food makes me happy

My weight will probably always fluctuate. I know how to lose weight. I should be able to maintain a weight, but that doesn't seem to happen. And I definitely know how to gain weight.

I'm currently in a cycle of between 165 and 180. My "goal" or "ideal" weight is between 155 and 160. But at 165, I'm pretty happy with how my clothes fit. At 180, my clothes get tight, and that's when I realize I need to get back on the losing weight train.

That happened, most recently, two weeks ago. Today the scale said 176. (According to the BMI for my height, the threshold between normal weight and overweight is 169.)

So if I enjoy having a healthy weight around 160, and I know how to eat healthy and exercise enough to lose a pound or two per week, why does my weight fluctuate? In other words, why once I get down to 160, why do I gain the weight back?

Obviously, I'm not the only person in America who do this. Gaining the weight back is cliche. But why do I do it?

I'll start from a logical, healthy perspective. Let's say I ate a bag of chips and some cookies last weekend...that's not doing anything for me. That pleasure is so fleeting that's it's gone. As opposed to watching Inception, that pleasure is something you can remember and look back fondly.

So if you add this up, you could conclude that food doesn't really make anyone happy.

But here's the thing. Food makes me happy.

Just a month ago, I would wake up on Thursdays and be happy that I was going to get biscuits and gravy. For the Chiefs-Chargers MNF game, I was setting up my menu a week in advance. I had fun in the store picking out my frozen pizza and cheez-its. And when I got to Niraj's and I opened the box of cheese crackers, it really made me happy.

It seems that for most of my work colleagues, alcohol makes them happy. People love having those meetings on Friday afternoons where there's beer. But that doesn't do much for me. At those meetings, I'm headed straight toward the bowls of chex mix.

When we take a trip, the first and maybe only thing I'll research, is the best places to eat.

When I would have a glass of chocolate milk, the act of drinking would only last for 6 seconds. But it really made me feel good.

Of course, two minutes later, the taste is gone. I feel fuller, but I could have gotten fuller eating brown rice and broccoli.

I've written here before:

The goal cannot be getting out of debt. The goal has to be saving money.
Just as the goal cannot be losing weight. The goal has to be eating healthy.

At the time, I thought that I had conquered that part of me that craved unhealthy foods. But four months and forty pounds wasn't enough to do it. And four years later, my idea of a fun time is still a pizza or a italian beef & sausage.

The way I lose weight is being consistent, "on the train." But once Thanksgiving rolls around, it's easy to eat pecan pie for a week and then be consistently unhealthy.

I don't have the final answer, a neat conclusion that this all adds up to. Unhealthy food will probably always make me happy. I'll just have to balance it with healthy food, that can also make me happy, just not as much.