Why?  Because for the vast majority of my life, I dreaded the return of summer clothing.  In case you haven’t noticed, there aren’t really any “spring” or “fall” clothes.  They just jump from winter right to the bikini’s…in MARCH!  And that’s precisely when my self-beatings would begin in earnest.  They went something like this:

“You ran out of time AGAIN?!”

“I thought this was going to be a SKINNY summer?!”

“Why do you even TRY?!  You are so PATHETIC!”

Soon bathing suits would be the only article of clothing I’d see –  all of them seemingly there for the sole purpose of taunting me by “saying” things like, “Nah nah, you can’t wear me!”  In my panic and embarrassment, I’d look around desperately for a big hooded sweatshirt or a pair of baggy sweatpants to hide in, but alas, no such luck!  Just rows and rows of skimpy stringy things (much smaller than my underwear, I might add!), and then, way in the back corner, I’d spot the dreaded rack of the “plus size” versions that, for some odd reason, only came in various shades of “floral.”

Understandably, in the end, I stopped buying swimsuits altogether.

Even though I no longer consciously beat myself down when I am witness to the annual bikini migration, I must admit that I still get this free-floating feeling of “the springtime blues,” as I call them.  To me, it is very similar to that feeling I used to get as a child on Sunday nights in winter, when it was cold and damp and it got dark early and I would think about how great it would be if I had just one more day of weekend…

I guess all those years of negative conditioning have turned this feeling into an automatic response. Although I no longer hate myself and hardly ever think much about what I can and can’t wear, it sneaks-up on me anyway.  I feel like Pavlov’s dog responding to the bikini bell of summer.  But at least I know what it is.  In the past, non-specific feelings like these would make for the perfect excuse to eat.  Not anymore.  Now I can let myself feel it and be compassionate to myself about it.  I now understand that the damage caused by more than three decades of mental self-abuse is not going to disappear in two or three years of program.  It is going to be a slow process, and that’s OK!  Just knowing what all this is about and giving myself permission to feel the feelings is enough.

Besides…now that school is back in session and the bikinis have all flown south for the winter, it’s time to celebrate!  So, for today, I feel GOOD!   Now, check THIS out, and we can all “feel good” together!! :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVFj-_SDIHE

HAPPY FALL!

We never even made it through the doorway.

The moment I set foot in the tiny bar, a short, heavy, sweaty, drunk, bald guy with his back to the door turned around, looked me up and down, and rolled his eyes.  I was mortified but took another step inside.  I had learned over the years to at least pretend I didn’t notice.

But then he yelled-out, “J—- C—–!  It’s bad enough I have to work with a bunch of fat b—–s all day, now I come here and I have to look at THAT?!  Are you f—— KIDDING me?!”

I instinctively started back through the door I was still holding open.  I know I looked like a deer in the headlights.  All the guys in the place were roaring with laughter.  For a moment I had the dreadful thought that my boyfriend was going to get into a fight when he said something to defend me.

But he never said a word.

He backed out the door as fast as I did.  My eyes started to well-up and my heart was pounding.  I hated my boyfriend for not defending me.  Worse, I hated myself for not seeing this coming – – for not assuming that I would be ridiculed for how fat and ugly I believed that I was.  In a sick way, I actually felt like I had gotten what I deserved.   I wanted to scream and cry and run away forever.  Instead I settled for yelling at my boyfriend for not at least saying SOMEthing, to which he replied that it would have been useless anyway, since there were so many of them.

True, but not in any way consoling.

My first garbage-picking memory starts out nice enough.  Every Saturday night my family would gather downstairs to watch a show or movie and mom would make pigs-in-a-blanket.  That tradition is one of my happiest childhood memories.  Unfortunately, it is also intertwined with the early stages of my eating disorder.  That is the part I will be focusing on here…

I can remember lots of obsession related to this particular group of food memories.  It would start with being fixated on when the food would be ready to eat.  I would watch the clock…

tick…tick…tick…

…get the condiments out…

tick…tick…tick…

…and the plates…

tick…tick…tick…

…and the napkins…

tick…tick…tick…

…and the drinks…

tick…tick…tick…

Truth be told, I was being TOO helpful.  It was not in my nature to be that useful.  “Selfish motives” were the thing powering me at that time.  When “the dogs” were finally taken out of the oven, I would choose the largest one, never giving a single thought to the possibility that someone else might be as hungry as I supposedly was.  Then I risked burning the roof right out of my mouth by biting into one of the steaming “pigs” while everyone else had the sense to wait for theirs to cool.  Before I knew it I was on my second one and already mourning the fact that I wanted a third but couldn’t have it for fear of looking like the thing I was eating.  All the while I ate, I was silently plotting a way to get more.

