Sabotage, and Other 4-Letter Words

C’mon. Is it THAT hard to just eat healthy? Really? Ugh!! I really struggle with this and I shouldn’t! I took a nutrition class in college. I’ve done the Weight Watchers Points thing. I KNOW that I’m supposed to eat fruits and vegetables and lean proteins. I make a kickin’ salad with greens and fruit and fat free poppyseed dressing. Other salads, too, but that one’s my favorite. This would have been SUCH a GREAT week if I could have just stopped putting crud in my mouth!

What kind of crud, you ask? How ’bout a large (seriously? I NEVER order a large anything. Sheesh.) cookies and cream milkshake from Chik fil a. Never ever had one before, but had to “reward” myself for biking 23 miles on Friday night. Twenty-three miles followed by a very sensible grilled salmon and asparagus dinner at the Overlook Grill, followed by an artery-clogging, fat-centric, cookies and cream milkshake. What the heck? All I had to do was NOT pull in to Chik Fil a and NOT order more than 1,000 calories of non-nutritious milkshake. Why is that SO HARD to NOT do? Why do I keep doing this to myself?

No, seriously– why?

I started thinking about this today. Not because I want to come up with some excuse, but because I want to understand so that I can STOP IT already. I’m sabotaging my goals. No one else is doing it, just me. Why? And as I ask the question, I hear the answer: I am NOT a trophy wife.

For many years my husband has reminded me of this fact. I’m not a trophy wife. He couldn’t understand why a homemaker would be anything but fit. “You’re home all day– you should have a rock hard body!” he would yell. Not a trophy wife. There were plenty of hot gals out there, he assured me, and they were throwing themselves at him. He had to turn away advances. At least, he usually turned them away. NOT a trophy wife. He bought me a treadmill for our anniversary/Valentine’s Day, he complained. He had paid for gym memberships, he lamented. Why wasn’t I thin?

So, what happens if I get fit? What if I get that “rock hard body” that he wants, and he still rejects me? We’ve been separated for 19 months. He filed for divorce. He hasn’t spoken to me in about a year. Even when we’re trading off the tweedles for visitation, he doesn’t so much as look at me. He doesn’t want me anymore. Granted, there are a lot of other issues that led to the destruction of our marriage, but my weight was definitely one of them. I would love to get super fit and see his jaw hit the floor when he sees me, like I’ve seen him look at other women. Maybe I’d wear a fitted dress– sleeveless so he can see my tan, toned arms. But what if it doesn’t do any good? What if it’s still not good enough?

This is where I have to remind myself: I may not be a trophy wife, but I AM a Princess– a daughter of the King of Kings. I have to start telling myself that I’m worth it. I’m worth it! I deserve to be fit! I deserve to be healthy! I deserve to NOT binge on ice cream treats. I’m better than that. I DO have self-control. I CAN do this. My husband might never look at me again, and he might never be impressed with the way I look, and he might already have found some hot little rock-hard-bodied gal to take my place. That’s okay. That doesn’t change who I am– a princess stumbling down the path toward fitness.