Weight loss is a war of epic proportions.  I love it and want to celebrate it.  I hate it and want to curse it.  There are times I just do not want to compromise or change.  Having to make a lifestyle change in the eating department does not leave much room for calorie negotiations.  Needing to fix my liver, and fix it fast, I did not waiver on my food choices.  I had to lose the weight and the fat.  This meant no eating out or off of my prescribed diet.  This was not an easy task.  I first started my journey in the fall of 2008 - right before the holidays.  Thanksgiving was a frozen turkey dinner, Christmas was a frozen pasta dinner, New Year's was yet another frozen dinner.  I used to joke that a Jenny Craig cheesecake a day kept the cheating at bay.  It was so hard to watch people eat such good food.  I was jealous!!!!!

At one of our many family get-togethers I had enough.  I lost it. I could not take the frozen dinners anymore.  I was facing the knowledge that I would not be biting into the succulent, juicy, cooked just right on the grill beef tenderloin.  I would not be savoring the creamy buttery taste of the bree cheese that surrounded the cran-orange chutney.  There would be no hunks of fresh bread warmed with melted butter.  Salad with homemade blue cheese dressing was no longer. Gone was the succulent chocolate cake with the fudge frosting that just melts in your mouth as the sugar slowly dissolves.  Gone.  Gone.  Gone.  As everyone sat around the table with their full plates and hearty laughter I excused myself to go and cook my calorie and fat restricted frozen meal.  With each spin of the microwave plate I began to weep.  As I removed my meal from the microwave and peeled back the plastic film I wept more and more heavily.  Enter into the kitchen Carl, my brother.  I can't imagine what I looked like, but I knew how I felt - lost and miserable. 

I look back on this day and giggle now, but I am also grateful.  I was so lost then.  Carl actually did me a huge favor that day.  He acknowledged my relationship with food as an addiction.  It was one of the first times the word addiction had been spoken aloud in relation to me and food.  It was liberating.  He said that unlike other addictions I could not escape mine - I have to eat.  I cannot walk away from food.  Addiction to food is a hard addiction to conquer.

Thankfully I am in a place in my life where frozen meals are not the foundation of my healthy eating.  The meals, however, did serve a purpose beyond that of calorie/fat restriction.  They provided me with the time I needed to learn how to cook in healthy ways, discover how my body reacts to & breaks down different foods, and it taught me appropriate serving sizes.  Obesity is my war and this battle is won.