Pissed off!

I am really pissed right now. I was going through my Victoria's Secret catalog, and there was one skirt that showed off the model's flat belly. I am sitting at home, sick, unemployed, bloated, and fat. I am a little teary right now because I was stupid. I had a good figure. I had it twice, and I lost it because I was stupid. Once I worked so hard to get there, I started stuffing my face again because I was deluded. I thought that once I got skinny, I would be one of those girls that could eat whatever they wanted and not get fat. If that was true, how did I think I got fat in the first place? I know I have to work to maintain my figure, but I had it and I gave it up. Now it takes so much more work, all the time, probably for a year (and that's if I stick with it) just to get what I had before. I am so mad at myself. I went from 130 to 150-160 and maintained there for a while. That wasn't ideal, but would have been good enough. Now I'm 180. No part of me looks good. Even my once-reliable waist is now thick. My chin is fat. My fingers are fat. I can't hide from it. I am so sick of it. But then I get depressed and demotivated. It all seems like too much, and the comfort of eating is so much more immediate. I struggle every day between wanting to change the body that I hate so much and wanting to numb my body image depression with food.

I can't last this way for long. Once I get a job, I will have to fit into my work wardrobe. I used to go out all the time, but now I'm afraid to go out because I might see someone I know. Being unemployed for a year means I sit at home. I don't walk around campus like I used to. Even with exercise equipment here, I won't get to the level of exercise I got before. I probably spent an hour each day just walking to and from the parking lot and from class to class, and then I did cardio on top of that. Being unemployed also means I have access to my kitchen whenever the hell I want. If I get a whim, I don't have the rest of the class period for the craving to pass—I just waddle to the kitchen and satisfy the urge. I have effing red stretch marks on a part of my body that I used to consider my belly area, meaning suitable to show off in a swimsuit, but now is part of a hip, needing to be covered. Those will never go away, no matter what the lasers and creams promise. I used to feel sexy and even thought of sex as a good replacement for a workout sometimes. Now, even when I'm horny, I don't want to have actual sex because it's not sexy, it's gross, I'm gross. A blob of dimples and stretch marks flopping around—that's all I am in bed. Disgusting.

How could I let this happen? Whenever I saw fat people as a kid, I would wonder why they didn't start turning things around once they reached chubby. Now I know it's a stupid complicated delusion called denial. I can't blame it on my hard time anymore. Yeah, I've been unemployed for a year and gained 30 pounds in that year. But I also had all the time in the world to stop it from happening. I don't want to be this anymore. I don't want pictures of happy moments to be overshadowed by how fat I look. I don't need to have another issue in my brain. I need to harness this feeling, put it in a box, and crack it open whenever I feel like giving up. If I hadn't given up so many times in the past 2 months, I would have lost more than 4 pounds at Weight Watchers by now. I would have been below the 180 mark, which is no longer obese. I am teetering on the edge of obesity right now and I hate it and I want it to stop TODAY. I am hungrier for feeling good about myself than I will ever be for food. I have never wanted any food enough to come close to crying over it. But writing about my self-hatred is making me teary. I remember a couple of years ago, I went ice skating with my husband. I was wearing low rise jeans, and I fell face first onto the ice. I ended up scraping my hip and bruising my hip bone. That's how thin I was. I couldn't even get low rise jeans over my butt now. I need to remember this feeling of wanting to go back, and use it to motivate me when the challenge seems insurmountable.

SW: 185

CW: 181

GW: 135

Four pounds down, forty-six to go.