Cookies and Cardio: A Love Story

     Did anyone else play that board game Candy Land? You had to draw cards and bring your little gingerbread people through all sorts of candy themed biospheres, meeting sugary characters, some of them more sketchy than others. While I've got your attention, I'd like to send a shout out to my girl, Queen Frostine, the baddest b*tch on the board. Note the cold dead gaze.     All the characters were interesting, but there was one I will never forget and probably never forgive. That freaking Mr. Mint. You all know him! He was a tall, red and white striped creeper with dead eyes and he hung out in the Candy Cane Forest.    The reason I hated Mr. Mint was because, when my family sat down to play, at least five times a game I would get to the Candy Cane Forest and then that sadist would send me back to the Sugar Plum Patch at the beginning of the board. It was like I had a target on my forehead and Mr. Mint had a peppermint sniper rifle.      I used to have nightmares about

     This week has been hectic. Most of it has been spent in New York, as my family got together to bury and celebrate the life of my late grandmother. That being said, getting the chance to regroup and write this from my own bed has been wonderful. But now that I'm home, it's back to the reality of eating right and hitting the gym. After I finish writing here, it will be a breakfast of eggs and then off to that lime green and purple sweat shop by my house.      But before I go, I want to talk a little more about why I'm doing this; the spirit of the process so to speak. And to do that, I will start by telling you a couple of stories.      Once Upon a Time, when I had managed to lose all that weight before, I walked into a church on a Sunday morning. I was standing around, as church goers do, and sipping my water, watching the hustle and bustle of people getting ready for the service. It was then that I was suddenly surrounded by that beloved and ever waiting group of p

       This morning I woke up late and, wrapped in a blanket, walked to the scale. It was that time; I'd been eating healthy all week and was really looking for that number to generate on the screen. My breath wasn't coming in tight gasps, as it did in a time before I had made friends with the scale. But there was still an energy of expectation, of hope, and of nervousness.        When I weigh myself, I stare very closely at my face in the mirror above the scale; making eye contact with the person I'm learning to love and giving them a pep talk about self worth in the time it takes for the numbers to calculate. Taking a deep breath, I looked down... and there it was: 200.8lbs. That meant I could finally start writing. I had hit the goal I'd set, the reward being this blog.        My weight and I have been in a constant dance, since I was very young. And I must admit, she was a dance partner I hadn't learned to get along with until very recently. She was large an