Broken Ideals

You know, losing weight didn't make me happy.

It sounds weird to say it, and god knows I get shit for it like you wouldn't believe, or maybe you would.

I lost 87 pounds, or thereabouts. And I wanted to think that I didn't have unrealistic expectations. I never thought I'd be hollywoodesque or suddenly beautiful. But I did think, MAYBE, it wasn't a terrible thing to hope I wouldn't hate myself so much.

But I did, and I begin to think, at 40, that's a trick this old dog isn't going to learn. I don't even know that it's possible for me to stop hating myself.

And on top of that, I ended up with problems; unwanted attention.

See, I used to have this neighbor. Bob.

And Bob was a drunken asshole. I don't think I ever saw the man sober. He lived in the apartment diagonal across the hall from us.

One day, I was outside, talking to one of the other neighborhood moms, while we were waiting for our daughters to get home from first grade - they were allowed to walk home from school, but for most of first grade, Darcy wanted me to be outside, waiting for her. Her dad would walk her over to the school sidewalk and let her go the rest of the way on her own. Small independences.

And Debbie was selling something - Pampered Chef stuff, maybe? I don't remember. I was leaning over the picnic table, looking at the brochure she had.

"Hey!" Bob tapped me. I'd like to say he tapped my shoulder, but he didn't. He stabbed me in the lower back/upper ass with his huge, blunt finger. "You look so hot, leanin' over like that, I took a picture." He shows me on his cell phone, this picture of my ass. He's seriously crowding my personal space and this guy is huge - well over six feet tall and probably a good 280 pounds. Like a linebacker who's been drinking too many beers.

"Um... yeah." I straighten up and move a little, trying to get out of his shadow. I don't like people looming over me. It's 2pm and I can already smell cheap beer and sweat.

The phone in his hand rings. "Oh, yeah, hey, yeah, I know, ain't it great... I just came over to tell her. So, you like that ass, huh?" He looks at me. "I texted the pic to my friend."

You did... what? I laugh uncomfortably and move further away; honestly at this point I'm trying to get Debbie between me and him. She's just as uncomfortable.

"Oh, look, she's laughin'," he says. "It's makin' her tits bounce around." He hands me the phone. "He wants to talk to you."

"Yeah, right. You know, I'm waiting for my seven-year-old daughter to get home from first grade." I give Bob a look, but if it impacts him at all, he completely ignores it. I look away from him and start talking to Debbie. Neither of us look at Bob, or the phone, or acknowledge anything else he says. He eventually wanders away.

A few weeks later, my husband goes off to New Jersey for business for a week. And Bob starts rattling the doorknob to my apartment every time he walks by. If the door's unlocked, he opens it.

I start to feel trapped in my own house. I don't like to go out at night to take out the trash and now I NEVER go all the way down to the mailbox after dark.

Thomas gets home, and I tell him what's been going on. A few days later, Debbie asks us if we can take care of her dog for the afternoon, because she's going to be gone all day. "Sure, no problem." It's not. I don't like dogs, but Debbie's isn't too bad.

We're out walking the dog when Bob rides up, drunkenly, on his bicycle.

"That ain't your dog. Did you steal that dog?"

"I don't see that it's any of your concern," Thomas says, handing the leash over to me. "I'd like you to leave my family alone."

"What, asshole?"

"You heard me." I don't know what Bob hears in Thomas's voice, but what I hear is the keys moving from Thomas's pocket to his hand. I look. He's done the Wolverine thing with his keychain; several keys poke out between his fisted knuckles. "You're harassing my wife. Don't talk to us. Don't talk to her."

Bob jumps off his bike and charges him. Thomas stands there, cool and collected. Bob tops him by a good five inches and at least a hundred pounds. I scramble to get my phone out of my pocket.

Bob ended up backing down, no punches thrown. But I thought I was going to be sick.

For this? I lost weight for this? To be treated like this? To garner this sort of attention?

It wasn't the whole reason; I got frustrated by the slow, creeping gains, the constant hunger and irritability.

But Bob scared the hell out of me.

We reported him to the apartment complex - I have serious trust issues with police, too, and I don't... technically being a douche canoe isn't against the law. And I have no faith that a police officer would take me seriously. The manager told him that he wasn't to speak to us, at all, or they'd evict him. One more complaint and he was out - we weren't the only people in the complex who'd complained about him.

I lost weight for this?

And we're back... in the car... again.

One of my favorite scenes in Jurassic Park (a movie that I love intensely) is when Tim is stuck in the electric car, and Dr. Grant climbs up to rescue him. The car takes on this inanimate - but all too mobile! - malevolence that's just as scary as the dinosaurs. Of course, the whole movie is about the evils of men playing God with the miracle of technology, but this is hardly an explication...

The two climb out of the car, which then begins chasing them down the tree (gravity, she is a harsh mistress) while they scramble toward the ground. In the end, the car hits the ground at the same time they do - fortunately, most of the roof is missing and they're merely encapsulated. (Easily topping the "yeah right" awards list for most incredible vehicular nonsense in a major action movie...)

"Well... we're back... in the car... again," says Timmy.

That's where I am. A lot of running around and screaming and climbing and ... here I am. Back in the car. Again.

I'm not making excuses for myself; believe you me, I've already castigated myself more than you possibly could (some of you won't - if anyone's even left who watches this blog - but some will. There are always the smug douche canoes out there... which is fine. If that makes you happy, that's good for you.) about my lack of sticking on the wagon.

I've been hyper-busy. In case you missed it, a little more than a year ago, I became a published writer. Yay me! And since that first story, I've had eight (8!!) stories picked up. Some of them are still forthcoming, but I have a nice little shelf in my office that has MY WORK on it. I've been mentioned in Publisher's Weekly AND one of my stories was selected for Hustler Magazine's book of the month. (Yes, I write that kind of story.... )

I also came into a large amount of money and bought a house. Which was a much more stressful and crazy-making process than I thought could even be possible, and given how prone I am to MAKING SHIT UP to worry about, that's really saying something. We started house hunting in October, made 4 different bids and finally got our house in May.

I also finally got to take a dream trip - I've always wanted to go to Disney, and we finally went in December. 10 days of vacation, 4 days driving, 6 days in the parks, and a freaking huge credit card bill... holy fuck, but things are expensive... ridiculously so. Eating two meals in the park, plus snacks, daily... Ug. I think I gained 20 pounds just over vacation.

(I also did the 3-Day for a second time, and while I skipped it this year - the fund raising makes me more nuts, and I just didn't need the stress - I plan to do it again in 2013.)

In any case, I've gained about 50 of the 87 pounds back. Ish. I don't know for sure, but the last time I weighed in at the doctor's office, I was rolling in at just around 185, up from 135. Which, you know, is still not 221, which is where I started. I'm wearing 16 jeans instead of 6s. (Still, they're not 24s, right?)

I keep falling prey to that terrible idea that I will have more time later. I will have less stress later. I will get it together after the holidays. After school ends. After we move. After after after.

On the plus side; my house is clean. And I mean freaking spotless. Everything is dusted. I vacuum regularly, my bed is always made. It's my house, and there's something different about it from being my apartment. (I'm also astoundingly good at getting unpacked. We were all settled in within four weeks; the boxes that are still full are the ones that are STORAGE boxes and are staying packed. - Some of it will come unboxed once we get some shelves built in the office closet.)

I thought about waiting; starting back on my healthy eating/healthy living thing (diet!) in January.

But, really, why wait?

So, here I am.

Cereal Killer

I've been whinging quite a lot recently about "I don't know why my weight keeps going up."

Oh, liar liar.

I know.

Believe me, I know.

(And really, you probably did, too. Admit it, we all do this when we read some poor weight-warrior whinging on about it... "well, I bet you've been eating too much. or not working out enough. Or both. Shut up and get back on the wagon, slacker." In various mental tones of niceness. Weight loss is simple. Eat less, move more. Doing it is hard.)

I mean, yes, we all have our weird weight fluctuations. Too much salt can cause a bump, or that time of the month, an overindulgence in cheetos or whatever... but usually, they're fluctuations. Up for a few days, and then back down...

