopeless drunk.

As I approach the end of my first three weeks on this eating plan I am slowly fixing that little alarm that says, “Bazinga!  You are full and no longer eating to stay alive.  Now you are eating enough to kill you.”

It’s the next best thing to another me I have come up with.