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.

Conquistador of Chaos

The wedding is coming up so fast. I have no idea how I'm supposed to get things done on time. Furthermore, today I have to run to the Police Station to submit my stupid accident report, and to town hall to pick up my marriage license. What a waste of a lunch break. I suppose while I do that, I'll be near home so I can stop in and have a lean cuisine since I forgot to bring lunch today.

Yesterday I posted a lot and honestly, even though maybe I'm bordering on providing TMI, it was really cathartic and I think I really have to do some digging to find out why I feel the way I feel and why I do the things I do.

I feel like my weight problems and other problems stem from some core things I taught myself years and years ago. For example, I have always been disorganized. I think Julie Morganstern (author of Organizing from the Inside Out & Time Management from the Inside Out) would refer to me as a "conquistador of chaos". I let things get out of control, and then swoop in and put things back together again. And try as I might, I just have never been able to reach that balance where I don't let things get out of control. And while it's great, sure, that I am able to fix my messes, it means that I spend a lot of time anxious about the disaster I have created, and then fixing it. Instead of living life, enjoying life, doing the things I really want. I mean, it's not my life goal to constantly be cleaning or dieting or trying to make an emergency financial plan.

Since elementary school I never did homework consistently. I wanted to, but I just couldn't get my shit together. I couldn't keep my room clean. I wanted to. But I just didn't have whatever it takes to remember to put things away when I was done with them. Or I would for like a week, and then I'd stop because I'd be distracted or something.

Ditto for every diet plan - whether you want to call them diets or a "way of life", I still could not do anything consistently for long, before something came up and I went to my old ways. Exercise too.

Oh and my finances, forget it. I've been in a cycle of disaster & self-rescue for ages. I make plenty of money to be able to live my life the way I want, but I let myself forget to be conscious of spending, forget to be conscious of how little & medium purchases add up and quickly exceed what I have leftover in my checking account after bills. I don't want to think about it so I don't, until it's time to save myself.

And I love saving myself. At least I used to, until recently when I realized that it's never been permanent and I always fall back into my old patterns...since realizing that, I feel more hopeless than anything. But the act of saving yourself, getting sudden clarity and focus, putting together a game plan, cleaning a mess up. It's a great feeling of ecstasy and it lifts me right out of the depression that got me into the mess in the first place. I plan routines to maintain my repaired life, and they last only as long as the ecstasy - probably about a week or two. Then I might begrudgingly maintain my routine for another week, half-assing it all along, realizing how boring or not fun it is, and then things fall apart.

So...do I know how I got into this pattern, or how to make it stop? No. But I guess this is something I should be poking at while trying to get to the bottom of things.

It just hurts...

I just hurt so much. It's not even physical, I just hurt. I guess I am depressed. I know that my depression always takes an even bigger nosedive right before my period, and yet every time I have trouble identifying why suddenly I feel even more miserable than usual.

I hurt because I don't know a way out of this rut. I hurt because I've wasted so much time already. I hurt because my brain doesn't make the right chemicals for me to just be happy. I hurt because I won't get to see K for another 3 hours. I hurt because I don't know what I'm doing. I hurt because I'm afraid of what's to come in life. I hurt because I don't feel like I really have control over my own future.

More Thoughts

As you can see, the focus of this journal has shifted a bit, from being about daily points to being more about what's going on inside. I reserve the right to post whatever I want whenever I want, after all, this is my blog.

It's hard to really figure out where I go from here. I am trying to be vigilant about what I eat, and I think that's the best I can do for right now. After the wedding & the honeymoon, I am going to crack down pretty hard, I think. While I have some internal repairs to make, I can work on the external repairs at the same time. They are both going to take a very long time.

I think maybe some of the overeating is some strange method I developed to sort of take care of myself while no one else was. That could explain the soothingness, the relaxation I feel when I overeat or eat some comfort foods. Bad day? Have some toast and tea and curl up in front of the tv. Rough morning? Get a nice big coffee with lots of cream and sugar and a big chocolate muffin. No kids want to play with you at lunch time? Find $0.50 to buy an ice cream cone. The ice cream cone always wants to play. I have fond memories of losing myself in a book and a snack/meal/etc. I think if in my stepmom's house we were allowed to eat in the living room, I would have done the same with the tv, even though I wasn't half as lonely.

Maybe since moving to Massachusetts and leaving the friends I made as a teenager and grew so close to behind, I sort of became the weird little girl I had previously been again. Gaining weight, retreating into food, hiding from the world, just not being good enough. I feel a lot of social awkwardness when it comes to making female friends - I can't get close to people easily. I am never sure if they really like me back, and there's also the fact that I'm kind of a grump, so I often find people irritating for stupid reasons.

I mean it's been over 3 years and I'm only just recently starting to feel like I am capable of making friends. And part of me wants to say, well, who needs 'em? I have my fiance. I have guy friends. But I miss D and J so much. And even my fond memories often include food. Going out to eat, long conversations over a good meal. Shopping and eating and shopping and talking. And yet when I was in that situation, I kept weight off fairly easily. I mean I was never skinny, do not get me wrong. My graceful swan was a chubby graceful swan, but not an obese graceful swan, and not an ugly graceful swan either. By my senior year of high school, I was in the 150's at 5'4" with a slim face and an hourglass, muscular figure, and even though I wore size 14's and size large tops, I was pretty. I may not have known it at the time, I may have felt desperately overweight, but part of me knew that I had become a bit more attractive and just didn't know what to do with it. I felt really far behind socially, a pretty girl with an ugly girl's mentality. Hiding from guys and girls who were good looking, because any ugly girl or fat girl with low enough self-esteem knows that guys and pretty girls are the enemy. They want to make you feel bad and break your heart into a million pieces. The better looking someone is, the more they must despise you for who you are. Maybe I felt like they'd see through me. Normal looking at first glance, but if I spoke or interacted too much, my inner dork would come out.

