Determined To Succeed

Oh my God. Google has the coolest thing ever! If you visit Google even semi-regularly you know it changes its logo from time to time in celebration or honor of an event, person or anniversary. Well, this weekend, if you visit Google’s home page you will see they are honoring the 30th anniversary (!) of probably the most well-known, popular and addictive video game of the 1980s – Pac-Man. And not only do you see yet another in a long line of way-cool ways Google re-invents it’s logo to suit the event, person or anniversary – BUT YOU ACTUALLY GET TO PLAY PAC-MAN USING YOUR ARROW KEYS! It is freaking awesome!

Man! I remember going to the “game room” or arcade when I was a kid (it’s charming to say game room since and arcade since that was the only place to play games like Pac-Man) and spending quarter after quarter, and hour after hour, playing these games. It also just so happened that my local arcade was also a candy store. If you were willing to NOT spend $.50 of your Pac-Man money on the game itself you could buy a small bag of some sour this or sweet that, strawberry twists or gum balls. It was heaven for a kid…

…an unsuspecting kid who would never have thought i n a million years he’d grow up to grow out to 400 pounds.

It is very easy to say there were (and are) times I feel like that insatiable little yellow guy eating his way through dot after dot, fruit after fruit and ghost after ghost. I still look at certain foods and can almost hear the start up music that accompanied the beginning of each Pac-Man game as I salivate and ready myself to gobble up everything in sight.

I guess what I am trying to say here is that it took me a helluva long time as a kid to break myself of the video game habit (which I did after spending ten dollars in quarters, my entire allowance, in just a couple of hours one Friday) and it took a helluva lot longer to break myself of the unhealthy food cycle I was in as an adult that I don’t want to ever go back to being that way. I love food, don’t get me wrong. I so do. I just had a bad habit of eating everything, eating it fast and always wanting more – like being at a party and eating chip after chip, pretzel after pretzel and dip after dip.

Sound familiar? It should. They created a whole video game craze after it. I can hear the “wocka-wocka” sound now.

These days I exercise the control learned after three-and-a-half years of losing weight and a year-and-a-half of keeping it off to be able to go into a store or restaurant and not eat everything in sight. I wish it weren’t so easy to buy and eat crap. I wish bad foods didn’t taste so freaking good (especially fried mushrooms, hot dogs, buffalo wings, egg rolls, Milky Way candy bars, bacon cheeseburgers, fried chicken, ribs, chips, dips, french fries, etc.), but they do. And I wish it weren’t so easy to have them any time I want them just by getting into my car to go get them. But it is.

This is exactly when and why I pull back to remember what the weight loss journey was like, and that I am worth more than any of the regularly-gobbled up foods I used to consume in mass quantity on a daily basis. I still do have these foods, all of them, in moderation because I don’t want to be Pac-Man anymore. That no one’s going to take these foods away from me. That there are healthier, just as great tasting healthier foods out there. That I don’t need to feel full to feel satisfied. That I want to be at or around 225 to be around for another 30 years (at least) to enjoy foods from all over the world just in smaller portions. And that it’s OK to have them not as every day meals but wonderful treats…

…like visiting Google and having a good game of Pac-Man for old time’s sake.