Same with Easter morning....almost an entire basket of candy, down the hatch. I'd jump out of bed at 4:30 or 5:00 am and start gobbling candy as fast as I could.

Maybe so far this behavior is normal for a kid. But then I would actually mark time according to when I might encounter tasty food again...and I pretty much lived for those days. Not much hope in May or June, unless I got invited to someone else's house. And if I did happen to go to someone else's house, I would stock up like a bear preparing for hibernation. Usually other kids had some kind of awesome cereal for breakfast...Fruit Loops, Fruity Pebbles, Frosted Flakes, Cocoa Puffs, or Cinnamon Toast Crunch (my first taste of that was at Laurie Folke's 8th birthday slumber party, and it still makes my mouth water to think about it.)

The Fourth of July might hold a glimpse of hope, if we went to our grandparents'--they usually had Pepperidge Farm cookies, Fritoes and other kinds of chips, Triscuits and Easy Cheese. August was my birthday...I could count on cake and ice cream, for sure. I had to make it through September and October til Halloween. We weren't allowed to Trick or Treat, but we were allowed to have some candy on that day, and we usually had a harvest party at school....which meant candy corn, at least. And probably a cupcake with orange frosting.

November meant Thanksgiving, so there would definitely be good food on that day. And from sixth grade on, the day after Thanksgiving meant gingerbread houses...a tradition which is filled with so much goodness, it still gives me a thrill to think about it. We were allowed to keep all the candy that we could fit on our house. So I would open the roof, dump as much random candy inside as I could, and then plaster the outside with all kinds of good stuff.

Then Christmas would come, and you know the hope in that. The Whitman's Sampler. There was not much treat action in January, unless, of course, I could get myself invited to some kind of birthday party. Which, incidentally, brought about a whole new scheme. I would go to the party just for the food, even if I didn't like the kid. Doritoes, pizza, combos, soda, potato chips, cake, ice cream. And my M.O. for slumber parties was this: I made sure to get up long before everyone else and stuff my pockets with candy from the night before, while all the other normal little girls slept soundly in their sleeping bags.

February brought Valentine's Day, which meant conversation hearts and possibly some chocolate. And then March was Merry's birthday...more cake, more ice cream. Which brings us back to Easter.

That was my Year In Treats.

I would often daydream about going to a world where everything was made out of delicious food, and I could eat as much as I wanted. My sister Merry and I shared a bed when we were little, and we would lie awake at night and talk about the candy we wished we could get. I remember one day our great aunt sent us each a dollar, and Merry and I stayed awake long into the night discussing our plan...I would take our money to the school store (she was too little to be in school yet) and buy as much candy as I could afford. Then I'd bring it home and we'd divide up the loot. I think this brought us much more joy than it should have. The next day, I spent so much time in the school store carefully spending our two dollars, I totally missed my mid-morning piano lesson and totally got in trouble for it. But it was all worth it when I took that candy home.

In high school, I was such a nervous wreck that I really didn't eat much at all. I would skip breakfast, throw away my lunch, and sulk through dinner, pushing everything around on my plate. I didn't know about eating disorders at the time, but remembering back, that's when a whole lot of new trouble started. I remember liking the feeling of being hungry, of not eating. Because it was definitely something I could decide for myself, unlike most other things in my life at the time.

Then, the summer before college, I went into a deep depression. I didn't realize that's what it was, but I was filled with despair and dread and I didn't want to live. I had a horrendous job at the Disney Store, which at the time was across the hall from the candy store, Ooo La. Once again, I slipped into my childhood obsession with treats. I would stare at the candy and think about all that I could buy on my break. I would go in and fill my hideous polyester Disney sweater pockets with all kinds of candy, and I would sneak it into my mouth when the manager wasn't looking.

I started packing huge lunches for my lunch break. And then...the kiss of death. I made a daily habit of going to Cinnabon and eating a whole Cinnabon by myself. Every day! Needless to say, by the time I entered college, I had already gained 10 pounds.

In college, I had freedom for the first time. I lived on campus. And I had a meal card with a wonderful system of points. They were like dollars. So I could go into one of the school food stores and order as much junk as I wanted. Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream, Snickers, Doritoes. I was going through an inexplicably difficult time psychologically, which I can explain another time...but this kept me in my dorm room and afraid to go to the dining halls. So I would order a large portion of fried chicken fingers every night and eat them all by myself, trying to drown my sorrows in Honey Mustard sauce.

After a few weeks in school, my clothes got tighter and tighter until they didn't fit anymore. I had to go back to my high school homecoming in a few weeks, and I didn't want to go looking like I did. So, I stopped eating so much.

I allowed myself 200 calories a day.

And here's where I will have an intermission in this story.

It is already so long, but there's so much more to go. So I will give you a break from reading, but check back sometime soon if you want to know how life on 200 calories a day went.