I knew that the leftover dogs would be sitting in a the pan on the stove until we were finished watching tv.  If I pretended to go to the bathroom, I could make a pit-stop in the kitchen and eat another one before I rejoined the family.  Sometimes I would wimp-out, especially if there was only one or two left, thinking that would be too obvious.  But luckily for me, I come from an Italian family where food shortages are a rarity.  Most times there were as many as four or five left, so I was easily able to convince myself that no one would notice if one more was missing.  That usually held me for a while, and then I could focus on the show and enjoy the time with my family…

Until…

…after the show it would be time to clean-up.  I would watch helplessly as my mother dumped the rest of the uneaten dogs into the trash, then I would hold my breath and wait to see if anything got thrown on top of them.  If they remained “clean” on the top, as they usually did, I knew that I had all the makings of an early morning snack.  I swear that knowing this would wake me up the next morning hours earlier than usual.

At about 5 a.m., barely allowing myself time to pee, I would silently race to the kitchen trash container and grab the room-temp dogs.  I knew that by that time the dough would be rubbery on the outside and gummy on the inside, but I didn’t care.  I didn’t even put anything on them.  That would be too messy, since I wouldn’t be using a plate.  Besides, I didn’t have time for luxuries like that!  I was in a race against time!  What if my parents heard me?!   I would gobble the dogs, one in each fist, while standing in the hallway entry so that I could keep an eye on my parents’ bedroom door.  If one of them DID wake up (and it happened!), I would dash back to the trash can and throw them back in.  I’m sure they would know what was going on, but no one ever said anything to me about it.  But not to worry…I beat myself good and hard after every time I did it.

Years passed, my disease progressed, and my gorging was completely out-of-control.  I was buying bags and boxes of stuff I swore I wouldn’t finish, but I’d ALWAYS finish them!  Finally I got desperate enough to try a new way to stop myself.  I would get rid of whatever food I had started to eat (but didn’t want to finish) by burying it at the bottom of the trash – only to dig it out hours later.  I can’t tell you the humiliation of wiping coffee grinds off a bag of smashed chips or of eating out of a container of half-melted ice cream – –  because I “had to.”  Later-on I figured-out that unless I removed whatever type of food I was sick of bingeing-on from its packaging and mixed it with the trash that was already in the can, there was always going to be that possibility of me going back-in for more.  Of course, there were the times when I would try to fool myself by not disposing of “the goods” properly, knowing full well what I planned to do later on.  I’d play the whole horrible game with myself, only to end-up eating every last bit of what I didn’t want to be eating in the first place, no matter WHERE I put it!!

To live this way, day after day, week after week, year after year,…was pure torture.  I always felt helpless, like there was no way out, and ashamed that I couldn’t stop myself.  But today my life is completely different.  All the obsession and compulsion that I had surrounding food has been removed!

The same can happen for you!

I say,…

“O-A…

IS the way!”

. . . MY THIN EVIL TWIN ! ! !

She was NOT a nice person at all.  She had so much pent-up anger inside of her that it’s amazing she didn’t do any real damage in the short time she was around.  She did, however, manage to take out her frustrations on many people with her miserable attitude.  Most notably, she was a real jerk to guys she met in clubs – – as if they were the ones to blame for keeping her trapped in her prison of fat for all those years before.  If a guy asked her to dance, she would turn him down with a rude look or a sarcastic comment,…when only months earlier she would have given anything for any one of them to pay her some attention.  But that’s what she was so angry about!  Wasn’t she still the same exact person inside?!  Then why was everyone treating her so differently now?!  Obviously it was because of her weight!  How SHALLOW!!  And she resented this with every fiber of her being!  How DARE they think they could be so rude to her last year and then be so nice to her THIS year and think she would be OKAY with that!  Now she would show THEM!!  She made it her mission to try to make every single one of them feel the embarrassment and shame that she had felt every time she was the fattest girl in the joint.  No one would ask her to dance.  No one would even talk to her, even if they were all over her thin friends, and many times, she heard the cruel remarks.  So she felt she was owed this.

