A BIRTHDAY SURPRISE OF A DIFFERENT SORT

Last weekend my wife and I were invited to a 50th. birthday party for one of her co-workers husbands. Neither of us had met him but it was important to her co-worker we come and so it was important to us to be there.
 

This was no small affair.  A party room was rented at the Holiday Inn and there were black plastic hats, black beads, dark sunglasses and glow-in-the-dark necklaces for all to wear.  A DJ was hired for music and there was a buffet style food table set up.  Each table was decorated in black and there were Hershey’s Kisses strewn all about the tabletop.
 
It was a first rate party!  We had a good time visiting with the other guests, and it was a good chance for me to people watch. 
 

The buffet table had an assortment of choices. There were fruits, vegetables and cheeses, and several hot items including wings and egg rolls.  I decided early on that it was best for me to just sip my diet Coke and not eat.  The fruits and veggies I could handle, but I wasn’t sure about the wings and egg rolls.  I wasn’t going to rush in where “diet angels” would fear to walk.
 
This is when I learned a valuable lesson.
 
I watched the other people eating around me.  One lady’s plate I noticed in particular, though she was not the only one.  There was ONE eggroll, ONE chicken wing, ONE slice of Swiss cheese and a small assortment of fruits and vegetables. 
 

Good grief! There was more plate showing than food!
 
I sat at her table for two hours and she never did completely finish what she’d taken!  A nibble here, a nibble there…Mein Gott in Himmel!!
 
Intellectually I know that what she did was the socially acceptable thing to do.  This was a party food party, not a sit down “big meal” affair; but before I would have treated this buffet line as an all I could eat competition. 
 

“Just roll that steam table of wings over to my table please!”
 
Before it would have been all about the food and very little about the people I was seated at the table with.
 
So I sat at the table visiting with the other guests around me, nursing my Coke and stealing a Hershey kiss or two from my wife. 
 
Never in my life have I done that before.  Oh!--- Not that!--- I’ve stolen lots of “kisses” from my wife before…the “not eating all the free buffet food I could get” was the new experience.
 
Well, there was that time I passed on the Swedish meatballs……YUCK!
 
In times past I would have made a minimum of two trips to the food table, (let alone the carnage I would have inflicted on the cake, mints and nuts table!)  I would have concentrated on the food I was eating and not the people I was with.
 
This time I was trying real hard to concentrate on the people I was with, but I was also thinking a lot about the food I wasn’t eating.
 
Trying not to feel deprived.  

Trying to focus on this new chance at life I’ve been given.  

Practicing a new freedom my mentors have been teaching me. 
The freedom not to eat--- a birthday surprise of a different sort!
 
And it’s still true, I’ve never been sorry for what I didn’t eat.
 
Is it fun at the time?  Of course not!  But neither is the guilt I feel when I fall off my reduced eating plan…that guilt is worse than “not fun.”
 
Fitting into jeans that are 14 inches smaller around the waist is fun!
Fitting into a 1X shirt (with no button gap!!) and tossing out my 6X’s is fun!
 
Having my wife’s arms able to really reach around and hug me again is FUN!
 
Ahhhh, these heavy thoughts that move me toward lighter living!