Food Can’t Be My Reward.
Pizza and movie night – a time-honored tradition in our home – didn’t work out so well last week.
I splurged for “real Italian” food since their gluten-free pizza is the best around, and I am highly gluten-intolerant. Since Bill is trying hard to do less gluten himself, we ordered two gluten-free pizzas from an Italian trattoria 35-40 minutes from home. Bill picked it up on his way home from work.
Meanwhile, Shane – who was dog sitting – had to feed the dogs before picking up his own glutenous pizza at a shop much closer to home. I ordered it for him at 6:10 so that he could pick up at 6:45.
But when he arrived to pick up the pizza, it was after 7:00 – and the pizza was not there. Staff had never put in the order. The guy who answered the phone took my credit card number then, apparently, left for the night.
After a very convoluted phone call, we were able to get 50% off the price of the pizza that started cooking a full hour after it was ordered.
Bill and I were getting hungry by the time Shane got home at 7:45 – so we tossed our pizza into the microwave and sat down to eat. Bill, as always, had 42 toppings and melty cheese. My cheese, however, was not melty. In fact, it wasn’t right at all. I got a white pizza with no toppings and four kinds of cheese, so it should have been plenty melty.
I ate a whole piece, complaining about the cheese the whole time, before I realized that my pizza was not gluten-free. I hadn’t purposefully eaten gluten in years, yet I didn’t recognize a difference in taste. It was the thick, gooey texture that alerted me.
By this time, it was almost 8:00. I called and got the pizza for free, but I have to admit: I would have rather paid for the pizza and eaten it. Instead, and again … Cheerios were my only quick option.
By this point, I was nearly in tears over pizza.
Eventually I got sucked into the movie – Kimi, which was great – and forgot about my pizza. But afterward, while walking the dog, I had one recurring thought: Food can’t be my reward.
For two glorious days leading up to The Pizza Incident of ’22, I had eaten well. In fact, I’d eaten nothing but fruits, vegetables and nuts for two full days. And I ordered that pizza as a reward for good behavior.
So when my pizza arrived destined to make me painfully sick, my first thought was: I’ll go get ice cream.
But after two days of eating and feeling well, pizza and ice cream are not going to make me feel better. They are going to taste good and raise my cholesterol. They are going to ensure that I don’t lose a single pound no matter how much I exercise. Pizza and ice cream are not rewards. They are just foods, and they are foods that make me feel lousy.
But if feeling good were enough of a reward, I could just eat fruits and vegetables forever. Why do I constantly reward myself with something that makes me feel bad? I would really like to change this behavior.