Picking My Prison: Which Diet Program for Me?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I've got to lose weight.\u00a0 I will not tell you how much I weigh. I will admit that my blood pressure is edging up and my energy level is dropping down.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/publiccatholic\/2012\/09\/picking-my-prison-which-diet-program-for-me\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Picking My Prison: Which Diet Program for Me?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I've got to lose weight.\u00a0 I will not tell you how much I weigh. 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Hamilton has been an advocate for human rights, believing that government must support and defend the sanctity of all human lives, from conception to natural death. Representative Hamilton: Authored the original Victim\u2019s Protective Order to protect battered women, Obtained funding for the first statewide program for adult day care and the first statewide program of domestic violence shelters, and she She has also passed legislation to prevent law enforcement officials from publicly posting the private information of rape victims, Rep. Hamilton authored a 2005 law hailed as the most significant piece of pro-life legislation in Oklahoma in 30 years. She also passed the bill outlawing elective abortions in state-funded hospitals She has passed pro life bills requiring informed consent, parental notification, and limiting forced abortions. 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{"id":2802,"date":"2012-09-27T06:00:32","date_gmt":"2012-09-27T12:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/publiccatholic\/?p=2802"},"modified":"2017-02-09T00:18:16","modified_gmt":"2017-02-09T07:18:16","slug":"picking-my-prison-which-diet-program-for-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/publiccatholic\/2012\/09\/picking-my-prison-which-diet-program-for-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Picking My Prison: Which Diet Program for Me?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

$\"\"$ <\/a>I\u2019ve got to lose weight.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I will not tell you how much I weigh. I will admit that my blood pressure is edging up and my energy level is dropping down. It\u2019s time to stop buying bigger clothes. Time to stop hiding from mirrors. Time to quit avoiding the scale and \u201cforgetting\u201d to go get those blood tests the doctor ordered.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time for me to drop a pound or 50.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The trouble is, I don\u2019t want to.\u00a0Eat less, I mean.<\/p>\n

If you could wave that proverbial wand and painlessly shave off this bulk, I\u2019d be all for that. But watching every single bite I eat and not eating anything I like and never feeling full sounds like a punishment we should give to the worst criminals.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve considered ways to do this. I hear Weight Watchers is having a join-for-free special right now. SparkPeople costs nothing and seems to work for a lot of folks.<\/p>\n

All these programs work. If you do them. They even work for me. If I do them. Truth told, I have no trouble losing weight. I can lose on any \u201cprogram.\u201d What I can\u2019t do is keep it up.<\/p>\n

These \u201cprograms\u201d feel like whole-life straight jackets to me. <\/strong>\u00a0I can lose weight. All I have to do is watch every bite I eat with an obsessive exactness that often involves weighing my food and measuring it out at every meal as if I was building a bomb instead of sitting down to eat. No spontaneous bite may cross my lips.<\/p>\n

I become both my own jailer and my own prisoner, locked in my own gastronomic maximum security prison; caught in a war I can not win because it\u2019s between me \u2026 and me.\u00a0Keeping weight off is sentencing myself to this prison for life without parole. If I relax for a day, I stop losing. If I relax for several days, I gain.<\/p>\n

So. I have to keep tabs of every bite I eat. Every. Single. Bite. Every nibble. Every sniff and whiff of food cooking in the kitchen as I walk by. I have to write it down, tally it up and \u201ctrack it.\u201d<\/p>\n

I also have to monitor myself keeping tabs on myself to make sure that I don\u2019t forget to keep tabs on myself and start gaining weight again.<\/p>\n

If that isn\u2019t a self-made hell, what is?<\/p>\n

I\u2019d forget about it. Again. And buy bigger clothes. Again.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s that blood pressure, creeping up, and that constant tiredness that\u2019s become my new normal. I\u2019m willing to be ugly for food. But am I willing to die for it?\u00a0\u00a0I don\u2019t want to stand before God and have Him thump me on the head and say, \u201cYou threw away 20 great years I gave you because of chicken fried steak?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I need to give up avoiding mirrors and bathroom scales and pick a program. I\u2019ve been going to \u201cdo that tomorrow\u201d for a couple of weeks now. I\u2019m \u201cgoing to do that tomorrow\u201d again. I\u2019ll let you know this weekend if I do any better this week than I have in the ones before. Maybe talking to you about it will help me go ahead and take the plunge. I\u2019m hoping it will.<\/p>\n

Now let\u2019s see \u2026 Weight Watchers or SparkPeople \u2026 or maybe something else \u2026 Which prison will I pick?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"