Day 116: Slacking Off With Comfort Food

I have been slacking as of late with this blog and in the timely manner in which I have been posting.  The last month has been hard emotionally and I now starting to heal from my grief.  For the past week most of my blog entries have been written I just haven’t published them and I want to apologize to you, my readers.  Just as I need to clean up my diet, so too, I need to get back in the saddle with timely blog publishing.  I have struggled with both.

Why is it eating bad is so easy?  We all know we should eat in moderation and avoid certain foods but what makes fried chicken so comforting?  Are comfort foods associated with memories, taste, sensations?   

It is believed that comfort food often provides a nostalgic or sentimental feeling to the person eating it which makes me ask myself what happy memories do I have associated with fried chicken?  How about pizza?  I can’t really think of one other than I love the taste.  As a kid I didn’t eat a lot of fried food since my father grilled mostly.

Why aren’t corn dogs one of my comfort foods?  As a kid, if I behaved in church, every Sunday we would go to the Wienerschnitzel for hotdogs and the arcade.  I would shove quarters into the game machines while eating corn dogs.  Now, I love corn dogs, but I never crave them.  Never have I said, man today I need a corn dog.  You would think with a memory that vivid that corn dogs would be one of my comfort foods, however I can’t tell you the last time I had a corn dog. 

Maybe for me there is also a certain laziness in comfort foods.  Pizza and Chinese have become staples over the last stressful three weeks.  They are both too easy.  Just order and they are there and it is comforting to know you don’t have to cook.  Clean-up is just as easy since most of the time you throw away the container your food came in and all you have to do is put a few dishes in the sink. 

Comfort food comes at a price and that price is paid by the extra pounds I have to carry around.  Even with the exercise I have put on a few pounds over the past few weeks and sadly I am right back where I started. After being down almost 10 pounds.  I know I am not the only one who has ever done this.  The question that interests me is: Why?  Why do we do this same dance over and over?

My struggle with weight has always been like this.  First I lose, start feeling good, then something happens and it becomes a struggle that results in me gaining it all back.  Are we merely fighting genetic predisposition when it comes to weight.  I have read on multiple occasions that our genes determine everything from our height and eye color to our muscle mass and weight.  Is being a certain size like having brown eyes?  You can cover it up with contacts (diet and exercise) but in the end you will always have brown eyes (be fat). 

Daily Recap:

Matt: 30 minute jog at a constant 4.4 miles an hour.  I maintained a heart rate of 135 beats a minute

Kelly: 1 hour brutal workout with her trainer