Me and the Molasses

So... (Ok, if I have any guy readers, go ahead and take a hike, would ya? Most guys, they get the weirded outs when I talk about 'girl stuff'. So, you know, if you're the kind of guy who cannot go to the store and buy tampons for his wife, go... shoo. Why do guys have a problem with this, I wonder. I mean, do you really think the store clerk thinks YOU are using them? No. If the store clerk thinks anything about it AT ALL - and believe me, I've worked as a cashier before... the only time we care about your order at all is if you're being a SERIOUS PAIN IN THE ASS while we ring it up... - he's just going to know you have a wife/girlfriend at home who's probably being a serious pain in YOUR ass right now. Which, honestly, is not a bad think to be thinking. Oh, look, he's got a GIRL back at his house. This is embarrassing how? Nevermind.)

I had a gain again last night... not much, .6. But that brings my monthly loss to a whopping 2.2 pounds this month.

Now, as you all know, I've been tracking my menstrual cycle, specifically because I tend to have a gain right about the same time as I'm having EWM (That's egg-white mucus, which you knew that if you've ever been trying to have a baby unsuccessfully) which is to further say that I tend to gain weight right around the time that I'm ovulating. Unusual, since most women gain weight the week directly before their menstration starts, but ordinary I have never been.

Frustrating, as I've also been noticing a trend in the length of my cycle. Which, unfortunately, is not to say that I'm getting more time between periods; quite the contrary. In further fact, my cycle has "slimmed" down, so that I'm starting my period almost precisely every 28 days. HOWEVER, the length of my period itself has increased. It started at a nice, neat, four days. Two days of spotting/light bleed, one day of 'dear goddess, let me die now,' and then another day of spotting, then done.

This month? I started spotting on the 16th of October and didn't stop until the 25th. Which means my gain/maintain week should have, technically, been last week. (In which I maintained.) As, if things continue as they have been, I should start menstrating again in the next 4 days.

Somehow, it doesn't seem exactly fair that I spend 1/3 of my time having my period.

Not that anyone ever nominated life for the Fair Play award.

(Ok, done with that, guys, you can come back now, unless I've completely alienated you, and if, honestly, you're that easily alienated, you probably didn't want to be here anyway...)

Anyway, I confess I'm a little disappointed in my weight loss for this month.

I mean, I know this happens. "Gains are part of the whole weight loss process." "The last (10 pounds, 20 pounds, 40 pounds) is the hardest." "You will have plateaus (god, I hate that word. I can't spell it. French is just no.)" I know.

That doesn't, honestly, make it any easier to deal with. I'd say "Especially with Thomas the wonder-loser over there making everything look all easy," but let's be perfectly honest. Thomas could be gaining weight and I'd still be frustrated. Much as I love pointing out the various other scapegoats in my life, it doesn't really have anything to do with anything. I want to be doing well, regardless of other people. That other people continue to do better than me doesn't affect me nearly as much as the fact that I'm never doing quite as well as I want to be doing.

So....

Solutions...

Well, for the first thing, I think I need to slow the fuck heck down. I'm trying to do too many things at once, and the net results of that is that I'm getting absolutely nothing done, and making myself exhausted while I don't do it. I cannot maintain the pace of NaNoWriMo. I tried it for two weeks, and I'm completely burned out, and I have a perpetual headache on top of that. I actually spent the last couple of days almost entirely off the computer (except for some Warcraft, which engages an entirely different part of my brain than writing). Now, part of that was because my secondary hard drive is engaging itself in cascading drive failure. If you don't know what that means, it's basically my drive is dying. Slowly. Which is good, in that I can make backups of the drive, and that I can continue to use my computer. Which is bad, in that the drive is STILL DYING, and in between uses of my computer, I'm running scandisks to close off bad drive sectors, and that's time consuming. That said, after spending most of Saturday and Sunday off the computer, I feel... lots better. More relaxed. I got some extra sleep. I read books. I watched movies.

