Food: revised.

Over the past several days I've had some revelations about food. Not revelations, really. I'm sure people have been trying to tell me this my whole life.

Firstly (yes, it's a word, ask Ms. Sisemore), I will admit that my will power reaches into negative numbers on a daily basis, probably because I'm always hungry. Also, I have the supernatural ability to justify any food product as "not that bad for me." I see nothing wrong with eating two 100-calorie packs daily. It's only 200 calories, right? Extrapolate that methodology over a life time and we're not looking too good. I fully understand. Plus, I'm a character of convenience. Seriously, how convenient are semi-sweet chocolate morsels? And they're so small, it's like not even eating anything at all. See... there I go again with the justifying.

Secondly, I had an "epiphery" (as Michael Scott would say) while driving by Six Flags Over Jesus. The epiphery has nothing to do with Jesus or Michael Scott or theme parks. My co-worker Carol recently gave me a stack of magazines on a various assortment of home improvement/fine living topics. I was contemplating the evolution of magazine reading I've experienced in my lifetime. I used to read the teenie-bopper magazines like Seventeen and Teen and others. I scoured the pages looking for trendy outfits and hairstyles. Rachael from Friends hairdo, anybody? I took all the boyfriend-finder tests and personality tests the magazines offered. I studied the twiggy models with airbrushed upper thighs and plunging necklines. Their hair was straight and blond, and their legs were the length of my whole body. They probably had a diet consisting of saltines and baby carrots. And, in my 13-year-old mind, that was beauty. I am 25-years-old and it didn't hit me until yesterday that I had digested lies for the most character and self-image-forming years of my life.

Now I realize I've got a big messy self-perception on my hands. I've got to somehow figure out how to continue my love affair with food while re-learning what "healthy" and "pretty" mean. It could be worse. I could be 50-years-old and still think that I'm the only woman on the planet with cellulite. Luckily, I've got one swell husband who thinks I hung the moon and looked beautiful doing it. He would tell me I was beautiful while covered in cow dung, with no hairspray or under eye concealer. Maybe... eventually... someday I'll believe him.

In the process, or should I say, Thirdly, I've stumbled upon a really inspiring website/blog thing. I've never met the lady and have no idea where's she from, though I assume it's somewhere flat. Lately The Pioneer Woman is rocking my world. Everyone [read: Every woman] really needs to give her website a good once-over.

In the meantime you will find me briskly walking through neighborhoods near you, growing vegetables, eating vegetables (and anything else with calories, in proportion, of course), and slowly rewriting the correlation between food and beauty in my mind.