I already know

I had to go to the grocery store to pick up a few things to make a meal that Ken requested…ravioli. I’m not crazy enough to make them from scratch, I did enough of that as a child helping my Mom. Making the pasta dough and rolling out the sheets of pasta by cranking the handle on the old pasta machine. Then she would carefully cut the squares and my sisters and I would spoon the mixture into the square and use a fork to seal the edges. It was quite a process. As tasty as they were, I’m not prepared to make that kind of time or emotional investment in a meal. The emotional investment could easily lead to overeating and that is something none of us need.

I headed to Publix with my list in hand. The only exceptions would be any canned goods or fresh fruits and veggies on sale. No junk food, no processed foods apart from the ravioli.

Those of you from the Southeastern United States are probably familiar with Publix grocery store and their gargantuan scale at the front of every store where you can just hop right up and check your weight. This thing is massive and it has a HUGE dial spins around loud and proud for the world to see. As I walked past the scale to get a sale paper, I paused to let some people pass and an older man just jumped down from the scale and asked me if I was waiting for the scale. I politely told him no thanks because quite frankly I’d rather rip my fingernails off with rusty pliers than jump up on that with everyone watching.

Most of my shopping was done and I’m just cruising along thought the store and mindlessly humming along with the overhead music…if you want my body ANNND you think I’m sexy …and then there she was….thrusting brownies at me….woahhhhh.

She was a young girl in her late teens or early 20’s giving out samples of fresh baked brownies. I would guess she was right around 300 pounds. I could tell she had been sampling the brownies herself by the hint of chocolate fudge frosting in the corner of her mouth. So many things rushed through my head. I’m not perfect, I slip and fall but I’m awake now and not eating mindlessly anymore. I wanted to scream at her and tell her she is wasting her life away over a brownie, I wanted to tell her that she would miss out on so many things because of brownies and she would cry so many times in her life over brownies. But I'm standing there as big as or bigger than her and I said nothing. I know that if someone would have said that to me when I was her age, I wouldn’t have listened, especially if they were morbidly obese themselves.

I smiled politely and said no thank you but she was a natural food pusher and her response was “our brownies are really good, just try a little one” and then she whispered I could eat them all day. I suppose she felt a certain sense of camaraderie in whispering this to a fellow fat girl. I sort of felt my heart sink just a little bit for her and I starred for a second at the fudgy gooeyness and I honestly felt sick at the thought of the overwhelming sweetness.

It was right about then that snapped back to reality and I borrowed a page out of Ken’s book. When we go to Costco or Sam’s he will only try samples of things that he has never tried before. When I asked him why he didn’t want to try a certain thing his response was a simple I already know what that tastes like. He is so right and I didn’t need to eat that brownie sample because lets face it I’ve had hundreds if not thousands of brownies in my life and I do know what they taste like.

It really makes you stop and think about why you put foods in your mouth. They say that you only taste the first few bites and I’ve experimented with things and found that the first bite tastes the best, the second bite is good and the rest are just filler. I’m learning to stop when I’m full and learning to recognize signs of full before they happen so I don’t overeat or mindlessly eat.

With that in mind I smiled politely at the brownie girl and said, I already know what brownies taste like.