Secondly, get my ass back to journaling. I don't know why this is so hard to do, but it is. I hate journaling. My journal tends to look something like this:

Tuesday: Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack, checklist, activity all filled out. Full Smilies.
Wednesday: Breakfast. Snack. Activity. Checklist filled in.
Thursday: Activity. Checklist partially filled.
Friday - Monday: Blank.

Third: Water water water.

Me and drinking water go on this cycle... the cycle goes like this.

Week One: Drink soda first thing in the morning, water most of the day, one soda with dinner.
Week Two: Drink one soda first thing in the morning, then a water, then a soda, then a water, then a soda, then a water. Then soda for the rest of the day (my "waters" are 20 ounces, so, on Week Two, I'm still getting my water intake, altho you see I have greatly increased my caffiene intake as well.)
Week Three: Soda for most of the day. One water, somewhere in there.
Week Four: Soda all day. Water only when I run out of soda.
Week Five: Swear to do better next week.
Repeat Weeks Four and Five

My "logic," if you will, goes something along these lines. I hate water. HATE it. Bottled water is ok, but very expensive, so I don't generally buy it. The cute little filtery thing we have on the kitchen tap... really doesn't help anything. I can't tell a "taste" diffence, and I know for a fact that it's not actually filtering out any of the bad stuff that shows up in our city water. So, in order to be able to drink it, I have to put crystal light, or TrueLime and splenda in the water. (Both of these things add about 4 - 10 calories to my 20-ounce sports bottle.)

Soda, if you will, has >5 calories for a 12 ounce serving. The only difference between the soda and the adulterated water that I drink is:

Soda: >5 calories, 40mgs sodium, 46 mgs caffiene
Crystal Light: 10 calories, 10mgs sodium, 0 caffiene
Energy Crystal Light: 10 calories, 0 sodium, 120 mgs caffiene
TrueLime + 2 packets Splenda: 8 calories, 0 sodium, 0 caffiene

(Did you notice that the energy crystal light has 120 mgs of caffiene?? I didn't actually know that until I went and looked it up, just now.)

I try, sometimes, to cut back. Or, I'll try to quit entirely.

That never, ever lasts... and even if I do well for a few days, I find myself adding soda back into my diet after the caffiene withdrawal headache gets so bad that I start wondering if my eyeballs are bleeding. Obviously, even after a week or two weeks without caffiene, I go right back to it. Slowly, at first, then building. I'm so bad about caffiene that I absolutely refuse to buy penguin mints. I literally cannot be trusted not to overcaffienate myself. When you snarf 40+ mints in little less than 2 hours, you know there's something really, really wrong with you. (Ok, complete honesty here... I would mainline caffiene. I really would.)

Fourth, and probably last;

Exercise. (Another word I never spell correctly the first time, which is why we're all very thankful that such a thing as spellcheck exists. Even if spellcheck isn't in the dictionary.)

I can't seem to keep up with a constant work-out program. I did cardio for a while, on the DVD. Quit after a few months. I tried Couch to 5K. Quit after a few weeks. I did weight training. Quit after a few weeks. The only thing I've managed to keep up with consistently is walking. At the beginning of the year, Thomas and I walked ~1 mile, three times a week. Gradually we upped it to ~2.2 miles, and now we walk that 2.2 miles four times a week. It may very well be time for us to up the distance again. Or, at least, we might want to walk further on our Saturday walk - since our Tuesday, Thursday and Friday walks are already now taking place in the full dark, which is, honestly, not really fun. Especially since portions of the back trail are not lit.

In any case, something has to be done, because if I fall down consistently to losing only 2.2 pounds in a month, it'll be more than a full year from now before I'm at goal weight, and honestly, I just don't know how much more of this I can take. My first impulse after last night's weigh in was to go snarf a hershey's bar, because honestly, if I'm going to GAIN weight, I may as well at least deserve it.