Discover the Secret to Deployment Weight Loss

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The personal trainer was determined to be my new helper. “Call Me! I can help you with your eating plan! We can do a resting metabolic heart rate test right in my office!”

“Can’t wait!” I replied, putting plenty of yippitee skippitee in my voice.

Then I scrambled out of there. Yeah, I’m never gonna call that woman. I totally believe that she could put together an effective eating plan for me. I’m sure that she could make me lose so much weight that I could hang from a wire hook on my own Christmas tree.

Yet I will not be calling her. Because my metabolic resting heartrate is not in fact, my weight problem. Neither is it in the legume/sesame seed/ wheatgrass cocktail she is brewing.  Nor is it my particular body type.

My weight problem is, in fact, a wait problem. I am one of those people who put on weight when my husband is gone.

This is not at all his fault. This is the natural result of these three behaviors that naturally occur while waiting for a beloved to return.

So I am thinking that if that personal trainer could discover the solution to these three problems, we military spouses could storm her office. Hoist her to our shoulders. Carry her off to BUMED where they would crown her Official Wait Loss Consultant to the DoD.

But first she would have to solve these three little challenges to thinness so many of us face:

Leftbehinders. Civilian families often have leftovers after a meal. My military family has leftbehinders. When my husband deploys, I know that he will not be coming home to dine. Somehow that does not change my shopping habits or my cooking habits. It goes something like this:  Look--there is all this food still in the dish! And it tastes really good, doesn’t it? YES!  So why is there so much left over?  Better taste it again to make sure it is still good. AND IT STILL IS!!! Gosh, I feel like my behind has left me bigger than ever.

Procrastineating. According to the Urban Dictionary, procrastineating is the consumption of food undertaken to avoid a dull or arduous task, irrespective of hunger levels or the time of day. Since I think of every duty day, work-up, or deployment day as a dull and arduous task to get through (sinful!!), I count the moments in little bacon sandwiches, bleu cheese crumbles and anything manufactured by FritoLay. Time does pass while procrastineating, so this must be an effective measure, right? Right. It effectively puts the weight right on -- like a trowel.

 Leash Bindage. I know that weight loss never occurs without exercise. Dog walking works for me when my husband is home. After dinner I snap leashes on the dogs and we trot around  returning bright eyed and bushy tailed. When the ship is at sea, the dogs are squirrellier than ever. To walk them, I have to convince my son that walking around the block will not fracture a femur. That takes half an hour. I have to force everyone into adequate garments for the weather. Another 15 minutes. I snap leashes on dogs and they proceed to run around us in circles, effectively breaking any spare femur any one of us has going. So far my exercise routine has taken 45 minutes I do not have and I have not yet burned a calorie and must wear a cast.

OK, that's a little bit of an exaggeration.  I know my weight loss problem won’t be solved by bringing the deployment to a closet.

But the end of my wait problem sure makes it seem like all things would be then possible. Sometimes I just want the guy to come home.

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