As someone who regularly dumps all food groups into the same bowl usually containing a goulash of store-bought breaded chicken nuggets, microwavable sweet peas, alfredo sauce from aisle eleven, Dollar General cream cheese, butter and fried onions, I am probably the last person you want to ask about fine dining. At least by all good society’s standards (It’s kinda good, actually.)

It’s no secret that I’m a middle-aged, divorced, obese pale woman hanging on to her mental faculties by their last strand with still no idea what I want to do with my life aside from traveling the country in an RV, writing about random, weird things that other middle-age women do with their time and packaging it up in books under the guise of a pen name so I can unleash my snarky, judgmental side and call it fiction.

But I’m also a glutton.

Not something I’m happy to face or admit, but there it is. I have a black belt in blackberry pie. I’m a subject matter expert in eggplant parmesan, and I’m here to commiserate with you about the fight to regain your pre-thirties waistline and resemble something more of a human instead of a kumquat.

It’s alright, I can admit it. 

But to be clear, I don’t approve of this behavior. I’m not a traveler on board the fat positivity wheelbarrow. I don’t believe it’s healthy to be overweight. But that doesn’t mean you’re a piece of shit by default and should be treated as such.

I just know that forty-something years of beating myself up doesn’t work. So I’m gonna try this whole self-acceptance thing to see if I can learn to like myself while simultaneously losing this weight. 

And that’s a tall order when you’re a self-diagnosed hypochondriac, pre-diabetic, and pastry pursuer. I’ve spent the past 20 years since my Marine Corps days trying to keep up a consistent routine. But trauma and toxicity and dealing with an obsessive compulsive need to overthink EVERYTHING paralyzes a person into inaction. The same old excuses. The same old record and I’m tired of playing it.

Speaking of pastry (or rather desserts), banana pudding is my favorite dessert. I don’t know why. I’m not a dessert snob. I love all kinds of desserts– chocolate cake, key lime pie, ice cream– I’m an equal opportunity glutton. I’m never going to say no to the dessert cart as it passes by, but there’s just something about the moment those hard, crispy wafers turn into soft breaded sweet pillows of banana pudding pleasure… I mean– how can you possibly stop yourself from eating just one bowl?

Obesity is like swimming in banana pudding. The deeper you get yourself into it, the less you can move. No idea if that made sense or not, but you get the point.

I recently read that all of our needs as humans boil down to two basic categories– comfort and significance. The more you’re lulled into the taste of comfort, the more you’ll sacrifice significance for comfort, and vice versa. 

That means that those Jiu Jitsu classes you’ve been putting off signing up for? You’ll never join because the thought of hurling your pearly white ass the size of a Smart car over your left shoulder may not fondly remind you of the badass of your yesteryears, and instead will very likely send you speedballing into the closest Dairy Queen on the way home for a double shot of a caramel cellulite depression with hot fudge and peanut sprinkles.

Comfort or significance. You’ll trade the one that offers you the quickest guarantee for faster, more immediate pleasure. And I know that for me, comfort has been headlocking significance for some time now.

That means you’ll avoid mirrors and scales. 

You’ll convince yourself you’re not that big.

That you can indulge.

That you’ll start on Monday.

Meanwhile…

The thighs get plumper.

The belly apron hangs a little lower.

The fleshy curtain wings jiggle more.

The ass gets broader.

Your self-esteem shrivels.

But what if?

What if we chose significance instead of comfort? I know that when I’m busy doing something that’s part of a mission greater than myself, I don’t have an overeating problem. I can go three days without eating. My significance to doing that thing is high, therefore it’s more important to me than comfort.

So, what if I ratchet up significance to always be more desirable than comfort?

What if I discovered how to plan my significance intentionally?

What if weight loss naturally follows significance and it’s a matter of staying in a state of action toward keeping that significance? And how do you not run yourself ragged staying in motion?

What if it isn’t weight loss you had to actively pursue in order to actually lose weight? What if it was significance instead? 

Pursue significance and the weight would take care of itself. After all, weight gain is simply a side effect of a deeper issue. I believe that issue is a lack of significance in my life. 

But, if you aren’t buying into this, then I have just the thing for you. A condensed but comprehensive short guide to gluttony. Follow this and you will slide neck deep into comfort as your dreams for significance, belonging and a need to matter to the world drift by on a slice of banana as you bathe in a tub of vanilla pudding apathy.

1. You have to value comfort over significance. In fact, significance must be irrelevant to you. Starting that new business isn’t going to be as fun as bathing in banana pudding.

2. You have to eat every time an emotional trigger comes up. It’s like taking a shot everytime you feel inadequate, but with food.

3. When you’re not eating, you have to think about eating.

4. You have to commit to losing all self-respect when you eat. We’re talking both hands elbow high into the ooey goeyness of indulgence.

5. You have to finish everything on your plate AND your partner’s regardless if he was finished or not (I don’t make the rules).

6. At work, you have to sneak into the break room, eat the leftover birthday cake, then quietly sneak the rest of it out of the building and tell all coworkers you pass by on the way out that you’re bringing it home to your kids, knowing damn well those crumb snatchers will never see an inch of that buttercream icing.

7. You have to fantasize about your favorite restaurant offering a buffet-style land grab for an all you can eat happy hour and you have to plan the route from work to each of them as an “early dinner” excuse on the way home.

8. You have to pretend you don’t want the fudge brownies sitting in the middle of the conference table only to come back 45 minutes after the meeting and dump them in your coat pockets.

9. You have to force yourself on a new Monday morning diet only to rebel against yourself by 11am and then eat fast food for two weeks to show you who’s boss.

10. You have to not care how you look or will look to the opposite sex because let’s just be honest, you’ve found more joy in stuffing your face with fried chicken and mashed potatoes under the bright refrigerator light well past 2am,. and any dude with a half an ounce of self-respect is not going to go for sharing your attention with the hunky high cholesterol meals you plan to date.

Laugh it up, but that’s just some of the atrocious behavior I’ve exhibited over the past 20 years. It’s gotten better as I’ve found more direction in my career, but it can be better. I can be better. 

Because I’m a little fed with attending get togethers and running into a petite southern vocal fry princess with her backhanded compliments about how “beautiful” my triple X blouse looks on me when we both know she’s asking me where I got it so she can see if they have it in her white Mercedes car cover size.

If I have to endure one more of these twits I might have to hand off my halo, forget my Christian upbringing, and smack the southern right out of her veins.

All this to say…

Banana pudding is terrific but don’t choose it over your self-respect.

Go for finding significance in your life, but only in those things that uplift you. Don’t search for it in others.

And finally, Paris Hilton-esque Stepford women are horrid manicured creatures who secretly have the same problem we big girls have. Only instead of obsessing over cake to feed their feelings and the big gaping hole in their soul, they use designer shoes and vitriol.

In the end, we’re all seeking comfort and significance. It’s just a matter of which one will fulfill you and which one is going to destroy you.

Act accordingly.