Day One

Last night I did wake up in the middle of the night & binge. Two bowls of cereal. I don't know why I did it. I don't know why I've been doing this almost every night since we moved. When I wake up I do not think clearly. I just am driven to do it so I do. It's not actual hunger, I don't think. Though I have stopped eating a nighttime snack before bed, so maybe that is contributing to the problem.

Anyway, I woke up this morning and weighed myself. 269.4. That's 10 lbs higher (give or take) than the last time I weighed myself. I am upset, but not really surprised. I *was* upset when I plugged my weight into Fitday and on its little chart where it says Underweight, Normal, Overweight, Obese... it had a little arrow pointing to the right of "Obese" with the caption "Off the Chart".

I am off the chart obese.

And yet I continue to lie to myself when I want to rationalize a snack, telling myself "I'm not that bad...." I am that bad. I am very, very fat. I don't often see it when I look in the mirror. But someone who is 5'4" and 269 lbs is very, very fat.

Maybe it's not that I try to rationalize my weight ... maybe I am just in denial. Like someone who has cancer but refuses to accept it. Do I refuse to accept my weight problem? I can't ignore it easily. Every time I go shopping I have to grab larger and larger size clothes. Some 2x shirts I bought are snug and make me feel self conscious. I have pants that are a size 26. Some of my 24's are snug right out of the wash. A year ago, I remember crying when I had to go up to a 22. Two years ago, I was in an 18.

Anyway, there isn't much of a point in dwelling on self-pity and regret. I am what I am right now, and as much as I might wish I could go back and edit my previous food selections and activity choices, I cannot. All I have control of is what I am going to do with what I have right now.

As I had mentioned, my plan was to sign up with Fitday...however, already feeling stung from being declared "Off the Chart", I found logging my breakfast and planned lunch to be a total pain in the ass. Their food database leaves much to be desired, and some of their nutritional facts are just way off! (1 cup of tempura is in no way ~100 calories and ~7 grams of fat!!!) I plugged my same info into Spark People and I found it a lot easier with a more extensive food database and more realistic nutrition info. Thus, I have decided to use Spark People as my log. I was excited to find that I can also share my meal tracker via Spark People.

So, to reiterate my plan:

• Logging my meals into Spark People.
• Taking a walk or doing some physical activity daily.
• Writing in this journal on a daily basis.

I'll add more guidelines as I progress with this. It's going to be hard not to be impatient while I make some slower changes, but I cannot go on the way I am.