Saturday Special: I Lost Ten Pounds ...

One helluva way to reach that year-end weight loss goal.

I lost ten pounds this week after the grand holiday feast, ten lovely, precious, substantial, don’t-let-the-door-hit-you-in-the-butt pounds. In a week! Isn't that dangerous? Maybe for some, but sharp pains didn't spear my bare feet as I shuffled along the hardwood floor this morning. Ten pounds ago, I needed slippers. My clothes still hug me, but not bear hugs worth. As my lungs clear, I can breathe beneath the cinch of my bra. After expelling, purging, ridding my body of toxic waste and water I thought far more than thrifty pounds would be gone. Alas, it did take years of dietary wrangling to trim the two I lost last summer.

So I need a new plan if these ten will stay away. I've been eating nothing but chicken and rice gruel all week. Is that to become my new diet? At first, its bland flavor brought ecstasy! As I'm still averse to food, it still sustains without causing cramps and explosions of digestive distress that quicken my pace. Adding the carrots and celery was a nice touch, subtle and colorful. Even my foodie husband said it was satisfying. Indeed it is … satisfying … in a way that reminds me of my childhood bout with scarlet fever.

I haven't eaten anything else all week and the thought of introducing my flu-tortured tummy to my usual fare brings dismay. Will it only prolong the misery? Must I endure the humiliations of bathroom plumbing in order to make progress on the scale? Is it my fate to curb the return of that quickly-dispatched tonnage by starving my culinary joy? As my craving for rich sauces, piquant spices and herbs, and luscious textures that massage my tongue pester me to return to old habits, I must resist.

I will dip the ladle into the mush that coagulates in the crock, thank whatever god exists for the loss of ten pounds if not my recovered health. I will roll the rice around my tongue, savor the temperate notes of flavor that emit from stewed grain and boiled meat, and my sorry substitutions for real ginger, garlic, and onion. It IS good! A treat rather than some gelatinus goo to throw out. I grew up in a house where it was a mortal sin to waste edible food. Although I no longer hold any philosophy to be holy anymore, there is nothing more sacred in my heart these days than food. Glorious food! Hot sausage and mustard. And the loss of that ten pounds.

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