The Pancake Dilemma

I'm officially home for winter break, which is both exciting and scary at the same time. Exciting because I obviously have a month to do whatever I want without having to worry about school work. Scary because being home means a loss of control over what is in the kitchen. Grocery shopping is done for someone else in addition to myself, which means that there are things in the cabinet that I normally wouldn't buy for myself. It's scary because it means there's a potential to binge, which would result in a purge or weight gain, both of which scare the bejesus out of me.

So, because I'm either pro-active or a masochist, depending on how you look at it, I browsed the pantry contents this morning. And what do you know, I stumbled across a box of pancake mix. This sounds ridiculous, but I haven't had pancakes in years because pancakes are a carb and carbs are scary, or so my eating disorder tells me. And it's not necessarily wrong; pancakes are indeed a member of the carbohydrate family. There's really no other way around it; they are a carbohydrate.

Naturally, my first instinct was to put the box away and hide it behind less scary things like bananas and tomato sauce.

It wasn't until I was a few miles into my run that I realized how silly I was being, and how much I was engaging in my eating disorder. (Not allowing myself to eat something based on its food group? Hellooo, red flag!) So, in the middle of a daunting hill, I decided to have pancakes. What sparked this change in heart? To put it quite simply, I was out of my self-hatred mode. That's one of the things I love about running; it gets me out of my mind (which is usually occupied with things that I don't like/need to be changed). Instead of beating myself up, I've noticed that I'm actually really nice to myself and extremely encouraging when I'm out running, especially when the run gets a little rough.

So, middle of a big hill: I'm telling myself that I can do this, I can and will do this, and what do you know, I did it. Thought process goes to "Why can't I be this nice to myself outside of running? Pancakes. Done." The result is as follows:

A massive, disgusting looking, yet delicious pancake. And you know what? I didn't die from eating it. And I didn't gain five pounds from it. In fact, the only thing it really did was refuel me after my run, exactly like it a carbohydrate is supposed to do.

But that's not really the important part of it. The important part is that I ate pancakes. I wanted pancakes, so I made myself pancakes. Because I am a 20 year old woman, and by God, if I want pancakes, I am going to make myself pancakes.