Day 29: Up .2/-24.6 total/ Counting hours instead of days now

It's forty hours until the stroke of midnight tomorrow evening, my final day of this 30 day juice fast.  But, I won't be waiting breathlessly for the clock to strike while holding a family-sized bucket of KFC.  Instead, I will be in a hotel bed, fast asleep.

What do I plan to eat for my very first solid meal the following morning?  Fresh fruit salad like I did on my last fast. 

 I will be on the road tomorrow for a couple of days, doing my gig as a comedian at a holiday party for construction workers. The event is being held in a conference room in one of my favorite casinos, with one of my favorite buffets. (Translation:  any casino/any buffet.)  

But it's work and amazingly I have rules.  I don't gamble where I perform.  I also make it a rule not to eat at any venue where someone from the audience could see me beforehand.  Entertainers talk about keeping up a "Wall" between you and the audience until the show is over.  For me,  it is more than that.  It's all the shame I've felt as a fat girl when eating in public.  I've felt shame if ate normally, as well.  And as a teen, I was too embarrassed to order a salad. I worried that if I did, the waitress would figure out that I was fat.  And when I would finally say screw it all and ordered whatever I wanted, eventually I'd drown in a tidal wave of guilt.

I think all that shame and guilt spurred on my compulsive eating.  Today I found an old diary from 28 years ago.  As always, I was bemoaning my weight on paper, trying another new diet and vowing to exercise it off.  What is interesting to me is that what I weighed then is my goal weight now.  

But looking back is easy.  Planning for today and tomorrow takes work.  Not only do I want to lose the extra weight, but I want to lose the shame attached to both being obese and having once been obese.  Some of the most fantastic and beautiful people I have known and idolized were extra-large.  And some of meanest were downright skinny.  

What really counts for all of us is what is on the inside.  I am working on improving that as well, although an hour of aerobics is a hell of a lot easier.

Day 29:  Juicing like a timekeeper/Up .2/ -24.6 total

Quote for the day:  "It's never to late to live happily ever after." Unknown.

Pat Dennis
Corporate comedian and author:
Hotdish To Die For
Hotdish Haiku
Stand-Up and Die
Anne Frasier's Deadly Treats 

and more