This has... NOT been an aberration. This has been me up .2, up .2, up .4, up .6, down 1 (net of +.4, for those of you less mathematically inclined.) (Completely off the topic here, does anyone else have problems spelling mathematically? I mean, I don't know about you, but I don't SAY math eh mat i cal lee. I say Math mat ick lee. Therefore, I cannot spell mathematically right the first time. Ever.)

I've been paying for Weight Watchers more than I've been free. I usually manage to trim down about once a month to skate in under my limit (I haven't actually NOT made it back into my range at least once a month since November, but each time I make it into the range, it's higher than the last time. April, I made it into my range at 135.8 with a .2 margin of safety.) but I have been consistently up 2 or 3 pounds for the last three months.

Part of my problem has been a lack of something to train for. I miss my long-ass walks and I miss some of the freedom of wandering off the path of what I can eat that went with them. If I'm not exercising several times a week, I had better not stray off my 23 points a day. Without some goal to train for, I've been finding it harder and harder to get my ass down to the fitness center. (I blamed the weather, it was too cold, too rainy, too snowy to walk down there... I blamed the other people who use the fitness center; one whole time I was there, three of the four machines were in use and I don't like the recumbent bike. We all know who was to blame here, right? me!)

Part of my problem has been this annoying sense of entitlement I have. I'm mad, all the time mad, with my husband. Thomas has had a lot of trouble NOT losing weight. Annoying. As. Shit. And let me tell ya, having to live with someone who's whinging about being down another three pounds this week, even AFTER he had TWO DOUGHNUTS is just about enough to make any sane person stuff a few eclairs down their throats. Not to mention that in order to keep him from slipping down the drain when he takes a shower, we've had to stock the house with more high-calorie foods.

But mostly my problem has been nibbling.

I rarely sit down and scarf a 6 point doughnut. But I will eat a 100-cal pack, and 15 minutes later, I'll have another one. And 15 minutes after that, I'll have a piece of cheese. And 5 minutes after that (the cheese doesn't even last until I get out of the freaking KITCHEN!) I'll have an apple. And then I'll have a cup of dry cereal. And if I'm not paying attention, I'll have ANOTHER cup.

None of these things by themselves is the problem. It's that in less than 45 minutes, I've eaten 11 points. Frequently in addition to my 23 points that I'm allotted for the day. Honestly, I should just go ahead and eat the freaking doughnut, right? Then I'd only be 6 points behind, instead of 11.

My biggest problem is that damn cold cereal.

Technically, I buy the stuff for Darcy. In actuality, Thomas and I eat 95% of it. Thomas for breakfast on days he's not headed in to work; me, in a coffee cup, in front of the computer. And again, if I would just have one cup, that'd be fine.

But I don't.

I have one cup... and then 15 minutes later, I'll have another cup... and then another one... one serving of cold pre-sweetened cereal is 100-140 calories. (and, of course, a serving is often like 3/4 of a cup...) There are 14 servings in a box. When that box is empty in 3 days... well...

yeah.

For a while, I was asking Thomas to point it out to me, if I was eating the stuff, so that I'd stop. And I was okay for a while. And now? I'm just eating it when he's at work. Or in the evenings, when I'm reading in the other room. When he doesn't see me.

I'm sneaking food?

Jesus.

So, I fessed up with him about it today. And now I'm fessing up with you.

One of the things that Weight Watcher's suggests as a Tool for Living is Ask for Help. So, I'm asking.

HOW do I keep myself from doing this? I am nibbling myself right out of my weight range, and I must say, I don't like it very much. I feel guilty. And slack. And stupid. And I don't like feeling that way.

ICBM

I have several habits that I would like to change (one of the things I would like to change is my habit of taking self-criticism to artistically extreme measures, and towards that end, I am not going to call these "bad habits" since they're neither good, nor bad) merely so that I can get more enjoyment out of being myself and living my life.

As I've mentioned before, one of them is to improve my self-esteem by working on the way I talk to myself, about myself, and think about myself. Seems selfish, on the one hand, but on the other, loving myself more will give me more time, since I'll be focused more on what I can do better and less time on what I haven't/can't/won't/aren't capable of doing. Or, more exactly, I will spend more time doing and less time whining. Always an improvement.

In one area, I'd particularly like to improve is this: ICBM statements. Not InterContinental Ballistic Missile (although it does often have the same sort of devastating effects on one's mental landscape) but I Can't Because My...

I Can't (get more exercise/lose weight/be happier/get out of debt) Because My (life is too busy/body type is predisposed towards being fat/life sucks/paycheck is shoddy)...

Perfect example:

About two-three months back, while deep in the middle of "god, I hate that word" plateau, my Weight Watcher's leader, Beth, suggested that I might have better results if I tried the Flore Plan (now called Momentum, hehe...) Basically, when I'm on the straight Flex plan, I tend to eat 2 point crap with too much sodium, so I don't lose weight, but was the Core plan really helping anymore? Did I still know what a portion size was? Was I still listening to my body's signals? By trying the Flore plan, Beth was suggesting that I stick mainly/entirely to Core foods, but to limit myself to the number of Flex points I would get in a day.

Without hesitation, I said, "Oh, I can't do that." I had a huge pack of reasons, too. I hated tracking, I was afraid of my points and tended to horde them like some giant OCD dragon, it was such a hassel. In fact, I kept making excuses for the better part of four minutes.

Beth, who I love to pieces, looked at me. "So what you're saying is, you can't even try it." Ouch.

My first response to just about any suggestion or criticism is to deny the feasibility of that suggestion. "I can't because..." Which is, in the end, just a fancy way of saying "I'm not going to do this because I don't want to."

Changing what I say has helped me change what I think.

Instead of saying, "I can't do the Couch to 5K program because my legs hurt too much," I have altered it to "I find it difficult to manage the C25K program. How can I make it easier for myself? Or get the same amount of exercise in a different program?"

My daughter is a big fan of Blue's Clues (I think every 3-5 year old must go through this phase) and I find that I enjoy Steve and his Handy Dandy Notebook... Rather than immediately dismiss a problem as having no solution, Steve and Blue look for clues, write them down, and think of a solution.

(I'm having flashbacks to one of my favorite books; Robert Fulghum's All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarden.)

I pull out my notebook (I love notebooks, love them, love them, love them. A computer is all good and well, but there's something just extra satisfying about the physical act of writing something down...) and wrote down "C25K". And then I wrote up all the reasons I was having problems with this idea. I was getting shin-splints. I don't like being cold. I felt weird and uncomfortable running around with all my fat-girl bits jiggling. So... how could I make it better? Get better shoes? Run on a treadmill? Don't run at all, but instead do very fast walking? Start with a week .5 (instead of at week one, which alternates 60 seconds of running with 3 minutes of walking, I could start even slower; run 30 seconds and walk 2 minutes, run 30 seconds and walk 2 minutes?) In the end, I came up with a combination of solutions that have worked out pretty well for me. I am no longer trying to do C25K, but I am doing H.I.I.T. work on the treadmill, altering walking at 2.5 mph (with an incline of 6) with walking at 3.5 mph with an incline of 3. Sometimes, if I'm feeling particularly peppy about my workouts, I'll add in 60 seconds of running at 4 mph. I also started the 100 push up challenge, which gives me something different to focus on. Both of these things, I've found, I enjoy more than I did trying to do the C25K, which leads me to be less likely to give them up.

I still find myself launching an ICBM whenever someone gives me a solution to a problem; however, I find that if I let the idea simmer for a day or so, it might just be that other people do know what they're talking about...

Breakdown

There is no sense in pretendin'
Your eyes give you give away
Something inside you is feelin' like I do
We've said all there is to say

Baby, breakdown, go ahead give it to me
Breakdown, honey take me through the night

Breakdown, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

So, I made it nearly a year before having a complete and total meltdown about this whole lifestyle thing.

Last year, I shipped out chocolates and cookies to a few of my warcraft guild members (I made tons of cookies and chocolates last year, and I really like making chocolates. It's fun and sort of artsy and I feel creative and talented while I'm doing it...) and this year, talking with one of those people, he offered me a rather large sum of cash to make gift boxes for his employees. He's a lawyer and has a crapton of legal assistants and whatnot... so, despite some misgivings, I found myself dragging out the chocolate molds and the melting wafers...

