Pizza

So, part of this process, as I said so beautifully at the end of the last post, is identifying which food have crossed the line into addiction level food.  Then I need to look at those food and try to identify why they reached that status.  I have been doing that for all my foods, and most of them have a very similar story.  First of all, here is my list of foods.

• Pizza/Calzone
• Soda (especially Pepsi)
• Lasagna/Italian Food
• Subs
• Cheeseburgers
• Cheese
• Cookies
• Brownies
• Breakfast Sandwiches
• Quesadillas/Mexican Food
• Cakes & Pies

I didn't include chips or fries, because I can usually take them or leave them.  Also, surprisingly, I am not all that in trouble when it comes to candy.  I may eat them, but I have gone long stretches without them and been fine.  I'm sure you all are looking at that list and going, "Shocking.  I never would have guessed."  Yeah, it is a pretty standard list for "if you want to gain weight, eat this."  Well, I have decided to address the first item on the list - my personal kryptonite.  Pizza.

Pizza is my favorite food.  It is the one food that I just have never been able to do without.  Whenever I try to diet, the thought of never having pizza again is enough to undermine my efforts.  I think about ways to make pizza work with my new efforts.  A few years back, I got into Weight Watchers and lost fifty pounds in about four months.  But I still found ways to eat pizza.  And on my birthday, I took a break to eat some deep dish Pizzeria Uno and never was the same again.  It never fails, pizza hurts my efforts and hold me down.  Before I started this effort last week, I was about to start a new diet with Heather.  It was combining carbs and proteins in a way to make sure you didn't stockpile carbs.  Heather was on this during her pregnancy with Gabe, and it was very effective.  But the first thing I did, I tried to come up with a way to make pizza work in the structure.

So how did this food, this pizza, become such a force in my life?  I have tried to think through this over the last week.  Actually, I have tried to think through this many times over the years.  Here is what I kind of figured out.  When we were growing up, my mom was a great cook.  She made a wide variety of foods and made them well.  I, of course, was a spoiled brat child.  And I did not like all the food she made.  In fact, some of them I detested.  Meat loaf, Italian breaded pork cutlets, pork chops, smothered chicken.  I never made my mom's life easy.  There were some foods I really liked.  Being a snotty punk, I wanted to eat the foods I liked and grumbled about the ones I didn't.  (I think this is the way things go with kids.  My kids pull the same junk on me.  And my food is awesome, so I know it is not deserved.)  

My mom did a great job of making sure we got a variety of dinners.  We would never have any one meal too often.  Mom my made great pizza.  I always liked it.  We had it about once every two weeks.  I always looked forward to pizza night.  Now pizza also appeared a few other times outside of normal dinner routine.  Pizza had a special status in our home.  We would watch the Super Bowl together, and have pizzas from the Publix Deli.  (They used to make them and have them in the cooler case.  They were awesome.)  There also was the Ambrosia Restaurant down the street.  We rarely got food from there, but they had the most amazing calzone that we would get a couple times a year.  We didn't eat out much, but the type of food we had most was pizza.  My mom loved Pizza Hut and so we would get that every so often.  In short, pizza was fun and delicious.  It was attached to many good memories.  It was a happy food.

As we got older, my mom wanted to make our lives happy.  Things were not always great at home - lots of fighting and tension.  This is no secret to anyone who knew our family.  It wasn't a happy place to be for much of the time.  My mom wanted to help us be happier, and so she started to trim our menu down to the foods we liked.  This also helped to combat the complaining.  We also began to eat out more.  Things like soda, pizza, lasagna, burgers that used to be made less frequently now were more common.  This was the status when I left for college.