Of course, it never for a moment entered her vengeful mind that perhaps all this attention had more to do with her newly-found self-confidence which allowed her to dance like a normal person (rather than just sulk in the shadows), and to wear sexier clothes, and to put some extra time and effort into her hair and make-up.  Or that perhaps the club scene was not exactly the best place to meet a “nice guy” no matter WHAT size she was.

Or that…perhaps…SHE was the problem all along.

Today my life is completely different, and it is all thanks to this program.  Much of that change came-about even before I worked the steps.  Just being around fellow recovering addicts had a positive impact on me.  It made me more comfortable in my own skin and it gave me the confidence to tell myself that I am just as important and worthy of gas-pumping as the next person!  That was a big revelation to me (as crazy as it sounds).

So even if you have not yet mustered-up the motivation to get crackin’ on those 12 life-changing steps, just keep coming!  Little by little, a new outlook will begin to sink-in to your psyche, and before you know it, you are going to WANT to change…for the better!

The summer after 11th grade, as I swam in the backyard pool, my mind was swimming with visions of a thin senior year.  As was my custom, I vowed some time during the last week of school to stick to a strict diet of carrot sticks and water for the entire summer and return to school 3 months later magically transformed into a raving beauty.  But it would all be to no avail once week two of summer vacation arrived.  However, what made The Great Summer Diet Attempt of 1984 so different from all the others was the new low I hit in binge-control (or lack-there-of).

I started-off with the usual enthusiasm.  (Back then, I was young and foolish, not yet jaded by four decades of unsuccessful weight-loss attempts.  In my forties, I barely had the energy left to put-up a fight at all.)  I was going to only eat 800 calories per day.  Where I came-up with that figure, I have no clue.  I started out doing it in a healthy way (or, I should say, in as healthy a way as an 800-calorie-per-day diet can be), by spreading out my food consumption evenly throughout the day.  I basically ate fruits, veges, and one thin tuna sandwich on wheat bread daily.  By the fourth day, that ice cream in the freezer was calling my name.  By the fifth, it was screaming at me.  By the sixth, I had the measuring cups out and came to the wise decision that I could eat 400 calories of “real food” and still have 400 calories left to “spend ” on ice cream.  Ingenious!

That brilliant plan lasted about two days.

7 days after I had started, the idea came to me that the ice cream would be much better if I added a half-cup of unsalted peanuts to it.  (Doesn’t that sound sickeningly like the guy in The Big Book who decides that a shot of whiskey would taste great in his milk?!)  Peanuts are healthy, I reasoned.  Especially unsalted ones.  Yes, they are high in calories, but I could just take off some more calories from my “healthy” food list and use them for that…so now I was eating a cup of ice cream, a half cup of peanuts and 3 fruits every day.

That lasted about 3 days.

Then the REAL insanity kicked-in.

For the next week I lived-off little else but ice cream and unsalted peanuts.  But here was the kicker! – – I did it one half-cup at a time!  I ACTUALLY went through the trouble of measuring-out the ice cream in one-half cup servings, even if I ate TEN of them, just so I could feel like I was in control and be able to write down the amounts and figure out the calories!  Needless to say, I barely left the house that entire time!  I felt like I was chained to the freezer!  (AND the calculator!)  Finally, after 2 weeks of white-knuckling it, I gave-up.  Whatever few pounds I had lost were re-gained within a week.  Then I spent the rest of the summer bingeing and then starving and basically managing to stay the same weight as when I started, but continuing to mentally abuse myself for not being able to lose all the weight I thought I needed to lose.

Not exactly the type of summer a sixteen-year-old should be having.

The plan called for exercising rigorously and following a strict food plan all week.  Then you were “rewarded” by having one day to eat whatever you wanted.  The problem was that my food-addicted mind interpreted this to mean that on that “free day,” I could eat as MUCH as I wanted.  Even though the book outlining this plan gave clear examples of eating “normal” amounts of fattening foods at each meal on that day, I somehow was able to filter out that crucial part of the plan and simply began to see Sunday as “My Pig-Out Day,” as I WAY too affectionately called it.  (I suppose that name alone should have alerted me to the danger that lay ahead, but all I could see was a license to eat.)

Even as I write this, I can feel that sick part of my addiction that will always be alive to some degree in the back of my mind stirring and saying, “Oh, yeah!  Remember how in control you were?  That was a GREAT plan for you!  You were getting really thin and in shape…AND you could eat whatever you wanted!  Nothing like this unrealistic plan you’re on now!  You’ve only lost five pounds this year!  Lame!  If you go back on THAT plan, you’ll be thin by Memorial Day!”

