By Puja

I hear you asking what is fud?  Fud is how your greedy friend here pronounces food when she’s excited. Yes. I get excited about food. Not that kind of excited (shout out to food fetishists). But thinking about tooling a recipe, thinking about a dish, tasting a new to me chef’s signature dish thrill me in a way that few things do. I have a lot of issues around food, and this may be one of them, but that’s for me and a trained professional to work through.

I recently gained 12 pounds. And it snuck up on me. I was in the midst of being an independent single lady, and I went on a lot of dates with myself (no, I didn’t put out).  Then I got caught up on the “treat yo’self”  merry go round. By the time I came off the ride,  here were 12 lbs of extra me. As anyone who has ever been through this struggle knows, it is difficult to forgive yourself and refocus.

Look, I know that food isn’t the culprit here. I know it comes down to my willpower and impulse control (or lack thereof).  I think I have an issue with food. While this just means a longer tour of duty on the front lines of “Battle of the Bulge,” I don’t think I want to give up my social life.  Here are some of the activities I have been FOMO-ing and YOLO-ing about town doing:

Garden Party & wine tasting
Painting and wine
Dinner club
Beer Fest
Vodka Trot
Playoff watching parties
Picnic concerts in the park
VIP dinner and book reading
4 dozen donuts in a month as research for my food blog

Not counting all the birthday parties, engagement dinners, baby showers, and happy hours. That’s a lot of calories in a given week. In fact,  I just left a pre-concert dinner of Korean fried chicken.

OK. Ugh. I let my life revolve around food. In fact,  I have recently found myself getting angry when I go out to eat if the slightest inconvenience ruins my experience. Fud is my religion.  You are ruining how I worship with your lack of salt!  Why did I let it get so intense? I’m a Foodie and I love food. I love what food represents as nourishment, as art, as a touchstone of history, the interplay of culture and heritage… I love food. So when I use it as self-sabotage, it is the epitome of unhealthy.

This is my first detour on my fitness journey that was longer than a cheat weekend, it was a cheat month and a half. So I’m starting from scratch. My new year’s resolution to lose 20lbs, just increased to over 30, fine. I will reap the consequences. I’ve already had multiple power greens and Flax smoothies this week. I will forgive myself… Eventually.