Day 62: Retaking Breakfast (part one)

Somebody wrote recently and asked why I put so much emphasis on the diet aspect of this project. I've mentioned before that this is partially because losing wight is the one part of the project that's actually quantifiable. How much happier am I? How much has my stress level gone down? I couldn't really say. True, I note progress with things like yoga and Tai Chi, but I can't objectively measure that progress the way I can my weight.

But there are a couple of other factors, as well. For one thing, "eating right" is something I do all day long. I only do my yoga and Thi Chi a few times a week, but I do my diet every time I open my mouth and don't cram some sweet, fatty crap into it.

I've always hated psychological terms that moved into the public sector and eventually became over-simplified catch phrases. "Gunny-sacking," "enabling," "co-dependant." The most recent of these, of course, is the phrase everyone seems to be using now to describe someone who gets a great deal of sick pleasure out of complaining about their own life. They say such a person is "pulling a Reynolds."

Anyway, that's a kind of long-winded way of saying that I hate it when people say that they eat a lot to "medicate" themselves. I ate a lot, and especially a lot of crap, because it tasted good and I was bored. It brought me a moment of pleasure. And as we all know, pleasure is the methadone of the happiness junkie.