72

When I got to my sophomore year of high school, there were a lot of foods that I quit eating. Like sugar. Or butter. Or sandwich buns. Or mayonaisse. This lasted until my last year of college, with the exception of a few weeks spent in France.

During that time, I picked up a habit of, well, picking. I won't eat a whole dessert, cookie, candy bar, piece of candy, pancake. Instead, I take a bite or break off a piece. I leave the rest for later or offer it to my fiancé. He finds this annoying, but more often he finds that it works to his advantage (like when it means he can order pancakes for breakfast and get one of my two crêpes filled with Nutella).

My last year of college, I let myself eat what I want. I didn't have time to cook food, which is a huge sacrifice for me. A healthy diet and a good amount of time in the kitchen is the one luxury I always allowed myself. I love cooking food, for myself and for sharing. I love grocery shopping. I hate the microwave.

I got really comfortable with the microwave. With frozen Indian dinners or packets of steamed vegetables. Cakes that you heat up to melt the inside. I gained some weight.

I'm desperately trying to get fit and shed the last-semester-cookies-and-beer weight before Joe sees me on a regular basis... and more importantly before I try on my wedding dress again. I've tried to stop picking at things. I've stopped eating lunch and opted for casual grazing throughout the afternoon.

Then I baked cookies. One day this week, there was 100 percent humidity. It is officially summer in Western Ohio. The windows are open. We are living in a heavy, damp, invisible cloud. I left margarine for the cookies on the counter for less than five minutes and it was soft.

My sister keeps making fun of me, calling them pancakes. The humidity flattened the cookies, making them ooze in the oven until the dough was mostly carmelized with a lump of chocolate chips in the middle. They never set. They turned into one giant, crumbly dough mass in the cookie jar.

This has made it very easy for me to continue my habit of picking away at the cookies. Instead of incriminating myself with a broken cookie resting on the top the the stack, I can look in and see four cookies broken already. I can reach in, pick out only pieces that have chocolate chips and snack away.

This is not losing weight. It is, however, allowing myself to enjoy my life and not worry all the time about consuming the right number of calories, drawing frowning faces on the days when I go over 1500 or punishing myself by taking away all carbohydrates. It's a slow track back to my lean body, with no focus on weight and every focus on feel energized and happy and excited for those 30 minutes of cardio, those hours outside working with Dad.