Slow and Steady

I LOVE instant gratification. I'm that type of girl. This trait was passed down to me by my parents and I will no doubt, despite my best efforts, pass it down to my kids. I think this is a combination of human nature, ADD and good old fashioned heredity.

I actually used to be much, much worse but I married a man who can wait for some things forever (others require no such waiting). He will allow food that he really loves to rot in the refrigerator because he is saving it. He makes me wait to see movies that I really want to see for so long that more often than not I forget that they exist. He doesn't do this to torture me or to be spiteful, he really thinks that it's better to have things out there waiting for you than to enjoy them now.

I admire this in some ways but often it just drives me bonkers.

Where this instant gratification problem really gets in the way is with dieting. People always say, "it took you a long time to put on the weight, so it takes a long time to lose it". I say bullshit. I can easily gain 5 pounds in less than a week. And I sure as hell can't lose 5 pounds in less than a week, safely anyway.

When I was 23 I had gotten pretty fat. As fat as I am now minus 10 pounds actually. It was truly shocking when I got on the scale and realized what I had done to myself. I remember it very well because at that very same time my body decided to take matters into her own hands by developing a wicked case of what I initially thought was lactose intolerance. But even when I quit dairy, things continued ... very ugly things. To be completely candid I would get the most horrifyingly painful and explosive D whenever I ate. The only pattern I could see was that if I ate anything with fat in it, even avocados, it would happen. Anywhere and everywhere. And as I had just started college, I was terrified to eat. To avoid the pain and to avoid having to camp out in a campus bathroom. This led to me not eating anything but canned green beans and white rice. I would carry a luna bar around with me at school and some days that would be the only thing I ate.

Needless to say, I lost all the weight -- 70 pounds to be exact -- in about 3 months.

I felt on top of the world.

Now that I need to diet and lost this weight again I am so tempted to go back to that. I know it's awful, I know it's terrible for my body. But I also know that it works, fast. I could lose all this weight by the end of the summer.

Or I could follow the conventional wisdom of the dieting community and count calories and 'safely' lose 2 to 3 pounds a week. That would only take me around 42 weeks, being perfect every single day.

I'm not perfect.