Too bad none of that is true.  Not to mention the fact that I was a complete LOON through the entire 2 months I was on that diet!!   Here’s what happened:

Every Monday-Saturday morning I would get up early and follow the exercise routine I made for myself (using the book I mentioned earlier).  This included weight training as well as cardio.  Each day I would eat 6 moderate protein-packed “meals” (I put that word in quotes because calorie-wise I am sure they would be considered meals, but they felt more like snacks because the portions felt small to me.)  As with all my dieting attempts, I had little trouble staying the course Monday through Wednesday.  By Thursday I was bored.  By Friday I was ravenous.  By Saturday I was down-right deranged, thinking of little-else but the mounds of food that would be mine on Sunday morning.  I would have already been working-on the shopping list, secretly, in my mind, all week.

I think this was the only time I ever went on any type of weight-loss plan with my husband.  Of course, our favorite part was going shopping together on Saturday night for binge foods.  It became our date-night activity.  We would actually sit at the kitchen table together and write down all the restaurants we would hit the following day, make a junk food shopping list, and then off we’d go to the store like giddy school kids, loading our shopping cart with foods our moms used to tell us were not good for us.  That part was definately fun, in an immature, silly way.  When we got home, we’d even line-up all our treats on the counter and make jokes about who would get to what first (even though I already knew that he was nothing but an amateur, bless his heart.)  My husband is not a true food addict, and did not share in my passion for the supermarket “hunt” – – I could sense it.  But there were times he came close!  At the very least, for those few weeks he was definitely transformed into my eating buddy.

All Saturday night in bed I would toss and turn, knowing that these foods I had been craving all week were just a few feet away from me in the next room.  So close and yet so far!  It would take all the mental energy I had to keep myself from bounding out of bed and ripping into the bags at midnight.

Midnight.

The witching hour.

That was the time limit I gave myself.  “My Pig-out Day” officially went from midnight to midnight.  But I would force myself not to start eating until I was up for the day.  I was an old pro and knew that if I pigged-out and went back to bed, it would sour my stomach…and I had to keep it in top working condition if I was going to get-in all there was to get-in, if you know what I mean (wink, wink)!!  Sometimes I made it all the way ’til 6 a.m.  Usually, however, the latest I could hold-out ’til was 4 a.m.  (My non-addicted husband, on the other had, would wake-up at his regular time and have his usual cup of coffee, seemingly oblivious to the food-fest going-on around him.  In fact, he usually had no interest in any of our goodies until lunchtime.  (Told you he was an amateur!)

When it finally got to the point when I knew sleep was impossible, I would be out of bed like a kid on Christmas morning making a bee-line for the presents.  I didn’t want to wake-up my husband, so I would suddenly have to switch into slow-motion mode, so as not to rattle too much cellophane or crinkle too much plastic wrap.  Then I would bring whatever food I had been craving the most with me to the living room, turn on the TV, and dive-in.  I suppose that the first few bites were great, since I could supposedly eat without guilt…after all, hadn’t I earned it?  But all I seem to remember were the days of relentless obsession leading up to that moment, followed by the compulsion to keep eating, pretty-much non-stop, throughout the entire free-day.  Again, as I write this, there is a familiar longing that I feel deep inside myself, tugging at me to go back to doing all that kind of dysfunctional stuff I did with with food.  But if I am honest at the reality of what it was actually like, it was no fun at all.  I mainly remember a strange mixture of feeling insanely out-of-control and desperately ashamed at the same time.  But it was so enticing…so easy to believe that this lie – – that I had finally found a way to eat as much as I wanted while avoiding the consequences – – was true!.  But even while I was eating the very things I supposedly wanted, I never felt “good” about doing it.  In fact, I felt really bad about it.

By the time Sunday night rolled around, I had had it.   I was feeling bloated, strung-out on sugar, and at around 8 p.m., I’d started getting anxiety attacks while sitting on the toilet with severe bouts of constipation.  And yet, even while these distasteful “side effects” were taking place, my sick mind kept trying to figure out how I could get-in just one more bite of this, that or the other.  After all, it was going to be six long days before I would “get” to do this all over again.

What is that if not complete and utter insanity?!