Ah, college.  On my own for the first time.  I had a big meal plan at UCF, with lots of flex dollars to use above and beyond my meals.  I was in charge, and I took full advantage of this.  I would eat what I wanted.  For breakfast, I used the cafeteria breakfast buffet for eggs, omelets, bacon and sausage.  For lunch, we could eat at any food service spot - just had to be within a certain amount of money.  I had monte cristos, quesadillas, burritos, burgers.  I also would hit the pizza place on campus and have pizza, calzones, and meatball subs.  For dinner, I would eat at the cafeteria if they had stuff I liked.  Mexican night?  Sí, señor.  Italian buffet?  Of course.  Boring roast beef or whatever?  Head over to the Wild Pizza.  This combined with me getting my first credit card.  So, it got to the point where I would be buying pizza at the Wild Pizza for lunch and/or dinner.  I also would order it from Pizza Hut.

My eating habits were, to say the least, atrocious.  As I got into my third and fourth years, when I lived off campus, it got even worse.  I would be on campus all day, hanging out in the Baptist Collegiate Ministries office in between classes.  I ate out for so many meals.  Burger King, McDonalds, Miami Subs, Denny's, Taco Bell.  And, one of the most visited locations was the Pizza Hut lunch buffet.  We hit that at LEAST once a week.  I figured it out one time that I spent about $900 on pizza in a semester when I lived in the dorms.  I burned through money and packed on calories and pounds.  I ballooned in college.  But that wasn't the worse step.

Once I graduated, I moved to Tampa for my first job.  I would be gone all day and much of the night - working at the church or the BCM.  I rarely ate at home - even when I was staying with a wonderful lady from the church for two years who provided food for me.  Sure, I would eat the sausage and biscuits she always had in the fridge.  And I ate the frozen pizzas she always had for me.  No way on the veggies, though.  I now was hitting buffets with the guys all the time - rotating between pizza, Mexican, Chinese, Mongolian, big hot grill.  Since I worked with students, pizza was always around.

I had trained myself to link pizza with fun.  It was at parties and special events.  It was available at youth group in high school.  We had it at men's Bible study.  Whenever there was a good time going, there was the round taste pleaser in the middle of it all.  Instead of just being a special food once in a while, it became a special food all the time.  And, to paraphrase Syndrome from The Incredibles, "If its always special, it never is."  Special became normal.  The fun foods were the standard foods.  If it wasn't fun, it became just about impossible to convince myself to eat it.  Why would I?  That changed when I got married and we started making food at home.  Heather tried, just like many others before, to get me to eat veggies and simple meat dishes.  But I didn't want those or like those.  I wanted the fun stuff.  Almost ten years later, I still feel that way.  I have learned to make the more "boring stuff," but it always was just a waiting game until the fun stuff hit a few days later.

That's where I am.  Pizza is fun.  I am always at the place where I can eat pizza.  Even if I've eaten and then we go somewhere that has pizza, I could eat some.  It doesn't matter if I have it for lunch, I could have it for dinner.  I could eat it every night - I proved that my freshman year of college.  And, honestly, I have a hard time picturing myself not eating it again.  That is the one food that as I go through this process I just have trouble parting with.  I keep thinking about how I can get it back at some point.  Some day, I will be strong enough.  Some day, I will be able to eat it without it being a problem.  Maybe I can come up with a way to make it healthy.  But the fact remains that I can't do that.  I need to just give it up - for good.  If some day it comes about that I can actually eat it, well that will be interesting to see.  I don't see that happening.  

This is where I need to truly recognize this as an addiction.  An alcoholic can't begin drying out hoping that some day he will be able to drink again.  You have to go into the process being willing to give it all up forever.  Those things on the list have to go.  If I get to the point where I can have some of them again, well superdy duper.  But I am not going into this as a temporary phase of my life.  I am trying to make it a permanent change.  I would not at all be surprised if I will end up saying, "The last time I ever had pizza was January 15, 2010."  Is that sad?  Yes.  Very much so.  I am very sad at the prospect of never having those things again.  I honestly have no clue how to approach life without those things.  But I have to find out.  I'm tired of being bested by food - no matter how fun it is.  Ciao, pizza.  It was fun.  But I want to be free.