In my effort to make food fun again, one of the things I’ve been doing is thinking back to the foods I loved when I was a kid.  I guess I’ve been trying to figure out what made the foods I loved so lovable, at least to me.    I’d like to rekindle some of that spark I had for the foods I loved when I was a kid.  Back then it wasn’t about calories, or sodium or fat or carbs.  It was simply about the fact that the food tasted good and I enjoyed eating it.  I’d like to find a way to get back to those days.

One of the foods I loved when I was a kid was s’mores.  I loved toasting the marshmallow, even though I almost always would get impatient and burn it about halfway through.  I loved using the graham cracker to pull my burnt black marshmallow off the stick and I loved the melting squares of Hershey bar that generally got all over my fingers.  It was great taking that first bite, oozing with chocolate and marshmallow, knowing that I’d probably end up with a sticky face and sticky fingers, but already eager to burn my next marshmallow and start all over again.

There was just something about the taste and texture of this treat that felt right to me.  Although nowdays I’d probably want to use Dove Dark Chocolate and multi-grain graham crackers, back in the day I just perfectly satisfied with good old Hershey’s chocolate and whatever graham crackers were first on the shelf at the store.  What we used didn’t matter, what mattered was the taste and the fun we had making the treats.

I think, if I’m honest, it was the fun we had that made the food taste so good.  When I remember making s’mores I remember that I wasn’t worrying about the calorie content or if eating the treat would make me fat.  In my childhood memories, no one is chiding me for eating too many, or warning me about the fattening nature of the treat.  Instead, we’re all sitting around a campfire, roasting marshmallows, laughing when they burn, and sucking sticky fingers after munching down another s’more.

I guess in the end, it isn’t the food that makes the experience, it was the experience that made the food.  I want to try to remember what it felt like to eat something just for the sake of eating it, with no concern for any of the things that I now worry about every time I take a bite.  My guess is that recreating this feeling will allow me to put healthier foods on my list of favorites.

And, if not, there’s always s’mores.

It pains me to say this, but I’m a hypocrite.  I don’t like to admit it, but I do try to be honest with myself when I can, and this is one of those times when, as much as it hurts, I should be honest.   Believe me, it does hurt.

Some of you may already know from this blog that I have been working on finding someone to date.  I’ve put my profile up on several dating sites and I’ve been perusing the boy buffet, seeing what’s out there, and hoping to find a tempting dish I can call my own.   If you’d asked me when I first started this I’d have told you that looks shouldn’t matter and, for me, wouldn’t matter.  I was interested in kindness and intelligence and wit.  A few pounds here or there wouldn’t make any difference.  I would have believed I meant it too.

I’ve spent most of my adult life railing against men who expected every woman to be a size six with breasts the size of flotation devices and perfectly sculpted bodies.  It was so unfair, I’d cry, that men were so blind that they couldn’t see beyond a few extra pounds to the awesome person underneath.  Why were women held up to such unrealistic standards, I’d whine.  Why were men so unable to see inner beauty and so obsessed with outer beauty?  Didn’t they know that compassion and wit and intelligence counted for so much more?

When I started my search for Mr. Right, or at least Mr. Try It Out and See What Happens,  I was looking for kindness and wit and intelligence.  It was only as I rejected guy after guy that I realized I was also looking for George Clooney, or the nearest equivalent in my neighborhood.  I wanted the guy with the six pack abs and the roguish grin.  I didn’t want the guy who was carrying an extra 100 pounds and looked like his most strenuous exercise was walking to and from the fridge.  I was, to my dismay, doing exactly the things I’d condemned men for all these years.

I guess, at last, I’m starting to see that I’m just like everyone else, and that I have the same prejudices that everyone else has.  I may not like it, but I certainly can’t condemn others for doing what I’m doing myself.  The only thing I can do is try and be less of a hypocrite and live up to the standards I’ve tried to set for others.

They say people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

Tonight, my glass house has a few broken windows.

Someone, I don’t remember who, once said that sculpting and elephant was actually pretty easy.  You started, so the quote went, with a lump of rock and just chipped away everything that didn’t look like an elephant.  It was that simple.

Since I’ve been working on losing weight, one of the things I’ve had to do is a lot of discovering which parts of me were, metaphorically speaking, the elephant, and which were not.  I’ve had to chip away not only at fat, but at a lot of old beliefs that were keeping the fat in place.  Finding the metaphorical elephant has occurred both on the physical and the mental level, and so far it’s been an interesting experience.

On the physical level it’s been about discovering the body that was hidden under the flab.  I’m learning that I’ll always have boobs and hips, but that I’m built more in a classical hourglass shape, with a smaller waist than I would have imagined I’d have.  I’m starting to see definition in my jawline, my shoulders and my calves.  When I flex my muscles you can actually see muscles now.  I’m still adjusting to the idea that my body has parts that are admirable, even pretty.  The more I work on getting fit, the more I see that the sculpture I’m creating may actually be a thing of beauty by the time I get to the end.

While I’m sculpting the outer shell, I’ve also had to do a lot of peeling away on the inside.  I’ve harbored a lot of hatred for my body over the years.  It peeled and cracked and itched.  It reacted badly to sun and heat.  My head had migraines, my eyes didn’t work right, my spine was curved and my heart had fits.   I spent a lot of time dwelling on what my body couldn’t or wouldn’t do, and not much time thinking how incredible it was that, after I’d neglected it for so long, it did anything at all.  After many years of neglect and hatred, I’m learning to let those feelings go and value myself.   It’s a slow process, and I still have days when a litany of “you’re fat, stupid and no one will love you” plays in my head, but those days are getting fewer and farther between.

Mostly, right now, I’m just enjoying the process of becoming.  I’m still a half formed sculpture, but I keep chipping away.  I know eventually I’ll chip away everything that doesn’t need to be, and all that will be left is an authentic and healthy me.