The Ugly Truth: Hello from Skid Row

I could write my way to hell and back with chocolate pencils
 like these. But they are a cool idea. Check this link.

It's 2:15 P.M. on Tuesday, May 3, 2011, and I am writing to you from skid row*.


It's my own private road to dispair, which started in the car on the two-minute drive home from the supermarket and ended here at my kitchen table. I just fell off the wagon big time. It's a scary, spinning-out-of-control, giving-up-all-control, frenzied place to be. But I want to write it down so I can face how it feels.


I made a couple of mistakes, which don't work for my metabolism, starting with a bowl of Special K Chocolatey Delight with milk for breakfast @ 10 A.M. Faced with all those great choices in the cereal aisle, it's easy for me to forget that when I have cereal, it tends to be too light, resulting in overeating later. I seem to need protein. 


It was a rough morning, and after a difficult doctor's appt. with Figgy, I stopped at Dunkin' Donuts for an iced coffee. I never like their iced coffee, so I shouldn't have hoped I would today. It just tastes artificial to me, empty. Not satisfying. But I was trying to make a smart choice [no chocolate Munchkins]. I then dropped Fig off, drove back to town and stopped at the supermarket to return an extra $10 bill I got last night at the store. I requested $20 back on my debit purchase, but didn't realize till today that I got three tens, not two.


By now it was about 1:45. I was hungry, and the iced coffee--the caffeine--on an empty stomach was starting to stir me into a frenzy.


I picked up and put down rich chocolate-covered pretzels. I eyed Dancing Deer brownies. I picked up and put down chocolate-covered figs from Spain. I walked away from the freezer, where Ben & Jerry's was on sale. I bought a precooked turkey burger, broccoli crunch salad and a two-pack of chocolate-chip muffins. [I had also picked those up and put them down, but now I succumbed.]


And then, in the face of four illnesses [some physical, some psychological] that are tearing my family and my life apart, I ate.

1. The tops of the two chocolate-chip muffins, starting the moment I sat down in the driver's seat and closed the car door. 
2. Entire bottom of one muffin and 1/2 of the other.
3. A two-ounce Dagoba organic chocolate bar. 
4. Last part of #3 with some Peanut Butter & Co. Crunch Time Peanut Butter. 
5. Some chocolate chocolate-chip ice cream.
6. The turkey burger. 
7. The broccoli crunch salad. 
8. One Special K Protein Meal Bar [chocolate peanut butter flavor--artificial aftertaste; I don't recommend it]

Now I feel shaky and like a failure and like Will I ever get off this road? It's so ugly, I don't like it.

And I'm remembering one very expensive nutritionist I went to for a while, paying out of pocket, maybe $100 per visit. Crazy! [Her office was across from Tiffany & Co. on Fifth Avenue and my high-profile NYC ob/gyns, a husband-and-wife team, had gone to her with great success.]

Once I complained to her about some problem, which triggered me to eat the wrong things. For blog purposes, let's say the problem was work stress.

I don't care, she said. The work stress is there anyway, whether you overeat or not. Overeating won't make it go away.

True, so true. I feel sick and sadder now, and my problems are all still there.

Well, that's my midday report from skid row. I wanted to post it right in the middle of the pain so I could be in touch with it, face it, remember it and learn to turn away from it.

Thanks for listening.


*Here's how Webster's defines SKID ROW: a district of cheap saloons and flophouses frequented by vagrants and alcoholics.
P.S. There are chocolate smudges on my keyboard.