Slouching toward fitness

A few things have happened. No, I didn't wake up a size 6. But... I'm okay with that. No, I went to Pennsylvania this weekend, to teach a craft. I stayed with one of my oldest friends, a woman I've known since we were both 20 and studying abroad. We were not small then and we're not small now. In fact, one of my favorite pictures of us (taken, I might add, by my skinny boyfriend) is one where we're at the playground by the park near the Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen, and we are on a teeter-totter. (I hear they've been outlawed from playgrounds now, for being too dangerous. Probably just as well, they did contribute to a lot of fat-shaming and I'm only being a little tongue in cheek here). But there we are, balanced on it, looking pretty damned pleased with ourselves. You see, in our lives, as bigger (though not BIG, I might add, not the way kids are big now) girls, we could never find anyone to join us on the see-saw. So we had each other, at the ripe old age of 20. So this friend and I, as you might have guessed, have shared many years of eating. Not frenzied gluttony, because we're not that kind of big girl (and are there any, really? Well, right now, to hear them all talk, you'd think that every single plus-sized woman ate 1200 calories a day and worked out and still stayed a size 20) but we never held back, either. She skews toward sweet and I skew toward salt, which might have contributed, as well. So we ate. We ate at increasingly good restaurants, and we ate brownies and fudge and ice cream. But we also, until I stopped being able to, walked. And walked and walked and walked, at a pace that would put many people to shame. We walked all over Germany, we walked in Scandinavia, we walked later in New York and Philadelphia and probably other places that I can't remember. And then, once I stopped being able to walk well, we just kept on eating. I go visit this friend every year the weekend before Thanksgiving, and along with many other things, that weekend has become, for me, the kick-off to the overeating. It does not let up till New Years. Ho hum, it's the truth. I was wondering what would happen this weekend. Six hours there, six back, and a day spent sitting...it is not conducive to good nutrition, plus the fact that overeating, or at least indulging, is seriously connected with those trips, in my mind. A funny thing happened. I was not a saint, but I was not a sinner. I didn't stop at Burger King on the way down. I didn't nosh my way down the Garden State, the Jersey Turnpike, the Pennsylvania Turnpike. We did go to Friendly's and I did get a melt...but I got the one with the grilled chicken, not the breaded, and I certainly didn't eat all the fries. We had a Happy Ending Sundae, though. But there were no brownies, no fudge, none of that, at night. The next day, I had an okay breakfast and my usual Dunkin Donuts sandwich for lunch (the ham and cheese, because it doesn't have any mayo or stuff like that. Just....ham...and cheese. I did buy a bag of Doritos on the way home. However, this time, there were enough to give to my daughter when I finally arrived home. I ate far less of them than I normally do. Dinner was at Bertucci's, and my portion was quite reasonable. We had dessert, but again, the mini size that they now have. Not the mega-dessert. It was nice. It was just enough. Once home I had a killer workout with a different trainer and....okay, I confess that due to some other uproar in my life, I've given myself permission (I guess that's it) to go to McDonald's and NOT get the southwest salad, and I've been a bit indulgent here at home--but nothing like I would have been! So the point here is that I met a trigger and while I was sort of triggered, I didn't go on a shooting spree. Or an eating spree, for that matter. I have less taste for the other stuff now. I did not consciously set about to wean myself off it, and I still crave a good piece of toast, or a roll, or, even, a Dorito!, but it's not the way it would have been. I will not say that I've been reformed, but I will say that the reformation might be taking hold. Slouching toward fitness, that's me....