Control Freak!

by Kris Pitcher

Occasionally, when I'm trudging around with my cooler full of meals and my tiny containers with their portioned one ounce almond/walnut mix...I wonder if I look like a freak.

"Everyone has to eat." I tell myself. I wonder if other people feel conspicuous with their super-sized meal? Probably not. That's normal after all, right?

I have a system!

My preference is to control what I can control. It snowed last Friday, so I know I can't control the weather. But I can eat what I'm supposed to eat in order to meet my goals. They are my goals, it would only make sense for me to work to get there.

And maybe it's the monotony of the food. It is literally the same thing meal after meal, day after day, week after week. This works for me. I don't need "variety". But maybe it's that monotony that seems so conspicuous to others.

I'll tell you what, it doesn't matter to me. It doesn't matter if I stick out like a big ol' thumb. It doesn't matter if I drag (figuratively) my cooler along where I go each day. I don't care if you see me take a bag of chicken out of my purse to put on the plain salad I just ordered at the restaurant.

It doesn't matter because I've got a plan. It's not so much that I'm a control freak...I mean you should see my house. I control nothing. The piles of magazines that come in and never go out. The office which has crept from it's designated room up to the kitchen table. My creative space which looks like it was hit with a hurricane. Don't care.

What I do care about is the plan. The plan is I'll be on stage competing, and I know what I need to do to get there. Period. So, I eat the way I'm supposed to eat, and I do my workouts.

Maybe we should all be freaks about something important to us. But maybe a more fair name would be passion freaks?