The last supper

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On May 14, I got news that almost upstaged my graduation from law school one week later: I was a finalist for the Carolina Bride Get Fit Challenge. Sure, graduating was great, but Wake Forest wasn’t going to send me to the Bahamas.

After I got the big news, I started thinking, “How am I going to lose weight this week when everyone’s drinking and celebrating?” Then I read the email a bit more carefully—the first weigh-in wasn’t for 18 more days. Eighteen glorious, chub-inducing, reckless days later.

So I ate.

And ate.

And ate.

Any weight loss ideas I had ever had tanked faster than "Battleship" did on opening weekend.

My mind worked under two pretenses: 1) I couldn’t afford to lose weight before the first weigh-in, and 2) if I happened to gain weight, that would be all right in a competition where the prize is based on total percentage of weight lost. The more I weighed by June 1st, the greater percentage it would be to hit my goal weight.

Under my current clean-out-the-fridge plan every college and graduate student implements as the end of the school year nears, I originally found myself eating nothing but frozen fish, chicken, and vegetables — the healthy stuff I’d pushed aside the rest of the year. I realized immediately that I felt lighter and lost several pounds, but that simply wouldn’t do.

I began an intimate, emotional goodbye to many of my favorite foods — a farewell tour of carbs, carbs and more beautiful, delicious carbs. Unlike many of my Get Fit counterparts, my fondness is not for sweets — I’ve been extremely fortunate in that regard. I’ve never liked chocolate, and candy has no power over me. But give me a bowl of rice, a plate of spaghetti, or anything that can be doused in a sauce and you might as well slap a bib on me and pull up the trough.

Ask my mom and fiancé what my favorite food is, and there will be no hesitation. It’s gravy. That’s right: meat juice and flour mixed together by my mama, served most simply and amazingly over pure white rice. The thick, brown liquid that has spawned more than one joke over the decades is the food that I would choose for a real Last Supper, if there had been only one.

But alas… there were many. Among those that met their demise over the weeks before June 1? Moo goo gai pan. Seafood pasta. Beer. McDonald’s French fries. Cook Out milkshakes. Jet’s Pizza. Crab cakes. Beer. Shrimp etouffee. Kraft macaroni and cheese. Pad Thai. Sesame chicken. And beer.

Of all that I’ll miss during these next eight months, there are only a true few, and they really all go back to the memories behind them. Macaroni and cheese with hot dogs that my mom would make when we were growing up, after we’d run around outside in the sprinkler all day long. McDonald’s French fries, because my sister and I would split a box with my dad on the way home from his coin club meetings when we were kids. Shrimp etouffee that I first had with my fiancé when we went down to Savannah for a long weekend. Pad Thai while I was studying abroad in Australia, learning more about myself and the world than I ever thought I could. Crab cakes with my mama at 131 Main that I bought with my first real paycheck after college.

I know that in order to lose weight, I have to break the emotional attachment that I have with a lot of foods, but it’s going to be a lot easier to replace them with newer memories now that I’m at such a great point in my life — a huge future ahead of me with a job on the horizon and a marriage to the man of my dreams. It’s going to be a long, tough road, but I know that I can do it.

My love affair with food will never end, but now it has to be more well-planned and in moderation. Everything, that is, except for my mama’s gravy. That’s one memory that I’m never going to leave behind.

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