THE TYRANNY OF THE TWOS OR WHEN WILL JUST “ONE” OF ANYTHING EVER BE ENOUGH??

Last night I had the first hamburger(s) I’ve eaten in 204 days. It’s plural as I ate two burgers (but only on one bun!!) so I saved lots of evil, dark and nasty bread calories!!



For as long as I can remember whenever I would order fast food, I would always order two. Two hamburgers, two slices of pizza at the pizza by the slice place, two breakfast egg sandwiches…you get the idea.

The one exception was “Taco Tuesday” at Taco Johns® back when you could get two tacos for 99¢, then at lunchtime I’d buy EIGHT tacos for $3.96! (See my theory was that on taco Tuesdays the hard shell tacos were a little bit smaller so I needed more to fill me up!


Eight almost did it.


Now about last night…

Our church sets right across the street from our local community college and we as a church have tried to be good neighbors to them. For the last several years we have participated in a “welcome back cookout” for the students. Last night our participation included grilling almost 250 hamburgers for them. In which I participated by cooking for a brief time, to relieve the real chefs of our group.

Now I love to grill, probably a “guy thing” but I find it fun. Our next door neighbors have a big holiday cookout in their backyard each Memorial Day and Labor Day that includes anywhere from 25 to 50 people on average. (This has been going on for 44 summers!)While I have always been happy to cook for the others, since I’ve been watching my weight, I have decided that I will definitely man one of the grills to keep busy and focus on serving others rather than serving up too much food for myself. (If anyone ever decides you can acquire calories by inhaling, I’m sunk!) That strategy worked well on Memorial Day and on this past Labor Day Monday.

48 hours later I find myself in front of the grill again at the college and this time the burgers are shrieking out my name and DEMANDING I eat them!!


Knowing that I would be participating in this cookout last night I tried to prepare for it. I ate plenty of fruits and vegetables during the day so as not to starve myself. I had both of my protein shakes and I took in extra low-cal protein during the day to appease my hunger pangs. I drank about 3 ½ quarts of water during the day and I ate one of my “meal replacements” just before I went to cook so I wouldn’t feel hungry.


These are strategies that I have learned to use to battle overeating and they have been quite successful in my war against fatness.


But not last night.


Now my weight loss mentors would say that it is perfectly alright to eat the occasional burger….and it is! I had even allowed in my eating plan for the day to eat one if I wanted to.

In years past this cookout saw me eating 4 or 5 burgers throughout the course of the evening and when hot dogs were also offered, a few of them ended up in my tum as well. Several home made baked goods and bags of chips also wheedled there way in. Oh it was a “grand’ time let me tell you! Was I there to help cook or to eat a bunch of food? (Hint: While it was a nice cover story to say I was helping cook for the students, it was probably mostly always about the food.)


That’s kinda hard to admit to myself.


I’ve spent a lot of years building a “nice guy” persona and now I realize that in this case, being a nice person really didn’t have much to do with why I was there. It probably falls under the category of killing two birds with one stone.

I cooked for the students, and got to get “stoned” with too much food.


Man what a trip!








I had allowed for the possibility of ONE hamburger but I was COMPELLED to put two patties on the bun.

So what is different now? Big deal you had two hamburger patties! Well, it’s the “tyranny of the two”. If left unchecked, the small snowball at the top of the mountain becomes a formidable killer at the bottom.

Before I was given the weight loss skills I am putting into practice now I would have considered eating the two patties as a major defeat. Especially in the light of the precautions I took leading up to the event. A defeat like this, had I not been coached well by my mentors, could have tipped me back into giving up the idea that I can overcome, with God’s help this thing called morbid obesity.





So I deconstruct the events of yesterday. I try to look at it without a sense of guilt. I attempt to learn from this stumble and will talk with my weight loss mentors for steps I can take to avoid it happening again.

I forgive myself, and I don’t ever let the words “give up” come into play…ever!


I am not on a “diet”. I am learning skills to eat healthily for every day of the rest of my life. Putting these skills into practice will ultimately reflect on the scale the way I want it to.

One is enough. 

 ENOUGH IS A FEAST!

 Hmmm, that sounds like another blog entry for the future!


So, yeh, some heavy thoughts that once again lead me to move toward lighter living.