Move Away From The Corn Dog

I had a run-in with a box of corn dogs the other day. I've never had corn dogs in the house before. They were one of those "forbidden" foods that weren't allowed across my threshold. It happened innocently enough. I saw them at the store and put them in my cart. No pangs of guilt surfaced. I didn't even give it a thought. I eat anything I want now and I can feed my kids anything I want. I brought them home and put them in the freezer. I cooked some for the kids and decided I'd have one myself. Uh oh. It tasted so good drenched in mustard. It was gone in about 30 seconds. I wanted another one. Then it hit me. Was I really allowed to be doing this? I could feel the fat grams attatching themselves to my thighs. I wanted to know how many of those little suckers I was dealing with. I ate another one but I didn't look. I controlled myself. I ate two corn dogs without even glancing at the nutritional information on the box. Why should I.

Why should I spend my days figuring out fat grams and calories when it's all done for me. All I have to do is eat the food. It's my body's job to figure out the details. I eat the food and my body digests it. Then I listen for my body to tell me what I should do next. Am I still hungry or am I full. Do I crave corn dogs at my next meal or do I want salad. I go with it. It's the simplest plan ever created, put into play the moment I was conceived. It worked perfectly until my environment started messing with it.

As I got older my brain was picking up messages that my body had never conceived of before. My Grandparents forced me to "clean my plate". Why did I have to eat when I wasn't hungry anymore? When I was eight I heard some teenagers talk about "pigging out". You mean you just keep eating even when you are full? I'll have to try that. I heard older women saying they were fat. Was I fat? My legs are wider than all my friend's so I must be fat too. It didn't occur to me that I was a foot taller than them so of course I would be bigger. On and on it went. I noticed that when I looked in the mirror, I didn't look like the girls in the magazines and on television. My body was flawed. If it was going to disappoint me like this then I would have to start disappointing it. I stopped eating what it wanted me to. I looked for clues outside myself on what I "should" be eating and what I "shouldn't". I learned from my friends how to tell if I had been "bad" or "good" that day. I needed help. I obviously couldn't make these decisions on my own. Dairy products will kill you. Cheesecake will make you fat. The television said so. Now what should I be eating? Grapefruit, carbs, protein?

Wow! Why couldn't I see how crazy that was? How did I live like that for so many years? Starving or binging and always miserable. Always out of control. Never trusting myself. It's seems like a long nightmare that is finally over. Hello! I'm awake now! I eat corn dogs without adding up the little numbers printed on the box!