Unfinished business … and an FO!

First, the FO [that's Finished Object to you non-knitters]. Sorry about the horrible photo. These little caps are going to my daughter-in-law's friend's new triplet boys. They're a month old, and still in the hospital.

Two of them weigh more than four pounds now, and the third weighs less than two pounds. That's why one of the caps is so much smaller. I used Saucy, a nice soft cotton, in cream, sage and brown. Very manly, don't you think?

And the unfinished business? A thought-provoking post called "How to Stop Quitting" is over at diet-blog … at least it's making me think.

I started gaining weight when I was about 10 or 11, according to childhood photographs. At that time, my family moved, I had to start a new school, I started getting an allowance and we lived across the street from a "mom-and-pop" grocery store. A perfect storm for a new dieter to join the fold, right?

I was old enough to cross the busy street on my own, and mom and pop became my new best friends. I spent every spare nickel on candy bars. [Yes, I'm so old that candy bars only cost a nickel. Hard to believe, right? Right?!?!?]

My mother was a perpetual dieter, starting and stopping for who knows what reason. She used to drive to a doctor an hour away every month to pick up a tiny hinged box filled with colorful pills and capsules. They were known as 'rainbow' pills; we now call them amphetamines. I loved the boxes, which I got when she finished the pills.

My dad had to maintain a healthy weight to remain on flight status with the Air National Guard, and Mom made sure they both dieted for the couple of months before his annual physical. They did the Drinking Man's Diet, the Atkins Diet, the Cabbage Soup Diet, the Grapefruit-and-Egg Diet [also called the Mayo Clinic Diet] – is it any wonder I'm fat? They didn't make us follow their plan, but The Diet was an ever-present member of the family, hovering in the background all the time.

When she wasn't dieting, Mom was eating chips and dip and drinking Pepsi. But I never knew what made her stop, either the binging or the dieting.

When I look at this family history of disordered eating, I have an inkling of why my relationship with food is so dysfunctional. When I look at my own history of relationships, I'm a leave-'em-when-it-gets-too-hard kind of friend, wife, partner, co-worker. [Sobriety has helped me overcome this character defect.] It should be no surprise that when the dieting gets tough, Debbi gives up.

But not this time. First, to be honest, it hasn't been tough. I've had my moments, but all in all moving my body vigorously on a regular basis and eating fresh, healthy food is a great way to live.

Several years ago I was able to lose 15 or 20 pounds. Obviously it didn't last. Why did I quit then? Well, mostly because I stopped losing weight. I suppose my body went into a plateau, and after three months of working out hard, eating what I was supposed to eat and not losing any more weight, I gave up. Jonathan's comment to me yesterday is important to remember here: The number on the scale should not be "what we want most."

I had to work hard mentally to accept that I wasn't going to lose two or three pounds a week. I'm averaging fewer than six pounds a month. But I'd rather lose six pounds a month than keep it. Like Jonathan, what I really want most is to move easily and enjoy a vital, healthy life. I need to be at a normal weight for that to happen. And I'm not giving up.