197

That number is horrible. Here I am, weighing in 30 lbs heavier than I was a few years ago. I long for the 167 days. I managed to have a blast in Mexico despite my weight but I know I would’ve relaxed and ventured more without all this extra fat. But good for me, I enjoyed life despite the bulky insulation I’ve buried myself in.

And this morning I woke up to 197 and a feeling of being there already. Enough is enough. My fattie clothes are getting threadbare. I feel uncomfortable. It’s time.

My goals:

Lose 5 lbs. by Thanksgiving.

Lose 10 lbs. between Thanksgiving and New Year.

Lose 15 lbs. between new Year and June 1 (Richard & Stefy’s wedding in Sorrento, Italy).

My weekly plan is:

Morning pages

Vitamins

Track calories (2000 0r less daily)

Four workouts/week

No more than one glass of wine a day unless it’s a special occasion

Reduce refined sugars to no more than 200 calories a day

Today I went to the gym. The first time in over three weeks.

My workout consisted of:

     5 minutes stretch

     10 minutes walk

     13 minutes run

     7 minutes walk

     5 minutes stretch

     250 calories burned

     2 miles

And it felt good. I have ten days to lose 5 lbs. I’ll still be a butterball at Thanksgiving but hey, I’m headed in the right direction. It’s time.

A chunkier miracle…

OK, as anyone who even vaguely checks in with my blog knows, I want to lose weight, get fit, feel healthy, strong, confident, sexy. Yet I struggle painfully to get myself on any kind of nutritional or physical plan. How a sane, competent, intelligent woman such as moi can be so at odds with herself is baffling.

And it doesn’t help that the perfectionist in me insists that if I’m not perfect, then I have failed. That one slip means tossing the day to the wind and following that one slip up with an avalanche of bad decisions. That is self-sabotaging. I know that.

I know a lot. About myself. About nutrition. About psychology. About succeeding and about not succeeding. I also know that knowing something intellecutally is not the same as getting it emotionally. Knowing and doing are not the same thing. Knowing and wanting, vastly different.

I know that if I eat right I feel healthier, look better, like myself more, respect myself more. I know that having a thinner body feels great. Not hating myself after eating is wonderful. I know that how I eat is a reflection of how I relate to myself and my world.

I know that when I try to eat right and get frustrated, if my new habits haven’t really taken hold, I quickly give up on myself. Even punish myself. Eat worse than before and more than before.

And then there are all the things I don’t know. I don’t know why sometimes I set a plan for myself and it clicks and sometimes I set a plan for myself and it evaporates before lunch time.

So here I am, a few hours from flying to Mexico where I will be by the pool or beach or on a boat or walking sunny warm streets in summer clothes. And I’m embarrassed and sad and angry with myself. But I am not the enemy. I don’t want to waste more time regretting my past or berating myself. I don’t want to regret the present either or lose any more of my life’s experiences to fatness.

Food has been a friend to be and gotten me through tough times when I wasn’t ready to cope. It’s a safe and readily available means of escape. It’s a way of loving myself too. Food can keep good company. Food can keep me safe while I find the strength and gumption and self deservedness I need to do the hard work and live better. Food can protect, can give joy, therapy, can help us bond with others, can be celebratory. Food is not the enemy.

There are no enemies. There’s just me, living my life, one day at a time. I am a miracle. Everyone is a miracle. Today I’m a chunkier miracle than I want to be. So be it. Mexico can handle it. I can handle it. I need to embrace me, like me, accept me. Stop being a bitch to others because I’m mad at myself. Start enjoying life again. I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be today. I can determine where I will be tomorrow. In addition to being in Puerto Vallarta.

I will work on self love, celebrating life, my friends, and all the miracles around me. I’ll get into a swimsuit and I’ll lay in the sun. I’m fat but I’m here. And I will participate in my own life.

I long…

I want to lose weight to feel good.

I want to lose weight to be more available to myself and those in my life.

I want to lose weight to feel good about myself.

But I want to lose weight also to have a sane life.

Not one in which I quietly loath myself, feel self-conscious and irritated. Not one in which I explode for seemingly disproportionate reasons because I’m so frustrated living in this body and in these thoughts.

I want to be thin but even more so, I want to have a life.

Having a nice body is great. Feeling healthy is awesome. Not debating myself before every meal and not hating myself after every meal is wonderful. But more important than all of that, I want to live sanely.

I forget this all the time.

I think it’s about being thin. It’s not. Or it is but that’s just a part of it. It’s really about living.

Today I am wearing a pant suit that is too tight. Too small, too short. Yuk. I feel huge and ugly like a butter ball waddling around in clothes that are two sizes too small. Instead of that feeling urging me on to eat less, eat right, it has the opposite effect on me. I find that I am eating everything and anything today. I’m frustrated and upset with myself (and therefore with others) and I feel ugly and fat.

