On the Closet (you know the one):

A few things have changed over the last forty-seven days.  Firstly, I've parted ways with refined sugar, wheat, and dairy.  Secondly, I've longed a little each day for refined sugar, wheat, and dairy.  Thirdly, I've lost, and don't especially care to find, 15 pounds!

And so I've been trying on all the clothes in my closet that are out of style and too small.  The ones I've been storing, pushed against the wall on that most unreachable shelf.  That's why my closet resembles a diva's.  Clothes are strewn in colorful piles, dresses hang precariously by one shoulder, and shoes (the impractical ones I can barely balance on) lie listless on the floor in compromising angles. 

Why do we do this to ourselves?  Why do we cling to the clothes that grow tighter around our burgeoning bellies until the buttons, strained, become weapons of mass destruction?  Maybe we've popped open the tent and pushed the polls through, but none of us ever intends to hammer the stakes into the undulating lush ground of Fatsville.  We're just visiting.  Fly by night.  Round trip.  But when we arrive, we're tired, hungry, and just want to nap for a bit. 

I've been napping for years.  Not because I'm lazy.  Let's throw that stereotype out the window.  Because I hurl myself into my work.  Because I have three kids under five.  Because I eat when I'm tired.  Because I'm always tired.   Because the food industry cons the FDA into approving addictive substances (ie: sugar).  Because nothing I try ever works.  Because the U.S. is a culture where high-fat foods and low activity is the number one lifestyle.  Because I live in this culture. 

But in the depths of my closet there is hope.  

My closet is disheveled.  It smells slightly mildewed (from a load that was in the washing machine a day too long).  It's dark and deep.  But in that closet there is a pair of jeans.  The pair flung in the unreachable corner in a moment of haste years ago.  That pair of jeans fits.  Halleluiah.   The turbulent flight back from Fatsville is panning out.  15 pounds.  Gone.