Late Night Sonic Run

 

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Sunday

Late last night, which was Saturday night, my son and I were commiserating with one another about our situation. One of the reasons I picked the particular diet we’re both on is that we’re not ever supposed to get hungry. Other benefits of this diet (besides the resulting weight loss) include: cleaning up one’s blood chemistry so that cholesterol and blood sugar levels normalize and sugar and carb cravings go away. Since we have annual visits to the doctor coming up in late October, I was pretty psyched about going on this diet. I mean, what’s not to love? I’m looking forward to the doctor saying how proud he is of us for losing so much weight and that all of our blood work came back within normal ranges. This is not what he said last year. Last year he was livid in a professional kind of way, which looked a lot like restrained irritation, that we’d gained so much weight from the year before. I won’t even get into the blood test results! I still turn red when I think about it. No siree … that is not going to happen again this year! This has been major incentive to keep Ry and me on the straight and narrow.

However, I’m not going to lie to you, late last night, Ry and I found ourselves hungry. Not for the first time either. And I hadn’t gone to the grocery store for the upcoming week yet, so we were both hungry and we had nothing in our frig or pantry that we could eat.

We’ve been trying very hard and mostly succeeding at following this diet. The first couple of weeks were tough because we were fighting some really hardcore cravings for sugar and carbs – potatoes for him, pasta for me. Sweets for us both. But it’s been nice seeing the scales dip − over ten pounds now for me, even more for him. After that first flush of successful weight loss, though, the scales appear to be stubbornly set.

The good news is that I haven’t regained any weight. The bad news is I haven’t lost anymore either. Now I’m calling this our stupid diet. Our stupid, lying diet. Because while the cravings are not quite as intense as they were those first two weeks, we still get them, especially when we’re hungry. Because even after eating more starchless vegetables than any one person should ever have to eat along with the leanest of pork, chicken, turkey and beef, we still get hungry. Let me tell you, low fat cheese will only get you so far. The same with sugar free popsicles and fudgesicles, which tend to be my saving grace. Only, last night we were out of fudgesicles, popsicles and low fat cheeses. So under the circumstances, we decided to do what any normal human beings would do − we decided to cheat.

It was after 11:00 p.m. and we were watching TV when hunger struck. And you know what sounded really, really delicious? A cheeseburger. A yummy, ooey, gooey, greasy cheeseburger with lettuce, tomato, and pickles sandwiched in between two light-as-air-buns with a smattering of mustard. Oh, and, also, the smallest coke that Sonic had to offer. I probably should have insisted on going to Whataburger, but Whataburger is miles away and Sonic is around the corner, so I opted for Sonic. My husband David decided, shaking his head in disapproval, “What the hell, if that’s what the two of you want, then I’ll go get burgers.” Ry went with him.

Now it’s really nice that my hubby can be so judgmental. After all, it was just the other night when we went to eat at a sit-down restaurant that Ry and I choked down very dry chicken breasts with undressed salads. Our salads, by the way, came with flaky croissants drizzled with melted honey butter. Talk about temptation. We promptly handed the offending bread over to David. Well, my son promptly handed over his croissant. I did so more hesitantly. Hubby, on the other hand, ordered chicken pot pie, of all things! By the time we were finally served our meals, it was all I could do to get finished eating as quickly as I could. It was freezing in the restaurant and I couldn’t wait to get out of there. Hubby, however, was slowly savoring his homemade chicken pot pie with our two flaky croissants along with his second glass of Cabernet. He asked why I was so fidgety. I told him I was cold. Freezing, actually.

David said, “Really? That’s too bad because this chicken pot pie is keeping me nice and toasty.”

No. I didn’t smack him in the back of the head like he deserved. I want to believe that it was the wine talking. Even so, I gave Mr. Sensitivity a dirty look and said through gritted teeth, “Yes, but some of us can’t have chicken pot pie! Some of us can’t eat anything that has ‘pie’ as part of its name!”

“Oh, right,” he said, “I forgot.”

“Just drink your wine,” I said. “And give me your keys. I’m going out to the car where I can warm up while you finish.”

“Great,” he said, “you can drive us home as well. This Cab is pretty strong!”

So other than noticing his disdain Saturday night, I didn’t really care whether I was being judged or not. Ry and I have been very good over these past three weeks, and it wasn’t going to hurt us to enjoy a burger once in a blue moon.

When the guys got back from their Sonic run, my son brought me a TV tray with the Sonic bag and small coke perched on top. Ry, apparently, hadn’t been able to wait. He’d eaten his meal in the car.

I opened the bag with great anticipation and pulled out … what the hell!!! Why had I pulled out a junior burger? I looked into the bag. Surely I’d just pulled out the wrong burger and the big, juicy burger I’d been envisioning was still lurking at the bottom. Nope. It was just the one junior burger that consisted of a small, dry hamburger patty looking rather lonely between two buns. No mustard. No cheese. No lettuce, tomato or pickle. Just the tiny, naked patty, which had the hell cooked out of it. I took a sip out of my coke and nearly spit it back out. Yuk! This was not coke. This was a sugar free coke. Argh!!! While I can stomach sugar free popsicles, I absolutely hate the taste of sugar free cokes, something both my husband and son well know.

Now I was mad. I’d been deliberately set up. “David, what the hell did you bring me?”

“What do you mean? I brought you a coke and a burger, just like you asked!”

“Then what the hell is this?” I said. “The coke is sugar free and … this, this … why would you bring me this?” I asked as I showed him the dinky little burger with nothing on it.

David claimed all innocence and said he couldn’t believe they’d botched such a simple order. “That’s why I hate going through drive-thru’s,” he said. “They always, always get the order wrong!”

“You didn’t check the bag before you left?” I asked.

“Yeah, we checked − to make sure they got Ry’s order right, and his was fine and on top of your order. There wasn’t any reason to believe they’d get your burger wrong!”

David swore up and down that there was no way he’d intentionally screwed up my meal. He’d ordered the cheeseburger with everything on it, no onions, easy mustard, just like I always get it, and he’d ordered me a small coke. Not diet. The guy taking the order repeated it back to him, for Chrissakes! How the hell had they gotten it wrong? He pulled the ticket out intending to call them and complain. They charged him for a cheeseburger, by God, that’s what he paid for, and he expected them to do right by us, even if it was creeping up to their closing time. That’s when he discovered that the receipt said junior burger on it. That’s all he’d been charged for. “Just throw it away,” he said annoyed. I’ll go get you another burger from somewhere else. How about Wendy’s?”

I told him to just forget it. Even the Universe, apparently, was trying to keep me on track. And when the Universe is conspiring against you or … for you or … whatever … sometimes you just have to let go and accept it. To be clear, I threw the soft drink away, but I did eat the burger. I was, after all, hungry. It took the edge off, which is what I was needing to have happen, but I’ve never gotten so little enjoyment out of eating a burger. This has to qualify as one of the worst ever late night Sonic runs/diet cheats!

weight loss humor
Found on runner’sworld.com via pinterest

Anyway, thank you, Universe, cleverly disguised as inept Sonic employees, for keeping me from cheating – too badly.

The upside? On the scales this morning, it showed that I’ve lost two more pounds.

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