Monday morning I would be dutifully back on the hamster wheel, still nursing a sugar hangover, but wondering what was so hard about this whole dieting thing.  This was easy!  I had absolutely no cravings for ANYthing!  It was a MIRACLE!  And there were even leftovers!  I would congratulate myself on how much willpower it took for that to happen while, at the same time, I would “forget” how physically sick I was just a few short hours earlier.  Just the mere mention of the foods I’d eaten on Sunday would make me nauseous…for a day or two.  But by Wednesday, that flimsy motivation would fade away, as it always did, and once again I would start to write a new shopping list…secretly…in my mind.

Here is how I used to act-out my food addiction at the typical family cookout in my ‘tweens…

My first order of business was always to volunteer for the jobs that would allow me to “feed” my habit.  I usually got my way, too, since I was the oldest, and because I was just a little too overly-concerned with this issue, whereas my two normal-eating sisters could care less.  Anyways, I would always volunteer to “make” the potato salad.  Sounds nice, right?  Helpful?  NOT!  First of all, the potatoes and the eggs were already cooked (my parents always did that part).  The salad just needed to be put-together.  So it was not only an easy job, but it also allowed me to be the taste-tester.  Plus I’d get to lick the bowl.  (I’m sure this habit would only appeal to a real food addict – – most kids at that age would only be interested if cake batter was involved!)  Next I would volunteer to “plate” the party pizza and the desserts.  This meant that I had an all-access pass to boxes of baked goods.  The whole time, I would be arranging with one hand and stuffing my face with the other.  And I would think nothing of it.  When all the prep work was done, I would get dressed for the party and then conveniently wait for the guests to arrive by pacing in front of the food table.  I’ve heard people in program call it “guarding the table.”  If I think about it, I did look very much like a German Shepherd patrolling a stretch of fence.  My mother would have to keep an eye on me and constantly tell me to stop eating the food so there would be enough for everyone else, or to make a dish and stop using my fingers,…  Embarrassing the first 100 times.  Not so much after that.

My next task was to get the grill lit as soon as the last guest arrived by “casually” giving my father hints that “everyone” was really hungry.  Back then we had one of those round charcoal grills that seemed to take forever to heat-up, so the sooner I could get the process started, the sooner I could get more food.  Next I would volunteer to take orders for hamburgers and hot dogs (and add a few extra of each under the guise of being prepared in case someone wanted an extra item) and to collect all the cooked meats, and to be the person to announce that it was time to eat.  Of course, somewhere in the middle of all that, I managed to eat a couple of hot dogs before anyone even saw them come off the grill.  Then, when it was clean-up time, I would be eating whatever was leftover (since, as I reasoned, it was just going to be thrown-out anyway).  By the end of the meal, I’d say I would have consumed an average of 5 hot dogs (3 with buns) and 3 hamburgers (2 in buns) without even batting an eye.

But the biggest draw for me were the s’mores.  My mother would have to literally hide the packages of chocolate bars from me or else I would get into them like a rat and she would have to run out on the day of the event to replace them (which happened more than once).  But when dessert time finally arrived, all bets were off.  I would make myself double-s’mores (by doubling the “inside” ingredients) and then go around trying to entice everyone there to at least have a toasted marshmallow so I could continue to make a few more for myself.  After eating 3 or 4 s’mores, THEN I would have dessert.

This is the way I spent every single family cookout – – obsessed with trying to figure out how to get the huge amounts of food I craved without anyone noticing how much I was eating (even though I am sure it was quite obvious!).  I knew the amounts I wanted were insane, but I also knew that I had to have them!  The sickest part of all?  I was only TWELVE YEARS OLD when I started doing this!  And since I would spend, not just cookouts, but all family gatherings doing this same type of food-hoarding behavior, it is probably not surprising at all that, to this day, I have trouble mingling at social events.  I’d rather disappear into a game with the kids at the party, or hang-out with the family pets.  And even now I still tend to “guard the table,” even though I am not eating the way I used to.  Also not surprising is the fact that after every cookout, I would be physically sick.  I wouldn’t purge, but I usually got really bad constipation and oftentimes ended-up with bad stomachaches and indigestion.  If the cookout was on a Saturday, I would do the same thing all over again the next day with the leftovers.  If it was on a Sunday, I would think about the leftovers all day at school and then raid the fridge the moment I got home…and THEN I would eat a full supper!  But either way, I would have a horrible night’s sleep and would end-up being irritable and groggy the entire next day.

