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Your real weight loss problem

  • Published
  • By Jacey Eckhart
  • CinCHouse.com columnist
WASHINGTON, D.C. --  You don't have a weight problem. I know, you are thinking that I haven't seen you in the only pair of yoga pants that have fit you since the baby was born 14 years ago. You think I haven't shown my own thighs at the Gator Pool yet, so I have no idea of the scope, the enormity, the vast chasm of your weight problem.

And you'd be right. Cuz I'm not a doctor. Instead, I'm the kind of woman who knows that if you are a military spouse and you have a few pounds to lose, you may not have a weight problem. Instead, you probably have a "wait" problem.

As in, it's 8:30 p.m. and he still isn't home from recruiting duty so I'll eat this extra burger while I'm waiting so it won't go to waste.

As in, if I have to wait one more day to get an employer to pick up my resume or even to step over my body as I plead for work - any work! - I may eat my way through the box of Bisquick just to stave off the boredom.

As in, the e-mail has been down all day and the last I heard from that Marine he was going on patrol and that was 29 hours ago. Geez, is that a "Hot Krispy Kreme Now" sign I see glowing from four exits away?

Trust me, this wait problem is nothing new for military spouses.

My own 5'2"-98lb-mom used to have this very wait problem during the Vietnam war. She would watch the news after she put us all to bed. In the morning she would yell at us for eating all the ice cream. I mean, whoever heard of toddlers scaling the freezer to steal Butter Pecan? Mint chocolate chip, maybe. But Butter Pecan???

When it comes to our weight, I think we spouses are just like so many Americans. We combat negative feelings by reaching for chili cheese fries. Or at least I do. Since we often are dealing with bigger than normal problems like moving teenagers or never knowing when our SEAL is actually going to deploy until he is gone, is it any wonder that the pounds creep on?

Because our real problem isn't food. Instead, our real problem is isolation, stress, loneliness, frustration, fear, anxiety and having a thing for a man in shiny shoes. Heavens, if I had fallen for the UPS guy instead of a sailor, I'd have lost so much weight by now I'd be wearing a size 2T.

Or not. When we go to a weight loss program or counselor, I think we ought to be required by law to tell them that we are military spouses. Because if they knew, I'm sure these folks would realize that we need a bit more than the average dieter. We need to be reminded that our first weight loss skill has to be a little different. Our first weight loss skill has to be to stop blaming the military for all the waiting in your life. Stop blaming your service member for having a career that gives you a lot of residual stress.
Otherwise, the weight might come off, but the wait will bring every pound back on.

We need to follow the advice of weight loss gurus like Bob Greene and Jorge Cruise and Martha Beck and work on improving our actual lives so that we don't have to rely as much on food to fix us.

That's what is working for me. Today I weigh less than I have in the past five years. I joined a program that helped me face the fact that I had to eat vegetables more often than Thanksgiving and Christmas. But the real change came when I found that it was the waiting hours between three and six that were killing me. Not because I was hungry, but because that was the time of day my life crashed in on me. Kids came home from school cranky and needy. Brad wouldn't be home from work until late. Anxiety flooded in as I figured out how much I had not and would not accomplish that day.

And it wasn't anyone's fault. It wasn't the Navy's fault. Or Brad's fault. Or the kid's fault. It wasn't even my fault. It was just the wait of the day. It took me months to figure out what I needed to change about my life so that I didn't eat my way through that part of the day. I had to try a lot of different options, wait to see if they would work, resolve to keep trying new things until I had a solution that gave me some hope.

Try, wait, resolve, hope. Those are skills military spouses already have learned the hard way. Now it is time to apply those skills to something new.

A syndicated columnist for CinCHouse.com,Jacey Eckhart is an author, speaker and military life consultant based in Washington, DC. If you've found a weight loss skill you want to share with other spouses, e-mail her at jacey87@mac.com.