one can of tuna in water, drained

So I printed out the meal plan, the one with 1200 calories in, and with 2% cottage cheese on top of everything –- I’m not kidding. Everything. -- and four ounces of various types of meat.

Then, I went grocery shopping. And I stocked up on tuna and various types of meat and more cottage cheese than a girl should really own, and I lugged it all home and stuck it all in my fridge and stood back and I said there! I have a fridge full of healthy food! And then I ate some ice cream.

Then, the next day, I woke up, and I prepared one packet of oatmeal and a half of a cup of 2% milk and a banana and I ate it all slowly and I sat and looked at my plate and said “That’s it?” And I was sad and lonely.

But lunch! Lunch was coming! And at lunch, I would have lettuce and tomatoes and other vegetables and a cucumber (except that my fridge froze my cucumber into a weirdly mushy mass of slush, and that was really interesting) and a can of tuna, all topped off with cottage cheese. I shook it all together (except the cottage cheese) and I sat down and I ate it slowly and I said “Wow. That was kind of disgusting.” And I was sad and lonely.

Dinner was a whole-wheat tortilla with low-fat cheese on, and then microwaved because that's the kind of gourmet I am, and also because I could not bring myself to assemble the fauxrito with spinach and lettuce the nice people at Good Housekeeping wanted me to assemble. And my cheesy tortilla, that was pretty tasty. But underneath, I remained sad and lonely.

Today, today was another sad and lonely day, from the two frozen waffles with fruit spread to the cabbage salad topped with (you guessed it!) cottage cheese, it has been nothing but sadness and loneliness.

I know that the Sad and Lonely diet is kind of ridiculous and overprescribed and undercalorated. But I needed guidelines. Soon enough I'll graduate to big girl eating (that was an unfortunate pun. huh.)

But right this second, right now? I was not going to get back on track without reading a sheet of paper that said “today, you will eat the following [sad and lonely] things.”

I have not been ridiculous about it – if I need more food, I have been eating it. But that has meant, these past two days of sadness and loneliness, eating an apple between meals, or snacking on some pretzels before I go to the gym.

Because I totally went to the gym today! And it was all I could do to spend twenty minutes on the elliptical before bolting at the shower, and I did not even care that the locker room was filled with girls equipped with piercing shrieks. But I swore I wouldn’t do any less than twenty, and I fulfilled my Solemn Promise, and that feels okay. I’ll get back to where I was soon enough. With cottage cheese and four ounces of salmon by my side.

This entry was posted by anne, on Tuesday, March 08, 2005. You can leave your response.