Zeal for Thy Gingerbread House Consumes Me

Advent and Weight Watchers

I continue on Weight Watchers, losing weight realllly slowly (heading towards 40 lbs total since May). They say it's a process, not a diet, and they're right. Some weeks are easier than others, and I'm getting the hang, sort of, of "balancing" a day: go out for a big festive family brunch and eat fruit for dinner, contentedly.

But man, is this a hard time of year. For two historical reasons:

1. I don't think I've had an adult year until this year when I didn't hit December first and think "Well, there are about twenty days until Christmas. I could lose twenty lbs! Or ten lbs! I could be down a whole size and fit into that whatever on the hanger, or that size in the store....." On December second, I would get up, do a 1/2 hour of aerobics, pack six celery seeds and an eyedropper of water for lunch, park eight miles from the office and walk briskly.....then all the flurry of aerobics and calorie-counting and whatnot fades off nearly immediately into another grim status quo, another "fat Christmas." (This was even in years I wasn't overweight by more than ten pounds - sheer habit.)

2. Chocolate chip cookies! Aunt Mary's candy! Mom's Hungarian horns! My peanut brittle! My stollen! Homemade this and special that comes rolling into the house, and even worse, into the office. It doesn't seem like Christmas unless there are some red and green Hershey's Kiss wrappers in the cupholder in the car....

The grace of Advent helps with both these issues, I'm finding, with God's help. First, we WAIT for the feast, we don't fall face forward into it. We give up lesser things and wait upon the Greater. When we do arrive at the Holy Day, we do enjoy the happy tastes, smells and sounds of life, but in reflection of His Gift, not just because. Second, if we trust, whether it be in the Weight Watchers Points System or in the Word of God, and stop making every last little damn decision ourselves, we will prosper. This is not to make God into a system, but He did give us a system, a model, a path, a Way. I think adults just don't trust enough, in anything. We are super-competent and judge all for ourselves. It's good to trust in God, and the gift He has given me of Weight Watchers.

The biggest revelation of all to me is that, if I firmly believe that God has given me my life, my gifts, and the meal in front of me, that it would be piggish to be, well, piggish. If what is in front of me is of MY OWN DOING, that I got it, made it, bought it with my money, then if feels like it's MINE, and I can treat it as my right and can consume it, spend it, eat it, give it away, even, using only my own satiety and sense of status as a measure of "enough."

So, I'm making the usual stuff (maybe I'll post a few recipes as we go along), to give much as gifts, but to leave some for home, for entertaining and for myself. I'm very comfortable for some reason in putting it all away, without leaving out one or two or a hundred: I am promised that we will feast, on Christmas Day. Why that's making the difference, I don't know - guess it's that Grace thing.

I'm also not obsessing over what I shall weigh on Christmas Day. I'm losing weight, I'm working to look and feel better, and with God's Hand on me, it will come in His Time.

I don't want to make it sound like this is totally easy, but it's certainly joyous around here lately.