Raise your hand if you once belonged to the Clean Plate Club!!

Alright, I am not the only one that was or is part of this club, I knew it. I was raised to finish everything on my plate and I mean everything. My mother was a wonderful baker. She made the best lemon meringue pie, macaroons, and cookies. However, cooking was not her expertise. Our normal dinner meal consisted of meat, potatoes and a veggie, none of them were cooked with any creativity. To this day I absolutely hate boiled potatoes, almost more than anything else on earth. Every single evening we had boiled potatoes that resembled a white mushy paste. With 6 of us children around the table I remember many nights, or should I say months or years being the last one to leave the table. I could not leave until my plate looked like I had licked it. We never wasted anything in our home and especially food. My mom often talked about the starving kids in Biafra. I wondered why we couldn't package up my potatoes and send them to the poor children the next day. Surely, they would welcome potatoes that were mush. I sat by the hour looking up at the turquoise clock on the  bright yellow wall, hearing it tick and wondering how wonderful life would be if there were no mushy potatoes in this world. My doggy often sat by my chair and by golly, if my mom wasn't watching, I would gift Penny with mushy potatoes, but she even had a hard time swallowing the mushy paste. Other times, I would fake that I needed to go to the bathroom, scheming all the while to flush them down the toilet, but my mother soon put a halt to this evil practise.  

This very mind set has followed me all the days of my life, and I am ashamed to say I even drilled this into the heads of my innocent children. I never want to waste a single item on my plate, especially if it is delicious. In fact, I often glance at other people in a restaraunt and I am quite horrified if they leave food on the plate and then "horrors of horrors" they let the waiter quickly brisk it away and I know it is destined for the garbage. I almost want to ask them if they are "sure" they don't want a doggie bag, or better yet, I want to suggest that I could take it home. All I am thinking is - wow, I could have made another meal with those leftovers. Often times, I will eat to the point of bingeing because I don't want to waste the food. I may be stuffed and can't move but the thought of leaving a few tablespoons of food and wasting it is almost like a SIN. I have created my own weight problem because of my faulty thinking, no one is to blame but me. I have made a clear definitive decision to turn in my membership to the Clean Plate Club, it is the loving, kind and nurturing thing to do for me. Since giving up my membership in the Club I have lost 33 lbs.