I made several batches of chocolate without too much trouble. I counted 2-3 points a day for various amounts of licking my fingers and really wasn't feeling too bad about the whole thing...

And then came...

Thursday, it rained so hard that you'd have expected to see Noah somewhere out there with his cubit-stick, measuring wood... we didn't get in our long walk. Darcy was being a society-menace... actually, she's really not, but my god, the girl can drive me up the wall. I'm really not a very good mom... it doesn't take more than about 2 "Why" questions before I start making shit up improvising. "Why do leaves fall down?" "Because no one gave them licenses for hanggliders..." I forsee many, many trips to the school next year to talk with the principal about my deranged child... (she also likes to talk about squirrels who are blowing up school buses...)

I'm trying hard to finish up these boxes to get everything shipped on Monday so I can spend KC's money with impunity and Darcy's being a serious pest. She's not happy about the fact that I won't let her eat the cookies and fudge and chocolates that I'm making, and I've had to tell her five times in the last 20 minutes that these are for someone else and she can't have any...

When it just happened.

I snapped.

Went 'round the bend.

Flipped my lid.

I gave Darcy three or four pieces of chocolate and screamed at her to GET OUT OF MY KITCHEN! And then proceeded to snarf the rest of the row myself.

I do not know how much fudge I ate.

I know I threw a few pieces down the disposal as soon as I realized what I was doing. And Darcy took a few pieces before fleeing to her bedroom.

An 8 x 11 tray makes ~100 pieces of fudge. I know I didn't eat more than one entire row. So, at the worst, at least 2 pieces, and at most, nine pieces.

But still...

I didn't decide to throw myself down the stairs, so to speak. I was good the rest of the day. I compensated. I wrote it down. I estimated on the heavy side.

And yet...

I spent most of Friday feeling like a complete Oinker. I was snippy most of the day. I worked up a good sweat when we went for our Friday walk, pumping my arms and stepping hard down on the pavement.

And then, Saturday came, and it was just... gone. I was still a little astonished by what I'd done, but my jeans still fit. I don't look any different than I did on Thursday. I didn't wait til Monday to get back on the wagon; I went back on right away. I wrote it down. I compensated.

When I show a gain this week, I think I'll be okay with that. And if I lose anyway, I'm not going to give myself the excuse that I can act like this all the time.

Surprisingly enough, I'm okay with it. I did what I did, and while I don't want to make a regular habit of it, it's not the end of the world.

I think that's a non-scale victory.

I accept what I did without beating myself up about it for too long.

Good for me.

The Plan

The Plan:

Go to Best friend's parent's house for Thanksgiving dinner. Eat as much as I want. Get overly stuffed. Do not feel guilty. Walk tonight, and extra this weekend. Gain weight this week. Accept this as being a normal part of life.

The Ideal:

Go to Best friend's parent's house for Thanksgiving dinner. Eat as much as I need, but no more. Feel pleased with self-control, but not deprived. Walk tonight and extra this weekend. Lose or maintain weight. Feel proud of self and accomplishments.

The Probable:

Go to best friend's parent's house for Thanksgiving dinner. Eat not enough to be happy, but more than I need. Feel deprived and guilty. Gain weight anyway. Hate self.

The Possible:

Go to best friend's parent's house for Thanksgiving dinner. Eat some, get thrown up on by sick infant. Catch stomach virus. Spend all weekend throwing up. Gain weight ANYWAY and be truly and thoroughly convinced that the universe is a vile, evil place.

I'll let ya know how it goes...

Lynn, You Have the Flore

I think I've mentioned how much I hate the Flex plan, right? There's something mildly psychotic/OCD about counting "points". Not to mention the fact that the number of points people get seem to me to be seriously out of whack with the amount of food people should be eating.

If you do the math, at 160-170 pounds, I get 22 points per day. At 50-70 calories per point (If you eat something very high fiber and low fat, like say, a stick. Or raw twine. You can get it up to about 100 calories for a point.) that's 1,100 - 1,540 calories per day. Now, the high end of things is not too bad for calorie counts, but if you're doing that, you're also getting a lot of fiber. Perhaps too much fiber. (And if you've ever overfibered yourself, you know that this is a bad. bad. superbad. thing.)

Also, I develop this subconscious fear of my points... I'm afraid to use them in case I'm hungry later. So, since I don't use them, I, of course, am hungry later. And, towards the end of the evening, I don't really want to cook another meal, so I end up snacking those last 3-5 points away.

At the meeting on Monday (well, I weighed in. I didn't actually stay for the meeting because I'd left Thomas at home with Darcy and a migraine...) Beth suggested to me that I try the Flore plan. Just for a week or so, to see if what I'm doing is eating entirely too much core foods. (Going beyond 'satisfied.') The Flore plan, for those of you who are unfamiliar with this concept, combines the headache of both plans... use Flex points, eat Core foods.

Her suggestion was, actually, not to change my eating habits so much as just track how much I was eating and then see, next week, if I could cut back a little here and there. Knowing me and my desire for results now, I decided I was not even remotely likely to do that, and I would instead, just do the Flore plan for a week or so... Especially since I'm less likely to snack mindlessly if I'm not allowing myself to be mindless about it. (Being mindful involves writing it down, so if I am journaling, I cannot, by default, be mindless.)

I was complaining to Thomas for the last two weeks or so, now, that I'm always hungry.

Clearly, that cannot actually be the case.

Beth is probably correct that I've been eating too much. Nibbling myself to death, in essence. A cheesestick here (only 1 point!) , an extra 2 helpings of dinner there (it's core, so it's fine, right? Just because I ate all of Thomas's leftovers, and the stuff left in the dish. Right?) (I can't say for sure, since I stopped tracking even sporadically about two-three weeks ago...) I've been so hyper-busy recently that... honestly, eating is a task I can finish. I can go into the kitchen and find food. Finding food, then, I'm going to eat it. Eating food for the purposes of finishing a task is not fueling my body's needs.

Hunger isn't the problem; eating isn't the solution.

So... tracking yesterday went something like this:

Breakfast: 3 points
Whole wheat cream of wheat - 1.5 point
3/4 cup milk - 1.5 points
Mid-morning snack: 3 point
Medium apple - 1 point
1 cup greek yogurt - 2 points
Lunch: 4 points
salad greens - 0 points
tomato - 0 points
1/4 avocado - 2 points
1/4 cup fat free cheese shreds - 1 point
2 tbsp fat free thousand island dressing - 1 point
Mid-afternoon snack: 2 points
1 tsp canola oil - 1 point
1/2 cup Fiber One Cereal - 0 points
1/2 cup skim milk - 1 point
Dinner: 8 points
chicken breast - 3 points
1 cup brown rice - 3 points
1/4 cup fat free cheese shreds - 1 point
1 tsp olive oil - 1 point
Dessert: 1 point
Skinny Cow Low fat bar - 1 point
Before bed Snack: 1 point
1/2 cup tuna fish - 1 point
10 baby carrots - 0 points
2 tsp cranberry mustard - 0 points
Activity: 3 APs
walked 1/2 mile - 1 point
walked/jogged 2.2 miles (more walking than jogging) - 2 points

Added up, that's 22 points, 3 APs earned and unspent. On Core, that's 1 AP used (for the ice cream bar...)

Also, I got all my waters in... funny thing is, I wasn't hungry yesterday, despite the fact that I was being more careful about what I ate.

Hunger isn't the problem; eating isn't the solution.

Dashboard Confessional

Actually, this isn't about the band, but I really do like the name, and I'm feeling vaguely confessional today, so... there ya go...

The Cheats start to sneak up on you, have you ever noticed that? (Putting aside the fact that the word Cheating is weird and doesn't really apply well to a Food Plan... I mean, Cheating is to help you win through unfair means, and there's nothing winning about gaining weight, right? So why call it Cheating? Be that as it may, everyone knows what I mean when I say the word Cheat, so I'll just use it. It's like Organic food. Stupid. All food is Organic. If it were Inorganic, it'd be plastic, or rocks, or dirt or something. But then, I could write a whole article on my particular grammatical twidges, so I will just stop here before this becomes a rant.)

