How to Stay Skinny

I have a skinny family. All of us are skinny. Not a fat one among us. It has been the subject of consternation for friends and coworkers and peers to watch me eat and to see me not gain much. But I've discovered my family's secret.

When we eat, we eat. Many are the girls who can acknowledge that I've stomached half a pizza and half a package of Toll House cookie dough and ice cream and still had room for more. No inner organ down there digestin', just a bottomless pit.

However, many of my familiy members and I have chronic health issues. These issues may factor in, because any time we feel less than lovely and we think no food on earth looks good, we don't eat. Nothing looks good. We don't starve ourselves. And this doesn't happen on a regular basis. Just occasionally.

We also exercise. I do it because I have to manage my stress somehow. And heaven knows that yoga is one of the few things that helps. (Writing, though sometimes cathartic, is a double-edged sword; it is a catalyst more often than it is catharsis.)

I also recently decided to give up chocolate. The lack of the substance leads to less pain in my head in the long run. Now all that remains to be seen is just how far away from sugar willpower can take me. I'm guessing: not terribly far. Giving up chocolate, so far, is a beast! A terrible monster that, alas, I can only occasionally placate by giving it things I've tricked it into thinking are far more sugary than they are . . . like that yogurt . . .