Soaring Through Blue

New Year Resolution

A new year is upon us.

Are you feeling fat?

You are? Sigh.

That’s right, I know I started the discussion, but I find all this exasperating. I’m really above it all, but I will indulge you, this time.

Let me explain why, in more detail than you ever wanted to know.

Recently, I was sitting at a coffee shop, trying to work. I say coffee shop because we spent all our money on iPads, iPhones, Wiis and other gadgets, and therefore have no internet access at home, although my job supposedly depends on it. I say trying to work because I actually spend most of my time spying on other people, judging them, so that I can report all the details here, all the while informing fans on Facebook about how people are always judging me. This only goes one way, people. And don't forget that I am doing this here, for FREE, for you, except for answering gluten-free questions because that is beneath me.

That day, two beautiful young women were chatting. I get pretty lonely at home with only twitter friends to talk at, so I was listening and taking notes, inveterately, intently, slightly creepily. They were complaining about holiday weight, grabbing body parts and jiggling them like vapid, angry, drunken baby-killers.

That’s right, I am out of comparisons at the moment, and I went there.

Their solution? Give up lard, sausages, bacon, chorizo, caul fat, ham hocks, and possibly poached eggs, for as long as it took to feel well again. Ay, gods. The deprivation. I cringed, verily. How could they? I wanted to run over, shouting many things, and joyfully smother them in my warm, inviting bosoms until they melted and relented, right away.

They had no idea how lovely that would have been.

They are not alone. Raise your hand if you have thought of food as something to eat in moderation, something that must be considered, something that isn’t just there to be gobbled down, willy-nilly, shoved lovingly, lambently, leapingly into your gaping mouth, slashing and crashing against your teeth, the juices running temptingly down your chin for your partner to lap up, snorting, his hand on your thigh, more hog-like than baby-bird-like and then oh oh oh OH GOD, ahem, excuse me. Where were we? Ah, yes- Judgment Day.

Raise your hand if you thought you life would be so much better if you didn’t end up with heart disease some day.

You know this is silly, right?

I’ve written so much about this that I don’t want to go on. But I will. For free, people, so pay attention.

I spent the fall telling you about how much I was running. I wrote a lot about my sunlit walks, and the ravishing wind whipping through my hair, and all that. It all looked so lambent, leaping, lovely, vibrant and inspiring on the page, all that talk of glorious walking and running. I know you agree. You were in awe of me and my sheer, utter fabulousness. One of every 27 blog comments told me so. Yes.

I started sitting at the table to stuff my face. I consciously chose to sit there while stuffing, rather than doing it in front of the fridge. Consciousness is key, here.

Awe. You can admit it.

There is a lot of demanding and shouting in this house, gigglingly, gleefully, laughingly, mostly about food. I hope this is something we will always share in our family. If you are not shouting about food while spiritedly, gleefully running amok, you are sounding a barbaric YAWP of a NO.

I gigglingly, gleefully, laughingly lost some weight during that time. I won’t talk about numbers. I won’t even talk about the weight, except to tell you about it here. I know the singing, gratifying, luminescent, astounding, lavish praise (YES!) will follow, but you can be sure that I will be humbled by it. It’s an accomplishment that should make many people jealous. But I won’t talk about it here.

But, this past holiday season , I gigglingly, gleefully, laughingly baked a lot of crap and ate even more than that amount of crap. I told you I wasn’t eating any of it, but really, I was lying. You probably knew this, as it’s sort of my m.o. This threw the winter entirely off the rails.

Come January, I wasn’t feeling so hot.

Now, I want more vegetables. I want to pretend that sweeteners like maple syrup, rice syrup, brown sugar, cane sugar, honey, and sucanat are So Much Better than pedestrian white sugar. I want to change up all the ingredients so that all my old recipes are obsolete. I want to eat more food that I deem “real” and nothing I arbitrarily decide is somehow not real. I want to do cleanses while pretending that they’re not fads and spewing bile about other fad diets.

I want to listen, intently, luminously, inveterately, to my body about what it needs, and I want to tell you what yours needs, too, through passive-aggressive messages on twitter. This may not work for you, but it’s what works in our house, for our family.

You cannot do anything in the food world these days without some award-winning blogger implying in a blog or on twitter that you are doing it WRONG. I don’t know when the internet embraced such a nasty culture of judgment, but I am lambently, leaping, gigglingly sure that none of it comes from me.

What if January were the month when we all embraced the bad stuff we did over the holidays, and instead skipped shouting (only happily, no angry shouting, my life’s façade does not include angry), preferably, at people when we walked into rooms? What if January were the time to stop judging and be thankful instead, and to shout, ‘WOW! No cardiac arrest for another year! WOO HOO!” What if January were the month to stop the nastiness, the judging about what other people eat, the name-calling (especially towards vegans and vegetarians and people with “allergies” that I don't care about), the passive-aggressive comments about it all on twitter?

For one month, stop all that. One month is enough to build up some good karma.

You may gigglingly, gleefully, laughingly, save all that judging and nastiness for February.

RECIPE:

Oh, stop bothering me and go adapt something yourself.