Where was I before I got distracted by the grammar police? Right. Cheating. Sneaking up on you.

They do. Creepy little things.

Back when you (and yes, by you I mean me.) start your diet, you're soooo good. You watch every bite you each, you write it down, you measure, you weigh. You make sure you get all your fruits and vegetables, and you avoid temptation.

After a few months of it, you may sit back and think (smugly, of course) "This isn't so hard. This isn't so bad. Why did it take me so long to get around to doing this?"

I think the first thing to go is measuring. Measuring takes time. And we're not just talking about the time to dig out the measuring cup, fill it up, scrape it out, dump it in your bowl. We're also talking about having to wash countless numbers of measuring cups. And I don't know about you, but I only have 2 of each cup size. So, if I have a cup of this and a cup of that and a cup of the third thing, I have to stop mid-meal prep to wash out a measuring cup.

So... we eyeball it. And our eyeball gets bigger, every time we have a bowl of ice cream.

The next thing... journaling. Writing down every nibble and bite we eat is BORING. It's also time consuming. Even with the computerized options. I mean, Weight Watchers has a mostly lovely site to enter your food journal, and yet, you either have to look up each food item as you enter it, or you can save things to favorites. And yet, your favorite list is alphabetized. And Brown Rice isn't under Brown, but under Cooked. For Cooked Brown Rice. Skim milk? Under Fat-free Skim Milk. So, it takes time to sort through the list... And certainly, once you skip a day of journaling, you feel like you have to "catch up" and it's hard to remember what you ate yesterday, but looking at those blank pages makes you feel guilty... vaguely uneasy...

It's just easier to shut the book and not write anything down. "Oh, I'll remember it."

Water water everywhere... and it's rather unpleasant to drink, at that. It either comes out of the tap and tastes vile (as well as having everyone's leftover prescription drugs in it!) or it comes out of a bottle and poisons the environment for 4,000 years. Or you drink it from a plastic cup and you're poisoning yourself. If you believe some reports. Or sometimes, not. It's complicated and confusing and yet, you're told to drink 6-8 cups a day, and honestly, do you really need that much? Some studies say you do, some say you don't. Caffeine is the enemy. No, no, it's fine. And you try to alternate between soda and water, just to make things easier, but jeez, you're already putting the Crystal Light in the water, so it's got the artificial sweetners in it. Does it matter if you're drinking all soda instead of water? Not to mention two of my water-bottles developed leaks and I had to throw them away.

So... soda it is.

Or those little bites of things. And this is the one that's really getting to me. Darcy still eats sugary cereals. Perhaps I'm a bad mom that I let her eat "normal" food while I eat "diet" food. She gets full fat hot dogs (on lowfat bread rolls, but still, have you looked at the calorie and fat content of an Oscar Meyer Weiner?) and ice cream and fruit snacks and full sugared cereals. On the other hand, she eats whatever we eat for dinner, and as she's just as apt to chose a banana or some grapes for a snack as a cupcake, I'm happy to let her learn to have a better relationship with food than I do. Is it so bad that she doesn't currently think of a cupcake as the root of all evil?

And yet, these things she eats... some of them are very tempting. (Not the hot dog, through. I don't really like hot dogs.) But... gummy lifesavers. Cereal. Full fat ice cream.

I don't take much.

Just a bite.

But it's a bite here. And a bite there. And it's getting more and more frequent.

I counted, yesterday.

I had four extra "bites". That's probably more than two points there. And because it's "only a bite", I'm certainly not writing it down. Or counting it as a point.

Back in college, I took Geology 101, colloquailly known as "Rocks for Jocks."

In that class, we defined Creep as "the slow, inexonerable movement of soil downhill."

I think I'm suffering from Dieter's Creep. "The slow, inexonerable movement of my eating plan downhill."

And the result?

I'm up .6 pounds this week. Creep. Creep. Creep.

Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall

[Just so you know, I started writing this entry at 5am, after being awake for over an hour. My cat had another seizure, only a day after the last one. Before that, he hadn't had one for a few months, and before that, a couple years. I don't know if he's getting worse, or what. It's scary, and I feel very helpless. And I still can't afford to give him anti-seizure medication. So, I'm awake, and I don't want to be thinking about things I can't do anything about, so I'll write a blog entry about something else entirely. I may not finish it this morning, though. I'm already getting sort of bleary-eyed and desperately wanting to go back to bed. However, if I go back to bed right now, I'll just stare at the wall in that sort of squinty where-are-my-glasses way and worry and worry, and if I'm just going to worry and toss and turn and worry some more, I may as well get up so I don't bother Thomas. Right? Yeah.]

The mirror, these days.

Kinda not my friend.

I suppose I'm just as happy that it can't actually talk to me, although I imagine it does. In that game-show-host false cheerful voice as it tells me how terrible I look. It gleefully points out, in loving detail, every lump and bump, every roll and wrinkle.

I guess it's still holding a grudge.

Because I ignored it.

For years.

I still don't own a full length mirror. I haven't had regular access to a full length mirror since I left Hometown (My own private corner of hell. When I die and go to hell, I'll be back in Hometown with a bunch of rednecks who think hanging out in the Safeway parking lot drinking beer out of Dr. Pepper bottles is the height of cool.)

I have never, ever, liked the mirror. In high school I stood in front of it and counted zits. Seriously, I know everyone makes jokes about being a spotty faced teenager. My teenage acne was the sort they photograph and put in magazines as a "before" picture for Acutane. In fact, I've been on Acutane. My face actually wasn't as bad as my back, which was just beyond nasty. I'm rather desperately hoping that my daughter inherits my husband's complexion which is gorgeous and creamy-smooth and feels just lovely under my fingertips, rather than my own. Which is still somewhat vile, and I have scars the likes of which you'd have to see to believe, and I'm not going to show them to you.

And, like many things that I don't like, I developed a good case of Wally-vision.

No, not that one.

I think I've mentioned that my mom does Historical Reinacting. If not, she does. Basically, she dresses up in hand-made clothing from the 18th century and putters around with tents and campfires on weekends. It's an expensive and uncomfortable form of escapism, but you know, we all need to make an escape from time to time, right?

Anyway, back when I was still in middle-school, early high-school, she used to drag me around to these events with her. I did not - repeat did NOT - like them. It was hot. It was cold. It was raining. There were bugs. I didn't like sleeping on the ground. I didn't like washing cast iron pots in cold water. It was dirty. I did not like sleeping on piles of straw that poked through the canvas groundsheets. I didn't like eating anything that had been cooked in a washed-in-cold-water cast iron pot. Girl of creature comforts I was then, and I am still. Roughing it is not my idea of fun.

However... in our unit (the First Virginia Regiment, in case you care) we had this guy, Wally. Wally was... well, he was very enthusiastic about reinacting and he was a bit of nazi. (If you do reinacting, or SCA or anything like that, you'll find people divided into two camps. The "If they'd have had it, they'd have used it" people and the fashion police who yell at everyone for being inaccurate.) He was, however, also about five foot five and skinny as a rail. And once, after fussing at someone who had a wrong-century something-or-other, he got clocked with a perfectly era-accurate fist.

After which he developed the idea of Wally-vision.

"I do not like what I see over there. However, I cannot do anything about not liking it. If I look over there, I will be angry. I do not want to be angry. Therefore, I will not look over there."

Wally Vision. Do not look at things you do not like, unless you are willing to do something about them.

I had Wally Vision for the mirror.

I also had it for photographs.

I was looking through my wedding album the other day (My daughter likes to look at the pictures. I find it very amusing that - because I honestly couldn't remember the man's name - when she asked who the priest was, I said "Oh, that's the guy who married us," and Darcy now names him as "Guy Merrysus.") and realizing with a start that I have several pictures from our honeymoon. And we are actually in... none of them. It could have been anyone's vacation. It was mine, and while it wasn't the best time I've ever had in my life (my mother, god bless her, gave us a vacation in Jamaica, conveniently forgetting that I am allergic to pineapples, my husband is allergic to shellfish, and neither of us likes to swim. So, mostly we drank a lot.) it was mine. And it's like I never even existed.

