MMVI

January 1st, 2006

Here it is. The New Year !! What will be in our future ? What will we do different ? What will we change ? What will change us ? What will remain the same ?

A New Year always prompts resolutions and hopes. There seems to be a sense of starting-over, to a degree, and making up for the way things have been done in the past. Oddly enough, so many attempt to drown out the past with alcohol and drugs on that last night of each year. However, in a large sense, that is what I was doing for 51 years with food. Covering up the past, the unknown, the unwanted, the untried, the un-me. During "brief" times during those 51 years, I also used alcohol and to a much lesser degree, drugs, to do that which it seemed food was not covering up.

My instincts eventually told me the alcohol was not gaining anything. The Prozac, etc., was not doing anything except masking the things I refused to deal with. The real me was under all the excess pounds, actually screaming to get out, but itself muffled by more food, etc. I learned to take control, the moment I made that choice to have the stomach bypass surgery. That was a decision of control. In doing so, I gave up much of my own control after the surgery, in that I now can eat only limited portions, and many foods are off limits in a different way than ever before.

Tonight at dinner (actually last night, and therefore last year) reinforced my new mindset of not needing, and barely (if at all) wanting many of the old foods that I used to crave and consume in mass quantities, most of the time without really enjoying them, but rather just having to have them. I really feel better now about what I no longer eat. The many goodies that used to clog my system and my brain, no longer have control over me, and I truly can just say "no". True, I say "no" to some items as they would actually at this point make me physically ill, but the overall truth is, that the thought of just putting some food items in my system no longer appeals to me, even when I can do so, albeit in small nibbles. I don't crave them, don't want them, and don't need them to exist. so why succumb to their addiction again ? I don't, and won't.

2005 was a year of major change for me. 2006 will further that process, as well as allow me to spread my wings and flourish in ways previously unknown to me.

What will you do with your 2006 ???

Wally