May I have the 1/2 gallon of ice cream . . . . Please!

First of all, ice cream doesn't come in a half gallon size anymore. This was part of a marketing ploy designed to keep prices the same while shrinking the container size. I've seen this in ice cream, coffee (12 oz instead of 16 oz), even girl scout cookies. This way the consumer pays the same amount but gets less product. So the title should read, "May I have the 1 and 1/2 quart container of ice cream please (doesn't sound as good).

Let us look on the bright side! If you are a binge eater like me, and you are having a bad day like I did yesterday, these lovely marketing people just saved me about 400 calories and 14 grams of fat. How is that for looking at the glass half full?

This week's topic at my WW meeting was emotional eating. Emotional eating covers a total array of feelings such as sorrow, anxiety, happiness, anger, fatigue, and boredom, just to name a few. One of my triggers is boredom and fatigue. I can usually eat my way through any feeling except extreme sorrow or anger, which thankfully doesn't happen often. But yesterday, I found out that through an error made by a technician at Geek Squad, I lost all of my personal files from my 160G hard disk. I've had this computer for six years. Think about all of the "stuff" you have amassed on your computer over the last 6 years. The most absurd part is that this technician bypassed my back-up system - he effectively wiped out my back-up.

I was sick to my stomach. What really upset me was the loss of all of my photos. Six years of photos of my children. That would be ages 2 (my daughter) through 13 (my son) - GONE. Think about it: loss of a first tooth, Communion, Christmas, Birthdays, Vacations and the best photos of all, my husband and I just goofing around with the children. At first I could not eat. After about 2 hours I was hungry and began to eat the grilled chicken Greek salad I bought as part of our Friday night's "take-in"

Then I kept going. The salad was HUGE and I could have easily stopped half way but I didn't. I ate the whole thing. After the salad I kept looking for more. I was looking to anesthetize the anger and loss I was feeling. Thankfully I had some low fat apple streusel left over which I devoured with low fat ice cream. I ate a couple of pieces of chocolate and then I went back for the rest of the ice cream . . . . . . . STOP!!!

Here I am standing in my kitchen with 1200 calories and 42 grams of fat (and a spoon) in my hands. Please remember - for me this is the equivalent of the alcoholic holding a bottle of vodka in her hand. Something clicked in my head. Maybe it was the WW meeting I had been to the day before. Maybe it was all of those photos - photos of me and my husband and our children. Eating the ice cream was not going to bring back my hard drive or any of those photos. Eating the ice cream was just going to make me fat and miserable and unattractive in all of the future photos I was going to take to make up for the incompetent person who did this.

I put the ice cream back in the freezer and I closed the door. I closed the door on that big nasty demon. I made myself a cup of tea and went to bed. I didn't sleep very well. I spent most of the night trying to figure out how I was going to get back my files and how I was going to retaliate. I kept on thinking . . . yes this sucks, it really really stinks but worse things could happen.

Many years ago the great singer, songwriter and guitarist Eric Clapton lost his son. It was a tragic pointless accident. Clapton is a reformed alcoholic and drug addict. I watched an interview with him a few years after the tragedy and the interviewer asked him if he (Clapton) drank or used drugs after he lost his son. Clapton said that he didn't. He believed that if he had gotten drunk or stoned, that act would have discredited his son's life. It would have also been a complete act of hypocrisy as he was the founder of a rehabilitation center for alcoholics and drug addicts.

I'll never forget that interview. From this tragedy came a beautiful song "Tears in Heaven".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g2IlaDLVLo