(Have I mentioned that my dream is to someday have a renewal of vows celebration so I can wear a wedding dress again and look pretty, as opposed to looking somewhat like a silk wrapped marshmallow?)

Other people have pictures of me, but I don't really have many of my own. I tend to hide behind the camera. And I don't take pictures of my husband unless he's not paying attention because while I am camera shy, he is camera hostile. Mostly I have pictures of our daughter, and pictures of animals at the zoo, and pictures of my stuff.

Looking through my photo albums can be a surreal experience. This is my life. But where am I? Jesus, how could you miss me, I was freaking enormous. And yet... there I'm not.

To be, or not to be (fat)... if a fat girl falls over in the woods and no one hears her, does she exist? Cogito, ergo sum fat.

There are three mirrors in my house. One in the bathroom, over the sink. One in Darcy's room (you've all seen this one, it's the one I take my progress pictures in.) Technically, that's my dresser. I know, I'm a bad mother, having my clothes in my daughter's room. But really, there's no space in our room for two dressers. Our old apartment was much larger and we had enough room in the master bedroom for our enormous king-sized bed, Thomas's dresser and my dresser. This apartment? Not so much. One in the bedroom. We have a pier-cabinet instead of a headboard, and I love it for all it's nooks and drawers. But when we got it, I was very uncomfortable with the huge mirror that made up the entire wall across the king-sized mattress.

However, I'd been doing the mirror-slide for years by that point, so after we got the new bed, it only took me about two weeks before I was doing the mirror-slide in the bedroom as well.

Do you know the mirror-slide? It's that quick glance in the mirror; don't meet your own gaze, don't really look too hard. Hair's combed. Teeth are brushed. Clothes are not wrinkled or spotted. Great, move along, nothing to see here.

I've become an expert in the mirror-slide. Wally Vision. I can't do anything about my weight. Looking at myself in the mirror only makes me unhappy. I don't wish to be unhappy. Since I can't do anything about my weight, I may as well do something about being unhappy. I won't look.

And I didn't.

For years.

I mean, it's not like I didn't know that I was fat. I couldn't possibly not know it. When you're sneaking up on 250 pounds, you know it. When you worry about walking around in shops full of breakable things because you just know you're going to bump a shelf, you know it. Do they even make clothes anymore that "shrink in the wash" or is that just an excuse?

Wally Vision. What I see is going to make me unhappy.

I don't want to be unhappy.

Ergo, I won't look.

The mirror, as I've said, is mad at me.

And after years of neglect, I find myself desperately trying to salvage a relationship that died. Died, was buried, decomposed, and here I am, digging it up again and crying into the maggoty remains to please, please forgive me, I'm sorry, I didn't know...

Baby come back
You can blame it all on me
I was wrong
And I just can't live without you

Why can I not see in the mirror the person I know is there? Why why why?

I look in the mirror, I take a picture and all I see...

Han, mi boogie...

I know I've lost 50 pounds. (Fifty? Really? My god, when did that happen. Oh, right, the last eight months of my life which have been a blur of weigh ins and anticipating weigh ins and dreading weigh ins and... yeah. If I had to sum up my life for the last eight months, it would be "talked about my weight entirely too much.")

I know I've lost 11+ inches from my waist.

I know I'm wearing a medium shirt and size 14 shorts.

I know I'm now shopping the upper end of the "women's" clothing department, instead of the "plus".

I know.

And yet...

Me dwana no bata. Chone manya weesh asha beecho. E chu ta! Bantha poodoo!

The mirror hates me. That's really all there is to it.

It hasn't forgiven me for so many years of neglect.

And frankly, why should it?

But, we're going to councelling now, and I have hopes for a reconcilliation. At least he hasn't moved out yet. So there's still hope.

Right?

Please, Keep Your Excuses (I Have Enough of my Own)

Thomas has always said he hates biology. Unlike math, or chemistry, biology is unpredictable. In chemistry, if you add X element to Y element and add Z amount of energy, you always, always get R. Two plus two always equals four. Every single time.

Biology? Not so much. Sometimes you breed red-eyed fruit flies with white-eyed fruit flies and you get pink-eyed fruit flies. And sometimes you get all red-eyed fruit flies anyway. And from time to time, a brown-eyed fruit fly will show up in the mix. And while there are percentages and trends, you cannot predict. Ever. Exactly what will happen. (For instance, sometimes some idiot might decide to OPEN all the fruit fly tubes during the weekend and infect the entire school with mutant freaking fruit flies so that your English teacher decides to give bonus points on the final exam based on who can kill more of the little bastards. And wrote points up on the board WWI Flying Ace style so you could see who bagged the most fruit flies. Not that that happened, or anything... no, no, of course not. Purely hypothetical.)

I always liked biology, back in high school, because it wasn't predictable. You never quite knew what was going to happen, or why, but you could run experiments and find out.

I find I'm liking it less when I am the experiment. Didn't get in all your waters this week? Are you up, or down? Is it consistent over the weeks? Did you eat all 35 of your flex points? Forget to journal? What's the scale say?

Of course, I'm up again this week. 1.2 pounds, as a further matter of fact, which is the largest gain I've had since starting Weight Watchers. Sigh. I've been journaling though, so I've been pouring over my journal obsessively. The only things I can really see that might be the problem is 1) I ate all of my flex points and most of my activity points, which put me at 38.5 flexies. and 2) it's the week-to-10 days before my time of the month and sometimes I have a gain/small loss/maintain that week.

It never fails, however. As soon as I gain, I get el sticky globules of sympathy, advice, excuses, and theories about why I gained.

"Did you step up your exercise? That might be it."

"Time of the month?"

"You know, that's normal, right?"

I know. The entire point is to make me feel better. And honestly, I do appreciate the sympathy. I don't, however, appreciate the excuses.

I'm perfectly capable of coming up with my own excuses. Trust me, I am the Reigning Queen of Why-it's-Not-My-Fault.

But in all honesty, that's not what I need right now. I do not need to be blasé about my weight loss. I don't want to shrug off a pound with yet another round of how the world is out to get me. I don't want to get complaisant yet.

What I'm most afraid of here is becoming apathetic.

This is the weight my body is comfortable with.

That's the place I don't want to go. If I make too many excuses about why this isn't my fault, why I couldn't do better/try harder/be more vigilant, I'll get back to that place where I was blaming my ballooning weight on steroid pills that I haven't taken in five years.

For years, I blamed my size on steroids. It wasn't my fault that I was this big, it was doctors who didn't warn me about the side effects of the medication I was constantly taking. It wasn't my fault I couldn't lose weight, there was no way I could exercise, not with my ankle the way it was. My asthma is bad, I can't even walk a mile, much less enough to do any good! It's not my fault.

It's long past time I owned my own mistakes.

Next time I gain weight, please, please just say "Oh, that sucks. I'm sure you'll do better next week."

I can find my own excuses.

Emergency Chocolate and Other Depreciated Resourses

Back when I was first starting this whole Weight Watcher's/Healthy Lifestyle thing, I was trying to think of something else to motivate me. Knowing myself as well as I did, I knew that the numbers on the scale were just not going to cut it.

It doesn't even matter what the numbers are; I'm seldom happy with them. I can lose .6 pounds, I can lose 2.6 pounds... I can gain .6 pounds and my general feeling about it tends to range from extreme disappointment to not quite satisfied. It's enormously frustrating for me, everyone who's read here for any length of time will know this as well as I do: I have an enormous attitude problem. This should not come as a shock for anyone.

So, I was sitting around thinking... I should pay myself for my weight loss. Why not? I'd always meant to put away the money I was saving when I quit smoking, but it never quite worked out that way. I'm terrible with money, I'll admit that. If I have it, I'll spend over saving any day of the week. Even when I try to save money up, I'm not very good at it. Last year, I did however manage to put away almost $500 for Christmas cash. I did it this way: Every time we got money out of the ATM for things like Laundry Quarters or day-trips, I would withdraw an extra $20 - $40 and I put the cash in this hollow book I have. At the end of the year, I had somewhere around $500 and I used that money to buy Christmas presents and whatnot... it worked out fairly well.

