30-Something Scribbles: Thrown to the wolves ...
By Christine Esovoloff
I came across an old Cherokee story last night about a grandfather telling his grandson about a battle going on inside of him. It is between two wolves, one that is good and represents kindness, love, and truth, and the other that is evil and stands for resentment, hate, and lies. The little boy, engrossed in his grandfather’s story, asks which wolf will win the battle; to which his grandpa replies, “Whichever one I feed.”
First of all, how awesome is that story?! I immediately shared it with my family and we all discussed how we felt it could relate to us.
Well, during our talk I started to think about the battle that rages on deep inside of me every day. Only, mine is a little different, my battling demons aren’t wolves. Mine are WAY scarier!
One is a health-conscious, vegetable-loving freak who exercises regularly, does yoga, and eats things like fat-free sour cream. (Tastes like glue! If you’re gonna eat it, it might as well have flavour, ya know?!) Anyway, aside from the whole fat-free sour cream thing, this chick’s got some good points … and I try to listen to her whenever I can.
But she’s got some tough competition.
Which brings me to the other contender: a slothful, lazy girl who likes to wear mumus, watch re-runs of the Golden Girls, and thinks that the four food groups are chocolate, bacon, cheesecake, and coffee.
Mmmmmmm, bacon.
Who doesn’t love bacon?! And the Golden Girls rock! (In fact, I like to think of myself as a young Sofia Petrillo.) I’m not too sure I want to start wearing mumus … but you can see my dilemma: both girls have some pretty strong points in their favour!
Anyway, so the battle between these two goes on day after day and sometimes, it gets really ugly.
Who is winning, you ask? Well, the one I’ve been feeding of course!
I’ll let you guess which one that is. (Hint: She’s really HUNGRY!)
Now I’m sure that I am not the only woman out there who has these two nags battling inside. In fact, I know that there are plenty of women out there who are just like me.
Here’s how my typical day goes … I wake up all gung-ho to listen to my inner health nut, I boil up some sort of tasteless whole grain and mix it with some fresh fruit and choke it all back while trying to convince myself that it is just as good as French toast smothered with syrup and a side (or two) of bacon. Mmmmmmm, bacon. Then I brew myself a coffee, (when it comes to coffee, my inner health nut can shove it because I just can’t go through the day without it) BUT I should add that I only use cream, no sugar.
Not too bad so far, right?
Then it all starts to go to hell. I start bustling about my day, doing chores, running errands and forgetting to eat or drink anything until I almost fall over from hunger. Well, at this point the junk food junkie sees her window and starts pushing me to eat one of my kids ooey-gooey granola bars.
“You need to bring your blood sugar up; she coos seductively, it’s the only thing that will help.”
So I dig in, after all, I AM starving and she did make a good point about the whole blood sugar thing. Oh, what the heck, I’ll have two, its way easier than making something for lunch, right?!
Then I start to feel guilty and my inner junkie pipes in, “Well, you messed that one up! You might as well go ahead and eat crap for the rest of the day now.” (I don’t know where my inner health nut is at this point, but sometimes I think I can hear her muffled cries, like she’s being smothered with a pillow or something.)
Anyway, so I decide to go ahead and eat another granola bar. You know, because that makes sense. Oh what the heck, I might as well throw a bag of nachos in there, too! I’m not even really hungry anymore at this point, but why stop an already sinking ship, right?!
*Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Oh Christine, everything in moderation! Blah, Blah, Blah!” Well, I’ll tell you something, ‘moderation’ does not exist for this chica. It is all or nothing for me, baby! It is either no chocolate brownies or 12 chocolate brownies, there is no in between.
So, armed with nothing but a guilty conscience and a wicked sugar-high, I carry on with my daily activities.
After a while, the sugar high crashes, the guilty feelings subside and I decide that I can make up for my little indiscretion by ‘working it off’ on my elliptical. After all, if I burn all of the empty calories I just ingested, it’s like the whole thing never happened, right? RIGHT!
So, the day eventually comes to a close; I have dinner with the family, and get the kids ready for bed. Woooohooooo! Looking back, sure I had a small stumble, but I turned it around in the end. Right?
WRONG! Because this is the part of the evening where my chocolate craving hits. 8 o’clock every night, it never fails.
The two girls inside me start their battle … the health nut trying to convince me to JUST SAY NO and walk away while I’m still pulling even … and the junkie alternating between telling me that I deserve it because of the killer day that I just had, or that I might as well just go ahead and gorge myself again since I already messed up the whole day earlier anyway. Depending on my mood, one of the junkie’s two arguments usually wins and I end up wolfing down some chocolate.
But it’s okay. Tomorrow is a new day, right?! A fresh start! And I vow to eat completely healthy and work-out!
Yeah, right.
I usually just re-play the same dialogue between my two inner demons day after day, with some slight variation in what I end up devouring. Some days it’s granola bars, some days it’s cookies or ice cream, and sometimes, it’s even handfuls of those waxy little chocolate chips that you use for baking. Those are the really bad days. Where the health nut is on those days, I have no idea, probably crying in a corner.
Sigh.
I think I’d rather have the wolves.
