So, today was mom’s birthday. We all went out to eat in honor of her fifty-seventh year on Earth. Iguana Joe’s is possibly the best Mexican food on the planet.
I was extremely concerned about going out to eat so early in my transformation. I’m still very new to what I’m trying to do that I wasn’t sure how to handle it. I’ve also not really spoken to my family about what I’m doing. I would prefer to start losing weight and have them notice and approach me about it rather than make a public announcement that will most likely be received with ridicule and misunderstanding. I voiced my concerns to my bf, CH, who gave me such wonderfully practical advice. Order from the children’s menu. If that’s not possible, order appetizers. Drink a lot of water so you have an excuse to make visits to the bathroom to pray, if necessary. Divide the food on the plate into smaller portions and eat only the best parts. Pray, pray, pray, pray, pray.
I didn’t do as well as I should have and ate more than I should have, but I didn’t eat as much as I usually do and actually sent my plate back with the waitress with food still on it. I got their Pollo Loco plate which includes a fajita chicken soft taco, a chicken flauta, and a chicken enchilada, plus the requisite beans and Spanish rice. For my drink, I ordered iced water with lemon. In addition to our dinners, we had the normal chips and salsa, plus Dad ordered a huge appetizer of chili-cheese fries.
My normal routine in a restaurant like this is to really chow down on the chips and salsa. Before our appetizers even got to us, we’d need a refill of both. I’d also need a refill of the diet Coke I always order. Once the appetizer arrived, I’d make sure I got my share and would consume it along with handfulls of more chips. Then, not really feeling hungry anymore but excited about gorging on more rich food, I would finish every scrap of food on my dinner platter (and they are, indeed, platters and not plates). The rice and beans would be used as a kind of dip for yet more tortilla chips. We’d need another refill of them before dinner was through. The dinner that I would order had a bit of everything I loved on it: enchiladas, crispy tacos, chalupas, pork tamales, along with the ever-present refried beans and Spanish rice. Sometimes, I would finish this food, enough to have fed a hungry family of four, and would consider looking at desserts. By this time, some of the guilt would have started to creep back in, though, and in the interest of not looking like the pig that I was, I would forego the sweets. It could wait until I got home.
Tonight, I purposefully looked at parts of the menu I usually ignore. The “Specialties” menu, the children’s menu, and the appetizers. There was absolutely nothing on the appetizers section that looked, well, appetizing. Dad order the fries, but they weren’t even listed. They’re just something he knows they serve. The children’s menu wasn’t much better, but it was getting there. Finally, out of desperation to stay away from the combo plates that have always been my downfall, I checked the Mexican specialties and spied their crazy chicken (Pollo Loco) dinner.
I took a few minutes to consider the impact of ordering this particular plate. It had been about six hours since I’d last eaten, and that meal had been half a taquito and two more bites of the chimichanga from earlier in the day (the rest was thrown away). I was feeling lightheaded by the time we left for the restaurant, but I knew we were going out and I wanted to make sure I was hungry and could eat! I figured that if “normal” hunger allowed me to eat about two taquitos and one chimichanga, I was safe ordering something with one soft taco, one enchilada and one flauta.
I think the first mistake I made was eating all of one thing before sampling something else. I started in on the soft taco and finished it before I even knew what was happening. The enchilada was gone in about four bites. It wasn’t big, but I should have slowed myself down and prayed more. Maybe praying between bites would help… I was completely lost when I started eating the flauta. It was, by far, the best Mexican food I’ve tasted in a long time. I finished it also, dipping it into everything I had on my plate and trying it with each flavor combination I could come up with. I was really worshipping that food! By the time it was gone, I was disappointed that there weren’t more, so I consoled myself by eating my beans and rice with a few chips. Not a handful of them, but maybe five or six. I finished most of the food on my plate. I left about 1/3 of the rice and beans behind, along with quite a bit of the sauce and toppings they had on the enchilada. The sauce and toppings could have been an entire side dish! If I had eaten properly and sampled everything in small bites, not finishing any one thing but tasting all, I would have realized that I really liked the flauta and could have passed on the enchilada. Then, I could have finished the flauta, left the enchilada on my plate. At that point, eating some of the rice and beans on chips would have been okay.
I made my second mistake when I spied a little girl, about four years old, with her grandpa, across the restaurant at a stainless steel box. This box was a self-serve ice cream machine. The restaurant provided the ice cream plus cones free of charge. So I got a vanilla cone. It wasn’t huge – the cones were tiny. I wanted chocolate, but it was still in the process of freezing, so I had vanilla. Not entirely disappointing, but not what I wanted either. We sat and talked for a bit while waiting for the rest of our group to finish their meals and/or drinks. And then I noticed another child with a chocolate ice cream cone. So I got one of those as well.
So, here I sit, feeling not full but definitely beyond satisfied. I want to lie to myself and say that I’m just satisfied and that I did well tonight and ate less than half what I usually eat. After all, I had exactly three small chili cheese fries from the appetizer and only two chips before our meal arrived, AND I left food on my plate. I did good, right?!? Wrong. I am full. I have sinned. I don’t care that today’s society does not consider overeating gluttony, because I know that God does. I am guilty. There are no degrees to guilt. You are either all guilty or not guilty at all.
Father, I am ashamed of myself. Instead of trusting you and leaning on the strength you so readily provide, I did what I wanted. I did what I usually do. If I didn’t think it was further sin, I would glady get rid of what I’ve glutted on tonight. If it would make the sin go away, I would do it. But nothing I can do will absolve me. I am guilty. Only the blood sacrifice of Your Son on that cross can save me. Jesus, I really need you right now. I don’t want the fear of guilt to be what controls my overeating, gluttonous spirit. I want the desire to please You and be pleasing to You be what guides my eating habits. I don’t deserve it, but I ask anyway for your forgiveness one.more.time. I cannot do this alone. I cannot. In Jesus’ name I pray, amen.