And I thought I could do that again this year. Put away some cash for every pound I lost. Originally, I thought I'd go with $1 per pound, but honestly, even with as much weight as I have to lose, that's what, $94? What could I possibly buy for $94 that I wouldn't just GO OUT AND BUY? So, I decided that $10 a pound would work out well. At the end of my weight loss journey, I'd have $900 and that would be money well worth rewarding myself with. Right?

You know what they say about the plans of mice and men, right?

Yeah. So a few months back, we had to buy a new (used) car. (There really ought to be a better way to phrase that. It's not a new car, it's a shoddy piece of crap, and the only advantage it has is that it passed inspection in April, so I don't have to worry about inspection for almost a year... so it's not a new car. And it's not another car either, since that implies that we have more than one car. Whatever. It's like the air conditioning... do you turn the AC up or down when you want to make it less cold in the house? Turning the knob, you're turning it up, but that makes it warmer, therefore, turning the AC down... confusion abounds! Does anyone else worry about stuff like this, or is it just me?) In order to afford the new (used) car, I had to dip into my weight money. I took $200 out of what was, at the time, about $260... with the clear understanding that I would replace this money as soon as possible.

Oh, the plans of mice and men....

There's about $94 in there at the moment. There should be $446. And now, since there's such a big gap between where it should be and where it is, I don't know if I can POSSIBLY replace that... I mean, we literally do not have $350 to spare. (This would have, partially, to do with the fact that my house has a wild gremlin in it. Again. The car breaks and we have to get a new one. The vacuum cleaner had to be replaced. The DVD player went on the fritz. And now my digital camera is acting up. Will stuff PLEASE stop BREAKING? Please?)

And even if I was to replace the money, it seems like such a bigger deal - more financially taxing - than it did at the beginning of the year when I was day-dreaming about a 1k shopping spree... now, if I put the $350 back, it's being selfish and greedy and putting us at financial risk... and it seems silly to start over now, even though I have another 50 pounds or so to lose before I reach goal... I don't know why it seems this way, since you know, a $500 shopping spree is still a lot of money. And it's not likely that I'm going to hit my weight goal any time soon...

So I have the time to replenish that cash pool.

But it's like that all the time... once I get off track, it seems so damn hard, or useless, to get back ON TRACK.

I know, it's not logical... it's like getting a ding in your car, and deciding while your car has some scratched paint you may as well slam the hood in, back into a dump truck, and take a baseball bat to the windshield. All in the same afternoon. And yet, I keep doing it. I stumble on the stairs, and yes, I do contemplate throwing myself down the rest of the flight just out of spite. May as well fuck up really well, as long as I'm going to feel like a fuck up.

It's not an uncommon failing. I see it all the time on these weight loss/healthy lifestyle blogs... "Oh, I went off plan for lunch, so I may as well start over tomorrow. Pass the potato chips. And some of that ranch dressing. Not the low-fat kind, either. May as well be hung for a dragon as the egg."

Then... we come to my other motivational mishap...

My emergency chocolate.

I have a weakness for very expensive chocolate. And it's a weakness in two ways. The first is, I really, really want to eat it. At the same time, my "we never have enough money" self doesn't want to eat it, because then it's gone and I don't have it anymore. The whole "can't have your cake and eat it" problem... Drove my husband nuts. He'd buy me chocolates for Valentines Day and come November, I've still got half a box stashed in my drawer somewhere. One year, for Christmas, getting sick of my weirdness with chocolate, he bought me something like 12 boxes of chocolate covered cherries. (yes, this might be why I gained so much extra weight the second year we were married.)

And no, this weirdness doesn't apply to cheap chocolate. I'll happily scarf five or ten fun-sized twix bars in a single sitting. (because, you know, those fun sized bars have less calories, so I can eat 10 and be fine, whereas I'd consider myself to be pigging out if I ate 2 full sized candy bars.)

Anyway...

I have a small packet of very expensive chocolate. It's that really dark stuff, 85% cocoa... I got three tiny bars of it in a little box. The whole deal is about the size of a two matchboxes. Cost me $5...

And I've been carrying them around in my purse since January with the idea that, should my willpower ever flag badly, and I really wanted to go off the reservation and have a triple chocolate cake with the little chips on top of it, or something else horrendously off-plan... I'd have one of these little chocolate bars instead...

Since we started Weight Watchers in January, I have not had to eat a single bar.

While I have had "bad" food, I have not actually gone off-plan at all. Which is not to say that I haven't had a slice of triple chocolate cake, because I have... just that I've planned for it, accounted for it, and always been within my alloted flex points.

(Sorry, had to leave and go make lunch, as it's almost 2pm and I haven't eaten today... doing my typical stupid weigh-in day thing where I always seem to avoid eating much... )

Anyway, I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but Thomas is hypoglycemic. Essentially, it means that his blood sugar dips from time to time, he gets dizzy and irritable, sometime to the point of being angry and irrational. Sometimes this accompanied by near-fainting spells, trembling in the hands, and blurred vision.

Because he is an ass (which is to say that he jumps all over my case for avoiding a doctor, not liking to take medication if I need it, and otherwise preferring to just complain about an illness rather than doing something about it, and yet, does exactly the same thing himself) he doesn't take medication for this condition, nor do we monitor it in any meaningful way. Generally speaking, it's not a very severe condition. As long as he eats regularly, he doesn't suffer from a low-blood sugar episode. As a side-effect of us going on Weight Watchers, he's had only two of these attacks since the beginning of the year, which is much better than last year, where he was having them at least once every two weeks.

The solution, when he starts getting shaky and irrational, is to feed him. Usually something with a high sugar content, easily digestible; juice, chocolate, a full-sugar soda. Something to equalize his blood sugar quickly. He'll still feel bad for a few hours after we get him stabilized (and I usually take this time when I know he has a headache and feels sick to lecture him about how he ought to eat more regularly, and that I'm sure he knows that if he actually passes out that there's no way in hell I can carry him, and really, you'd think he'd learn better by now... etc etc) but at least we get past the crises stage easily.

The last time he had an episode, we were out. On the top of Mount Trashmore, as a further matter of fact, with no food within easy reach.

I sacrificed one of my emergency chocolate bars to him, so that I could get him off the mountain and down to a 7-11 where we could get him better equalized.

I've been really proud of myself for having those little candy bars, untouched, in my purse. A symbol, as you will, of my success. I haven't gone off-plan. I've splurged, but I've planned my splurges. The unopened box of chocolate was a trophy of my willpower. An icon to my dedication...

And now it's open.

And for some reason, being open... makes it more tempting. I mean, it's open now. It doesn't mean as much as it used to. I could, without a problem, just eat the other two bars.

Right?

This is me... throwing myself down the stairs. (Except I still haven't eaten them. And Thomas had to "borrow" my chocolate three weeks ago, at this point... so they've been in my purse, still uneaten by me... maybe I'm doing better than I think I am.)

Right?

Right.

Off the Reservation

As Thomas has said; this week, we went off the Reservation.

I have eaten:

full fat cheese
bacon
mint chocolate chip ice cream
oreos
a caramelo bar
chocolate fudge syrup
two stuffed sausages
one full calorie soda

I have not:

Counted any points
drank much water
checked my vegetables

I currently have:

a very dark tan
my period
lots of good memories

I did not:

Get into a fight with my husband while we were on vacation
Get sick while we were on vacation
remember to take my camera on vacation with me

Who would like to take wagers on how bad my weigh in is, tomorrow?

I don't really care. I had a good time, and that's the important thing, right?

Peace, y'all.

Running on Empty

This week would not be what one might describe as "On Plan."

In fact, Not Even Remotely might be a good descriptor.

Can we take a minute to discuss my loathing of the phrase "I cheated on my diet..."

Cheating, to me, implies breaking the rules with the intent of winning through unfair means.