The food soothes and punishes me simultaneously. Maybe I want to push myself into such pain that I’ll have only one way out: get fit already.

The rational voice inside me says “Can’t we get there without this hatred, this battling, this self-punishing?”

The upset part of me says “You tell me.”

I want my eating and my weight to return to normal. I long for those days and months and weights when food is not stronger than I am. When sane eating and healthy weight come naturally and easily. Yes. Naturally and easily. Those times when I’m in the zone with myself and I see clearly, unquestioningly, why I want to be there.

To be able to participate in my own life fully. Eating sanely is my ticket to my life.

Big Pink Cookie = Big Pink Ass

Because my thinking is all whacked these days regarding food, fatness, discipline, love… sometimes I decide to give myself something I have been choosing not to eat as a way to “let myself have”… say… the cookie. Like a reward? Or a reminder of why I chose not to eat so many cookies? Or as a way of saying “let’s try that again”? It’s like I have some sort of fatty amnesia. I forget why I took myself off the cookie in the first place. How I don’t really like the way it tastes or how it makes me feel or how it makes me look. So I give myself the cookie again. Or sometimes I haven’t forgotten at all. I know I’m not going to enjoy it. And I still eat it. What’s that about?

And while the cookie is a metaphor, yesterday it was also the literal cookie.

I ate an entire Uncle Seth’s Pink Frosting Cookie. These are a Seattle cookie, a soft cakey sugar cookie with pink frosting.

 

Basically it's sugar.

 

I knew as I reached for it in the deli that it’s 400 calories of pure sugar that I don’t particularly enjoy eating. And I knew I sure wouldn’t feel good after eating. But I walked right up to the cashier and placed my sugary white doughy cookie topped with sugary pink icing on the counter and paid for it. I knew I’d eat it and I knew I’d resent it. So what gives?

I quatered it at my desk and quarter by quarter I ate the whole thing. Actually after three quarters I put the rest in my desk drawer thinking “I’ll have that tomorrow.” But 15 minutes later I pulled it back out… This thing is so devoid of any nutritional value that it melts in your mouth just like a tablespoon of sugar would, bite after bite.

I couldn’t be more off course with myself.

Recapping…

Yesterday I sort of threw in the towel with my plan but that sort of surrender never lasts with me because I’m just too unhappy with where I am with  myself to just give up.

Last night for dinner Dave & I snacked in bed instead of having dinner while he watched football on TV and I surfed the Internet. We sound pathetic but it was actually quite nice. I had a glass of red wine and salted bread sticks with turkey slices and swiss cheese. Some big ass olives stuffed with garlic cloves. So good. But I took it too far. Had another glass of red wine. Some chips (which I don’t particularly like as a food group anyway and these in particular were kind of stale). And then I asked Dave to make me a drink. An alcoholic dessert really. All in all I felt pretty crappy before I was done and certainly afterwards.

At 5am this morning I woke up feeling terrible from my eating, my overeating, my cold and… I got my period. All realizations happening at about the same moment in time. I felt relieved though. It’s all behind me. I rolled out of bed.

I had a bagel for breakfast and even though it was whole wheat, what with the cream cheese and honey, it did not taste good nor feel good. Too much sugar maybe after my last week of easing up on all the carbs & sugars I normally eat.

I had a low fat string cheese + 5 almonds snack a few hours later and that felt much better.

For lunch I had 1/2 of the take away container of Thai Fried Rice from a food court. It is actually much tastier than it sounds. I got extra spicy (* * *) to try to help burn this cold along. I’m feeling full but satisfied and not so pessimistic about my fatness at that moment. I stopped eating half way through the container and that’s a first. For starters…

I know my overeating is making me feel trappede and have issues with myself but these are behaviors I can change. I realized that I already changed the attitudes and beliefs that I used to have that made me dislike myself and feel trapped in my own dislike. That transformation happened a few years ago, when I committed to and followed through with training for the Danskin Triathlon. Something pivotal happened during those months that changed what I believe about myself. All that follow through, repitition of good behaviors, all that success, it broke down some fundamentally self hating, self sabotaging beliefs. Now the behaviors have crept back into my life, like familiar repetitive dance moves I know well, but it is just the behaviors. I did change. I did learn that I can be fit and athletic and have a spirit of gentleness with myself. I learned that I deserve to be happy with myself.

To break through my behaviors is easy compared to breaking through beliefs.

I need to put actions behind my desires. And renewal of commitment. I need to change the direction I’m facing and step forward into the right direction. And I have to keep doing that. Yes, it’s challenging. But I now know it is within my abilities. I can appreicate that and appreicate myself before, during, and after weightloss.

Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending. – Carl Bard