+CHANGE

OREOS ARE VEGAN photo by John Komar via delish.com.

I just went to CVS to get Punch's RX refill and while waiting, browsed around and plucked items so I could cash in on my CVS grocery coupons, saving well over $10.

I noticed this +CHANGE:

I am getting much better at not wandering the cookie aisle and haplessly/helplessly/hopelessly tossing a package of Oreos, Fig Newtons, Nutter Butters or even trail mix with mock M&Ms into my cart--"for our daughters." 

I still falter sometimes [usually with the Tate's chocolate chip cookies Punch favors, from Kings] but far less often.

Simply put, if I buy it, I will eat it. 

The package might last until Punch and Figgy return from school [Oreos are vegan] but then again, it likely will not. 

I will inevitably eat most of it.

It is a battle. The voice inside me reminds me again and again that Punchy's ADHD meds suppress her appetite; her dr. monitors her weight closely and wants her to gain--thus, cookies. We see him every three months. Her weight is low on the growth chart. 

Yet she is strong and fast and smart, so I will continue to focus on normal foods that will not be tempting for me, such as plump dried apricots, cashews, steak, corn on the cob, chocolate milk, berries--and Saltines she can spread PB on. 

She does not take the meds if it is not a schoolday, so she usually enjoys eating on the weekends, vacays, holidays.

This is a sea change for me. As a slim young twentysomething, I would buy one of those single-sleeve boxes of Fig Newtons when I went to do my laundry at the Busy Bee Laundromat in Bradley Beach. The owner, Kathleen, very petite, might eat a couple of them but.....

Change is hard. So hard. I remember Oreos as a rare childhood treat, driving up to the Catskills to visit friends, Dad driving, Mom turning around to hand me a couple from the cellophane sleeve.

I want to sweeten my girls' lives. But a cranky, vicious mother high on sugar and exhausted from being overweight will not sweeten their lives. Such a mother could poison them.

HAVE A GOOD DAY.

Signed, Oreo againster