[Complete and total digression here.... my father has a comic strip magnetted to his refrigerator. It's of a baseball game. The first frame has the pitch. The second frame has the umpire yelling "Foul! There's a foreign matter on this ball!" The pitcher says "What's foreign?" The last frame has the umpire yelling "Foreign is Sushi!" That comic has been on my father's fridge for 20+ years now. I didn't get it when he first put it up. I don't get it now. But it does sort of pop into my head from time to time to puzzle me exceedingly.]

Forgive me, I've been (and still am) sick. Digressions become more frequent with me the less restful sleep I've been getting.

Back to cheating... When you cheat at cards, what are you doing? Trying to win a game when the rules of the game say that you should lose. I had a friend in high school who loved to cheat at cards - particularly solitaire. She flipped cards 1... 2... 3... the way you normally would, the first time she ran through the stack... when she started running low on cards, she did an alternate shuffle that moved the cards into her hand 2.... 1 behind the 2.... 3.... she still lost from time to time. But she won more games than she lost. She was really quite defensive when I pointed out to her that she was cheating.

"I'm only playing myself," she said. "How can I cheat myself? What possible difference does it make?"

"Well, I know you're a liar," I said. "And so do you. Don't you think your self-respect is worth more than that?"

So... if cheating is a way to win by breaking the rules, it is, therefore, impossible to cheat on a diet. Since, you know, cheating on your diet actually prevents you from winning. (Or losing, as the case may be!) Eating foods that are off plan, or in amounts that are off plan isn't cheating. It's just eating... and it's not going to help you lose weight. I'm not even willing to say that Gastric Bypass or lipo are cheating... since those procedures have different risks and temptations and expenses that make losing weight through those methods just as fraught with peril, temptation, and self-remorse/self-disgust as any other options.

There is no cheat; there is only lie.

Now lying... that's something I understand.

I try not to lie to other people too much - it's too freaking hard to keep track of. You have to remember what you told, and more importantly, to whom. And then you have to worry about whether person A who thinks one thing will talk to Person B who knows something else entirely... You end up having to be involved in conversations that you have no interest in, so that you're there to turn a conversation aside from a topic that you don't want them wandering into... it's a lot of work, and in the end, it's not worth it at all. Trust me. (Oh, sweet irony, how I love you!) But I lie to myself all the time. I've been lying to myself for years. "Oh, I don't look that bad..."

The biggest lie I've told myself, though, was this. "As a chronic asthmatic, I'm not going to live very long. I may as well enjoy eating, since I'm living on borrowed time anyway."

I'm 36 years old.

I was never expecting to live past 35.

I was certainly never expecting to live without my inhaler inches from my fingertips. Without the near consistent trips to the hospital every 6 weeks. Without waking in the night, gasping for breath. Without pausing in the middle of marital activities to grope lovingly for my nebulizer saying, "Hold that thought, would you, Thomas?" Not being able to laugh freely, for fear of sending myself into an asthma attack. I vividly remember a trip to watch fireworks with some friends, and we had to walk about a mile from where we parked to where we could see, and I had to stop every quarter mile to rest and use my inhaler. By the time we got there, I was shaking from the effects of too much albuterol. I vaguely remember my husband and my best friend joking about something to do with biting, but that's all... I can't remember the fireworks, I can't remember any conversation... just this nagging, low grade fear, nearly buried in the back of my brain while the front tried to keep on breathing. I am going to die like this.

Jeez, was that a digression worthy of a politician or what?

All of this boils down to nothing more than a long self-defense of my eating habits for the last - is it Friday already? Shit! - six days.

I have NOT been eating On Plan this week. I have NOT been exercising. I have NOT been drinking water. Almost a whole week at this point, and there's the snarky side of myself that wants to say "Well, shit, you've been Off Plan most of the week, may as well just finish the week off, right?" The sick part of me says, "Plan whatever you want, I'm having nothing to do with any of you, so just shut up and go away."

On the plus side (bah, I want to get OUT of the plus sized clothing, thanks awfully!) it's not that I've been over-indulging. It's that I simply have not been eating. If I'm lucky, I've been getting in ~800 calories a day. Maybe 2 waters, but mostly soda. (For some reason, swallowing water makes my throat hurt worse, and as I currently feel like I swallowed a bookcase. Sideways! I'm just not up to water. Soda. Or hot tea/coffee.) I haven't been eating my veggies either - partially because my tooth still hurts a bit (that's at least finally getting better!) and partially because I just DON'T WANT TO. So there!

Yesterday was the closest to On Plan that I've been since Saturday. And I'm still off by 3 waters and an oil.

You know the worst thing about all this? I'm sick. That's not an "excuse", that's not a "justification", I'm not "rationalizing" or "in denial." It's a freaking FACT. I'm sick.

So why the hell am I feeling guilty about my eating? (or lack thereof) Jeeeeeeeeez!

I did my measurements today. It's been about a month since the last time.

Upper Arm: 12 inches. (stayed the same)
Waist: 38 inches (down 1 1/2 inches)
Hips: 43 1/2 inches (down 2 1/2 inches)
Thigh: 23 (down 3/4 inch)

So, that's 4 3/4 inches lost this month. And adding up all my losses, I've lost 6.8 pounds in April.


Time to get philosophical about it. I've been saying it to other people for a while now, so it's time to take my own damn advise.

Scratch dirt over that day, it's done. Start again today.

(I'll try. But I'm still sick, so I may have to scratch dirt over today, too... I'd better get better soon, though, because I'm seriously running on empty right now.)

Part of the Plan (Also, My New Project!)

So, I missed my first Couch to 5K run this morning.

It was raining and thundering this morning.

Yeah.

I'd already planned to not run in the rain. Not necessarily because I think rain would be uncomfortable (it probably would be a bit, but it also might be sort of fun) but because the sidewalks flood around here. I think I mentioned something about the water table being pretty close to ground-surface in this area, and any time it rains, the whole city gets a sinus infection. In any case, I don't want to run on wet sidewalks (particularly given the amount of goose poo on the sidewalk!) because I'm worried about slipping and falling down.

My bones are pretty fragile after many years of steroid use; I tend to break something whenever I fall down. (elbow, wrist, leg, several toes, and the top of my foot) This is part of my Being Careful.

Nearly everyone - when I've mentioned that I've started running - has said to me "Ooooh, be careful." Yes, ok! I'm Being Careful, thankyouverymuch. I've been so damn careful that I've missed out on a lot of my life. And I'm not going to let it stop me any longer! But just because I'm trying to change things doesn't mean I've gone completely bonkers out of my head and will accidentally cripple myself. I'm making sure the path I'm running is safe, and dry. I've got good shoes. I'm not pushing myself any harder than I feel I reasonably can. And believe me, if my ankle starts hurting, I'll stop running.

So, I woke up this morning at 6:35 and looked out the window. It was pouring. Not that Get the Ark sort of pouring, but the nice, steady sheeting rain. The kind that gardeners are always really happy about because it means the rain will actually soak into the soil and help their flowers and tomatoes, rather than just puddling all over the place and pouring straight into the massive drainage system.

I confess to being slightly disappointed. But I'm Being Careful, so I didn't go.

So, I've started a new project recently.

One of my friends from the Weight Watchers newsgroup asked a few questions about eggs - which is to say she stated that she didn't like eating scrambled egg whites and was wondering what she could do about this. (Stop eating egg whites!). I mentioned that I never make an egg dish with completely whites, as the yolk is NOT bad for you, and it helps with the presentation. I usually make omelets with 1 egg, and 2 whites. Then I commented that in order to jazz up my omelet, I tried to pick a complementary spice to go with whatever I was stuffing in the omelet. Common omelets around here are: tarragon with fat free cream cheese and smoked salmon; smoked paprika and cilantro with salsa and fat free pepper jack; parsley with ham and fat free swiss. Like that.

What she wrote back floored me.

Um, I don't have any spices. I've never used them. Just some rosemary, that's all. And I never used it after I got it. Since I don't know what I'm doing, I didn't want to ruin my dinner. I've been married for 10 years, but only started trying to cook about four months ago. I have no idea what I'm doing in the kitchen, and it scares me.

No. Spices?