I'm more comfortable with my inner dork most of the time. I feel like I can usually speak with strangers, good looking or not, and my fake personality will take care of me. It's a mask I have to put on because inside I'm still scared of people. Scared of being laughed at, made fun of, teased. In elementary school, I was teased so often, so mercilessly. I didn't even realize how much I was teased...at some point during my adult years I looked at my 6th grade yearbook. A kid who I had always talked with and considered one of my schoolyard allies wrote in my yearbook: "Have a great summer. Don't eat alot."

But my fake, friendly personality does get me through a lot, where I'm not quite as afraid of people anymore. And instead of fear, sometimes I channel that into anger at those people, and try to find flaws to make fun of before they can get to me. Dumb jocks, stupid frat boys, slutty girls, princesses. I just put these people, who I don't know, who I might not ever meet, into my list of enemies right away. Otherwise, I wind up feeling inferior to them, like they're an alpha dog and I'm the lowest part of the pack.

Because I'm fat, I'm shy, I'm awkward, and I don't know what I'm doing with people!

Am I staying fat to hide, or to make myself unlikeable? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? I hate this so much.

There really isn't any reason people shouldn't like me. I think I'm pretty smart, and I dress nice and smell nice most of the time. I think people find me funny sometimes. I guess my social issue is also that I have trouble listening to people or caring about their issues because I'm so self-centered, wrapped up inside myself, inside my own anxieties and troubles.

I'm ba-ack...!

I stopped posting because I had made a decision to stop obsessing about food & my weight for awhile to see how that would go. It didn't go very well and I've gained some more weight. I didn't even think I was eating all that bad! Ugh. I feel like crap about the whole thing.

I think I am finally starting to realize that I just can't eat freely. If I ever want to get to and stay at a healthy weight I will always have to watch what I eat. I will always have to balance a higher calorie/point meal with lower calorie/point meals and exercise. I will always have to plan ahead when I can and make the best choices when I can't. I will always have to use portion control. I am not like those of my friends who can dine with wild abandon. I can enjoy food, but it must be in moderation.

I also think I'm finally starting to put losing weight and getting healthy as a priority over immediate gratification and the warm, fuzzy, safe feeling I get from my emotional eating. I have to admit that I love to eat. It's so far beyond the taste and the fullness. I can feel the chemicals in a sweet dessert course through me, and it's a sense of warmth and joy and wellbeing. It's a little high. It's a little high that's legal, cheap, and easy to get. And it's got to stop.

These next few weeks are going to be difficult. I am getting married on the 14th, and then going to Aruba for a week. I want to be able to eat out in Aruba and not have to order "diet" meals, and I suppose I can do that - not because it's a once in a lifetime opportunity, but because I will balance these meals out with lighter other meals, lots of exercise, and small portions.

The most important thing right now is to put the brakes on gaining weight and shift gears into reverse. I can do this.

Stuffed

Let me start off by saying that I am still OP. I have 15 WPAs left for the rest of the week. However, here I sit, nauseous and uncomfortable. This is the price I pay for only paying attention to how many Points I had left to "spend" and not paying much attention to how hungry I was.

After a light lunch and a nice afternoon going to the movies and the bookstore with my fiance, we decided to go out to my favorite Thai restaurant. I had the points and a serious craving for their Yellow Curry Chicken. I suppose I ought to have strategized to eat half, or something, but I just knew that I *had* the points to use and I wanted the food so I ate the whole thing.

Upon coming home, of course I wanted some snacks and treats that I was in the mood for. But on top of my heavy dinner, all of this food is not sitting well with me. I've eaten 42.5 points today which is just simply too much. At least for today it was.

But I'm learning. 30 points really is plenty of food. There needs to be a balance between using the points that are meant to be used, and learning to listen to cues from my body. And to not be quite so greedy when faced with a food that I love.

On the bright side, I did do one sensible thing at dinner. I love to order a Thai Iced Tea, however, at 7 points, I decided to skip it, and got 0 point unsweetened iced tea. Go me.

WI Today

Weighed in this morning and had a loss of 2.2 lbs. This makes me very happy, but I still have a long way to go. What makes me happier than the WI is the fact that I really, truly stayed 100% OP this past week. I even had a WPA left over, which never happens. I cannot remember the last time I did not go over my points allowance & WPAs at some point during a week.

I've proved that I can do it, and I am going to keep doing it. I am going to be OP all month long to prove to myself what I can do when I put my mind to it. In addition to staying OP, I will continue to go to Curves 3x a week.

I also purchased a pedometer today and will begin tracking my daily steps and striving to reach 10,000 steps per day as of tomorrow. It may be hard considering that it's going to be rainy and crappy, but I have errands to run including a trip to the mall, so I may wind up being a mall walker for the day. Hehehe.

What do I want?

I want to be healthy & fit.
I want to be able to buy great clothes.
I want to cook fabulous & healthy food.
I want to enjoy life more.
I want to be more confident.
I want to be more energetic.
I want to take yoga classes.
I want some inline skates.
I want a fabulous wardrobe.
I want only one chin.
I want to shop in "normal" stores.
I want to fit better in airplane seats.
I want to take martial arts classes.
I want to take dance classes.
I want to be relaxed and happy.
I want to stop & smell the roses.
I want to read every book ever written.
I want to write a best seller.
I want people to describe me as friendly & funny.
I want to be happy with who I am.
I want to be proud of my accomplishments.