From audio journal episode: AJE-2010-01-09-14-11.
As this new year came in, out went my certainty about going to camp this summer. What’s weakened my resolve to attend is this: Last year, I was doing pretty well on my diet as summer arrived. Then, I went to camp. Indeed, the food they serve is not part of my normal dietary fare; consisting of lots of refined carbs; specifically, white flour. They offer white flour-based courses at nearly every meal that have lots of added sugar as well. So when I go there, I gain lots of weight as a result. I eat way too much, and I’m sure that part of the reason for my gluttony is the presence of these refined carbs and empty calories.
I’ve tried in vane to avoid these foods by taking my own healthier dishes. I remember one year we took all kinds of nuts, dried fruits, sardines, anchovies, and cans of soup as well; the Campbell’s Chunky variety. But still, I was unable to resist “the bad stuff,” though that year, I gained only five pounds, whereas other times, when I took no “better” food, I gained eight to ten pounds. Taking my own food curbed, but did not completely avert my perennial tendency to pack on the pounds at camp.
Yes, history shows that keeping on a healthful diet is hard to manage at camp, not only because the food is not normally what I eat, but also because everyone else there is eating it. This encourages me to jump off “the wagon”. There’s ritual. There’s activity. There’s socialization that goes on in the dining room at mealtime. So to proclaim that, well, I’m just not going to go there and eat that food, turns out to be futile. You know, that’s cutting out quite a bit of the fun of the camp experience. So, excising all meals and eating only the food I brought is just not doable. I often affirm on the first day that I’ll only eat at the dining hall one or two meals per day, and eat my own stuff otherwise. But like most New Years resolutions, I typically end up forgetting that, and attending all three camp meals daily. If I don’t go, then I’m just hanging out by myself while everyone else is talking, laughing, enjoying the taste of the food, and having one hell of a good time in the dining room. Despite the noise, it’s fun to sit around the table with friends, laughing, debating, and interacting in general. The dining room is a place where people connect and share at camp. But it’s also the place where I get into big trouble when it comes to keeping my weight down.
Now if it were just the issue of gaining eight pounds each summer, I’d probably just shrug my shoulders, suck it up, and accept this as part of the normal camp phenomenon. After all, most people who go also gain weight, and besides, I can come home afterwards and lose it again in a month or so. Or can I? In fact, it’s surprisingly difficult to get back on the same track of healthy eating in the weeks that follow that I was so firmly planted on prior to camp. Sometimes several months go by before I get the new pounds off, and get back on “the good foot” in terms of my diet. Historically and sadly for me, camp wrecks the rituals and practices that I so meticulously establish here at home during the first half of the year. Indeed, it’s quite challenging to simply resume those rituals immediately after check-out on the day of departure. As I said, it can take me three or more months to wean myself off of refined carbs again, that I get so used to consuming at camp. Thus, I’m worried about attending because I fear that, as in years past, I’ll regain much of the weight that I’ll spent the first half of this new year struggling to lose. I would have lost 14 pounds total last year, instead of the 6 I actually managed, perhaps, if not for camp.
Now I don’t mean to say that camp is the only place where I screw up my diet. But it’s one place where I goof it up the most. If we visualize the entire collection of my dietary mishaps as a large tree, camp would be a huge branch on that tree that really needs to be pruned, and I’m thinking now that maybe this year, I should whack it off, and just not attend.
I won’t declare that I’ll never go to camp again, because maybe I just need a year or two off. You know, there are lots of folks who don’t attend, every year. Some come every other year while others stay away for three to five years at a stretch. I might just need a break.
Will I actually take it? Stand by to find out.
Tom Hesley
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