True Life Stay-At-Home Confessional

Being a girl who just gave birth 7 months ago, I'd be lying if I said there wasn't some tweeking my body could use. It's amazing just how stretched one can become just by carrying a budding human inside you. Even though I look not-too-shabby for having had a baby in the past year, my body is still unrecognizable to these critical eyes. It just looks...different. Between stretch marks that give my stomach an unrelenting African zebra theme and pudge in places it never used to be, I have my work cut out for me.

And the unreal women that grace my television screen don't help.

(I'd look that good too if I had money, doctors and silicone at MY disposal).

There are new diet crazes around ever corner, it seems. Each has it's appealing NO FAIL mantra, with the promise of losing, at minimum, 50 pounds in record time. (For the record: I don't need to lose 50 p0unds. 5 pounds would make a world of difference to me.) I do my best to eat healthy, but I feel I am thwarted constantly, by one enemy in particular. This enemy leaves me with the following confession:

I am a Carb-o-holic.

I have an enemy, and Bread is his name.

There are many things in this world I could give up and never look back. Carbs are not on that list. And yet, every diet and healthy eating manual out there tells me to eat LESS of them. In the way an addict craves his Happy Hour drink or her drug-of-choice fix...I hunger for Carbs. I need Carbs.

At any given time of the day, no matter how satiated I may be, they taunt me. The bag of pretzels on the pantry shelf. The french baguette laying innocently atop the counter. The ice cream shivering in the freezer. All quietly urging me to pick them first. Left to my own devices, I could drown myself in Carby goodness all day long. I'm sure one day my husband will come home to find me passed out on the floor in a carb-drunken stupor, Cheeto's in one hand and Focaccia Bread in another.

I've tried. I really have. I have reached for the bag of carrots, or the carton of yogurt, in attempts to quell the voices. But after a long day of eating right, I need to let loose. My mouth waters for something dense and doughy. So I reach for the baguette, tear off an slab, and let the gooey bread melt in my mouth. I have, again, been overcome.

Kudos to those of you out there who can say NO to the Olive Garden breadsticks or Herr's Salt and Vinegar Chips. Perhaps you can shield your eyes from the spinach dip surrounded by a dark pumpernickel bread bowl, and turn a blind eye to Coldstone Creamery as you walk past it's display window.

You are better than I am. My body will have a longer way to go than yours.

But friends...I have a fever.

And the only cure is more Carbs.