So, we started writing emails back and forth. I wrote a very long mail to her about basic spices, prepping to cook, and common kitchen sanitation. She was very enthused, so I continued to write out these emails. Soon one person became three, and now suddenly I have about 10 subscribers to a mailing list. Today, I wrote out a simple recipe for fish fillets, vegetables, and spices, including how to pick fresh fish, what to look for in buying onions, peppers, and potatoes, and how to plan your meal to get salads, sides, and main course on the table at the same time.

In any case, if you're interested in this mailing list, I'm happy to include more people. Just let me know in the comments to add you to the list, and include your email address (write it out something like Beginningcook at somewhere dot com so that email spiders don't nab your address and send you craploads of spam!) I promise that I will not sell your email address to anyone, and that I won't fill up your inbox. I'm not intending to write anything more than one email per week - altho I will catch you up on previous emails when you first sign up!

In Which Mall Security is Made Unhappy

I can honestly say I hope the weather improves...

For more than the fact that my gas bill is going up, and I'm cold all the time (my desk is right by the front door and the door is Not Well Insulated), and Darcy hates the wind, and her gloves are too big, and she keeps losing one and we have to backtrack to figure out where it fell, and my joints ache and my head is stuffed up.

Last night it was both cold and raining, and that was more than I really wanted to expose Darcy to. We've made her come with us on our walks despite the cold - since what else are we going to do? Can't very well leave her alone in the house for twenty minutes... I'm not calling a baby sitter for a 20 minute walk either. And I don't want to walk in shifts.

So, we drove over to the Mall last night to do our walk. I haven't really measured the mall (I'm afraid of having the FBI show up if I ask the mall for their dimensions, like they did to some poor fifth grader who asked the state for information about the Chesapeake Bay Bridge tunnel for part of his class project and they decided he must be a terrorist, looking to blow up the bridge.) but decided that if we walked for twenty minutes, that should be just about right.

Miscalculation #1: While it was cold and wet outside, it was hotter than the inside of Satan's pants in the Mall. So, walking was both more difficult and more uncomfortable while I'm wearing a damn 14 pound winter coat and it's plus 9,000 degrees.

Miscalculation #2: You wouldn't think Thursday would be a big mall day, and it wasn't too bad, but there were an awful lot of brat packs walking five and six abreast, teenagers who are all either yelling at the person farthest away from them, or talking on their cellphones (to the person 4 people away from them?) or telling the cellphoners to shut up... or telling the yellers to shut up, they're on the phone do they MIND?

Miscalculation #3: Two adults wearing trench-style coats and not actually going into any shops appeared to make security nervous. After our first circuit of the mall, we actually had a security guard following us around.

Miscalculation #4: There are still shops in the mall - although not as many as there used to be (at least 6 shops were gone out of business and another 5 or so were going out of business) - and we ended up stopping a few places to get this and that, or look at sales (After we finished our 20 minutes of walking, since shopping doesn't count as an AP) Which meant our little 20 minute walk turned into an all-evening affair. We got home around 7:15 or so, after leaving the house at 5:20.

So, I hope the weather gets better. Or I'm going to need to think of something else, because honestly, this just ain't working...

An Odd Moment

One thing about this 'lifestyle change' is that it's eating into my (pardon the pun, it wasn't intentional) leisure time. Generally speaking, I cooked dinner 3 - 4 times a week and the rest of the days, Thomas and Darcy were "on their own" for food. Which is to say, generally fast food, eating out of a can, or heating leftovers.

Since we joined Weight Watchers, I have cooked dinner Every Single Night except for the one night we ate out. I have also cooked breakfast and lunch on weekends for Thomas. Now, sometimes cooking lunch doesn't mean anything more than making a tuna wrap and prepping some soup and salad... but still, these things take time. And I'm also calculating point values for my meals and his. I know, I know. I should make him do his own calculations. Except that he's not preparing his own lunch, so how the heck is he going to know what the point value is unless I tell him? And I'm NOT letting him in my kitchen... since we've been married, he's torched one perfectly good stock pot, three frying pans, broken the top of the crisper tray in the fridge, busted two blenders and nearly set the kitchen on fire. You see why I worry? Good.

I've also done the dishes Every Single Day. And gone for a walk three times this week.

On the weekends, that's Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner fixing, one load of dishes done. For a total of one hour, twenty minutes of activity per day added to my schedule. On weekdays, that's sixty-five minutes of added activity. That's eight hours a week, plus the hour of the meeting itself. (As a note, Thomas took it on himself last week to complain that the housework wasn't getting done. ... )

That wasn't exactly what I wanted to talk about today, though.

I have been less hungry this week. Since I complained about it last week, I thought it only fair to admit that it was getting better. Sort of. I can be not-hungry when I'm not eating, although eating often makes things worse. I'll eat all my dinner or lunch and for the next hour or so after I'm done, I'm still hungry. Or at least, I feel hungry. Like 'that wasn't enough.' Sometimes it's actually more painful hungry than the 'I don't really need a snack right now' hungry. My various sources tell me that this is normal, and that I'll gradually be able to read my actual food intake needs a little better. Sigh. Yeah, whatever. It's still annoying and sometimes downright painful... and I understand why people quit dieting after the first few weeks.

Remember what I said a few days back about the "I had more energy after a few days..." Well, I'm not sure this counts, exactly, but my lord, has our marital activities stepped up quite a bit. Not that we were ever in a rut (yes, ok, that pun was intended. Sorry, move along.) mind you, but I'd say that has increased by at least 50%. We'll see if that keeps up (yes, yes, pun. I know...) because you know, I'm not complaining...

Which is still not what I meant to talk about. I'm sort of rambling a bit here...

The moment I had was last night.

You know the Crisper, right? That drawer in your refrigerator into which you put things specifically for them to rot? Does a crisper actually do anything? Aside from give you a closed place to let your fruits and vegetables rot peacefully? I've never noticed that it saves fruits and veggies for any longer than leaving them on a shelf. But then, I've always lived in an apartment and had shitty appliances. My friend Leigh has a gloriously expensive fridge and I'm willing to believe that her little hermetically sealed drawers might actually do something, but mine... nah... just puts a solid lid over the garden mulch I'm cultivating in cold storage.

In any case, I'd put out a fruit bowl on the countertop - a nice arrangement of apples, pears, peaches, lime and avocado - on Thursday because the crisper was a little overfull. Yesterday, there was one apple, a lime, and the avocado left in it. I bent down to pull out some more fruit for the bowl... and the crisper was almost empty.

There were two roma tomatoes, a half an onion in a little ziplock bag, and half a bag of baby carrots.

Nothing was turning into a suspiciously watery black lump. There were no shapeless grocery bags full of splotchy tomatoes, or sprouting onions. The bottom of the crisper was clean.

Well... how about them apples?

Math Sucks

I dipped into my flex points last night for the first time since we've started this plan...

By Accident.

The annoying thing was, I got to the end of my day and said "Hmmm. I'm short a few points? How'd that happen?" So I didn't think much of it, had a glass of milk to finish off the last bit of points and went to bed.

This morning, I added up my points to stick them in my side bar, and found the discrepancy. Towards the end of my lunch, I accidentally added 1 point instead of subtracting them.

On the plus side, I did make an Activity Point yesterday - we're getting back into the habit of walking around the block, but I'd already promised myself that I wouldn't use Activity Points until I was getting at least three in per week.

And this was, incidentally, what I was most afraid of, for the Weight Watcher's plan. I'm terrible with numbers.

Doesn't Take Long

So I've missed my first walk. Well, technically my third walk.

On the other hand, I had a lovely excuse. Friday night, my husband and I both came down with a nasty case of (suspected) food poisoning or some other nasty virus thing. In either case, neither of us was up to walking at all, any further than from the living room to the bathroom, or back to bed.

We spent most of our time passing each other in our activities. He'd be computer gaming and I'd be asleep. I'd get up, log in, and he'd decide to go take a nap which means that we spent the whole weekend not actually seeing each other much. On the plus side, Darcy didn't catch it (or eat whatever we ate... Thomas is holding out for bad Chinese food, but I'm not so sure) so we didn't have to deal with a cranky, sick four year old...

And I suppose it's not so bad, because while we didn't walk, neither of us ate much all weekend either.