To me, all of this is a clear depiction of what The Big Book refers to as one of those “mental blind spots” where, despite being mercilessly haunted DAILY by my obsession to be thin,  I would somehow “forget” about all that during one of these family gatherings, binge my brains out, then “snap out of it” and wonder how I could have done such a thing AGAIN!  The shame, guilt, and remorse were almost unbearable.  And yet I would repeat this behavior, event after event, month after month, and year after year.

Too bad the same can’t be said for adults.

In all fairness, there was only one fellow teacher who really hurt me, not because she was trying to be mean, but because what she said to me represented all of my greatest fears.  I can’t tell you how hard her words hit me.  I think my inside reaction (God forbid I should show any outward sign that my feelings were hurt!) scared even me, even though she was merely verbalizing what I had been thinking about myself for my entire life.

For whatever reason, on that particular day, as we sat in that empty classroom together waiting for the first students to arrive, she decided to tell me exactly what she had been thinking about me for the past few months.  The conversation went something like this:

HER: Can I tell you something?

ME: Sure.

HER: Do you remember when you started here last year?

ME: Yeah…

HER: You want to know what I honestly thought of you when I first saw you?

ME: …uh…

HER:  No, it’s good.  Listen to this.  When you walked in that first day and I met you and saw how big you were, I was like, “Oh my God!  These poor kids!  They’re gonna be SO scared of their OWN teacher!”  I just felt so bad for them, ya know what I mean?

ME: …uh…

HER: …so I just wanted you to know…now that I ‘ve gotten to know you and see how you are with the kids and how much they love you, I can finally see beyond what you look like.  You are a beautiful, caring person inside, and that’s all that counts, right?

ME: …uh…

HER: Come here!  Give me a hug!  I love you so much!

ME: …uh…

The funny thing is, I really did like this woman, a lot, and still do, which made it hurt all-the-more.  But even as she was saying it, I could tell that she really believed that she was giving me a complement and that she really thought what she was saying was going to make me feel better about myself.

It didn’t.

On Easter morning, I never cared about the colored eggs or the jelly beans, or even the gifts.  All I wanted to know was, “Where’s the CHOCOLATE?!”  From the moment I got up on Easter morning (which was at the crack of dawn), I would eat it as a pre-breakfast snack, as my breakfast, as a mid-morning snack, as an appetizer before the big Easter ham dinner, as dessert AFTER dessert, as an afternoon snack, as an Easter-leftovers supper side-dish, and as a midnight snack.  I would not be able to sleep knowing that there was chocolate in the house.  I would trade my sisters all my lame, hard, chewy, fruit-flavored candies for anything of theirs that was chocolate.  Then I would gorge myself and wonder why my candy was gone and theirs was hanging around for literally weeks to come.

Right around this time was when I discovered that I could actually buy my OWN food, and it was this particular year that I was introduced to the magic of the 50%-Off Candy Sale.  The Monday after Easter, a friend of mine (who had older and apparently wiser siblings) told me The Legend Of The Cheap Chocolates.  I was hooked.  That very afternoon, we scraped together our change (and probably some that wasn’t ours) and walked to the nearest drug store.  In a matter of minutes, we walked out each holding two over-stuffed bags of discounted candy.  It was almost TOO easy!  We giggled and yelled and ran to the back of the store, sat on the loading dock, and ate until we were almost sick.  We threw whatever we could not finish away, much too guilty – even at that young age – to bring any evidence of our bender home with us.  Then we each went our separate ways and never spoke of it again.  I don’t remember walking home, how I felt afterwards, or ever doing that again with her (or anyone else – – after that, I did all of my serious, premeditated binge-eating in secret), but I do remember the horrible mix of compulsion and self-disgust that settled-in as I bit the heads off at least a half-dozen chocolate bunnies chased by at least a dozen other chocolaty treats.  And I remember every ounce of the pain and embarrassment of that next weigh-in.  I had gained a whopping TWELVE pounds in one week!  The woman doing the weigh-in was sure that I she had made a mistake and asked me to step off the scale so she could do it over again.  I was mortified!  I knew the number was right.  Again the number showed a twelve-pound gain.  She said loudly, “That can’t be right.”  “Yes it can,” I said in a voice so quiet I don’t know how she even heard me.  “Oh,” she said, staring at me in disbelief.  She wrote the number on my card and handed it back to me.  I dutifully sat through the rest of the meeting with my mother (whom I had begged to join with me), knowing that I would never be back.  And I wasn’t,…until a couple years later, and a couple years after that, and a couple years after that,….