"I did not eat that cookie"

When I moved to Portland I was an athlete. Not in that feel-good "everyone is an athlete" sense, but the much more traditional definition. I had a very physically demanding job and in my off hours I hiked and biked and rode horses and took care of my property and animals. In the winters I snowboarded and shoveled snow and ran up hills dragging large inner tubes behind me. In the summers I swam and water-skied and taught sculling through the parks and rec department. I never once thought about what shape I was in. I did, however, think about how intellectually bored I was with both my job and my life so I gave up some of those activities to teach myself HTML and Flash and eventually landed a job at a great company.

Over the years I would periodically realize that I was more and more out of shape. I would make half-hearted attempts to remedy the situation, but I would eventually wind up making excuses. I didn't have time to work out all the time. I was totally still cute and there's no way that a size 10 is fat. I was getting older. The plethora of previous injuries haunted me. I was totally still cute and there's no way that a size 12 is fat. But all those really mean is that it wasn't a priority to me. Plus, I wasn't too horribly out of shape; that is at least until I quit smoking.

The Sunday morning of Thanksgiving weekend 2007 I smoked my last cigarette. I had smoked roughly a pack a day since somewhere around my 17th birthday and I was tired of being controlled by it, of practically everything in my life revolving around my smoking schedule. So with the help of Chantix I woke up that Sunday morning, lit a cigarette, and was immediately disgusted with myself. I snubbed it out and never looked back.

I didn't count on all the stresses that would pile up on me in the following nine months. I lost my last living grandparent to old age; I lost my favorite aunt to pancreatic cancer; I distanced myself from my long-time best friend because our relationship had become rather toxic; I changed jobs - twice - (and bosses three times) due to my company reorganizing; I lost the freedom to work in the way that works best for me; my new "mentor" talked to me like I was an idiot and made me cry on a daily basis; it seemed that most of my newest team only spoke to me when I made a mistake; one of my friends lost a leg in a mining accident and another tested positive for HIV (not technically things that happened to me, but those sorts of things affect everyone); and to top it all off, I invested everything except my 401K in my brother's business plan.

HOLY CRAP!! That's a big list! And it doesn't even mention the "little" things like the toilet leak that caused a $400 water bill; the toilet that still isn't fixed because it just hasn't been a priority; the dog that keeps getting out; my rampant, unchecked vehicle addiction; never having time to clean my house or catch up on laundry; friends that are mad at me because I'm not as present in their lives as I should be because sometimes the weight of everything comes crashing down all at once in a soul-crushing shit-storm of emotion. Through all of that I didn't smoke, not even once. I wanted to. Often. Like every twelve minutes. But I didn't even take a drag of someone else's. Instead, I ate. A lot.

At the thirty-pound-gain mark I joined Weight Watchers and started taking classes at the community pool. I joined the gym down the street and would reward myself for working out with time in the sauna. I got a bicycle and vowed to ride everywhere that was less than five miles away. I went to yoga at least two days a week. One by one these things fell by the wayside, but I continued to eat when stressed or bored. For someone who is bored every ten minutes this is not a good thing.

A couple weeks ago I saw an addiction therapist who politely informed me that my problem wasn't that I had an addiction, but that no one is supposed to deal with that much stress all at one time. Especially not ADD adults. We're really good "in the moment", but totally fail at the long-term stress management. She suggested exercise and six months worth of a good anti-anxiety medication so I made an appointment with my regular doctor for the script but went straight to my list of excuses for the exercise.

The next week my company took my entire team (150 people) to Salishan on the Oregon coast for two days of intense "team building". Wednesday night I spent the three hours of off time before dinner drinking with the Executive Assistant while we did some much-needed job venting. Then I had a couple drinks at the pre-dinner mixer. A glass of wine with dinner was followed by an obscene amount of drinking at the generously open bar. (I really felt my team bonded over the second round of Petron shots.) As frequently happens with this sort of binge drinking I woke up with a few regrets.

On Thursday morning my alarm went off and I reached to hit the snooze and felt something out of place. Cautiously I opened one eye and tried to make sense of what I had touched. That's when I saw what I had done. The evidence was there, spread casually across the pristine sheets of the bed. Chocolate and flour and butter and sugar all baked together to create the half-eaten cookie on the pillow next to me.

That's when it really hit me that I had to get some shit under control. My king-size mini-suite overlooking the golf course had become my oval office; the white sheets with their chocolaty crumbs my fateful blue dress. Somewhere in the back of my imagination I heard flashbulbs and clamoring reporters while I looked them in the eye, steadfast and earnest from the podium stating in no uncertain terms, "I did not eat that cookie."

Sometimes you don't fall all at once. Sometimes you slowly step down the mountain, sliding a bit here, stumbling a little there, until you look up one day and realize that although you once sat atop the highest peak you have now inched and crept and stumbled your way to well below the tree-line and you're left there with your half eaten cookie and a vicious hangover.

As an appreciation gift we were all given iPod Nanos with the Nike+ sport pack thingy that tracks your run. I considered it a sign, an intersection of my personal low and a really great tool. The morning of August 24 was my first recorded "run". It left me winded and sore and soaking in sweat and it took me 22 and a half minutes to fight my way through the entire 2.73 kilometers. If I were in a movie I would have been zombie food.