Feeling better, new approach

I think problems with my marriage have been undermining my weight loss efforts because sometimes I just feel unmotivated to do anything, like everything's too far gone. We are doing better, though, in part due to me taking an antidepressant. I was on Luvox without much success, and recently switched over to Celexa. It seems to be helping stabilize my moods. I don't get so angry or offended or hurt or despairing anymore. I feel like it's given me the ability to work through things more rationally, which is definitely a help to my marriage and my weight loss efforts.

Weight Watchers is great for the support and research that backs it, but I was getting frustrated with how slow my progress was. I fluctuated a little, but have very little to show for my months of meetings. Also, in any given week, I would forget to track foods at least 2 or 3 days, which is enough to stall the plan. On those days, I would typically eat and drink about twice my daily allotment. No wonder progress was so slow. Well, WW has another way you can go about your diet, and that is with filling foods. What I noticed right off the bat is that their "filling foods" program looks very much like South Beach Diet. These are foods that are not too high in fat, retain their natural fibers, and leave you feeling satisfied. So when I got back from vacation 4 lbs. heavier, I decided to switch over to "filling foods". I am doing this within the confines of South Beach Diet Phase 1. This is supposed to rid your body of the glycemic highs and lows that lead to carb cravings.

I did South Beach before, with great success, but didn't keep the weight off because I slowly backslid from the South Beach way of life. Also, I had bulimic episodes back then, and would sometimes eat off plan and purge it. So I never really gave the plan a chance to rid me of my carb cravings. I've been recovered from bulimia over three years now, and I think I can handle another try at South Beach, as long as I have accountability. Loved ones and medical professionals know of my past struggles, so I feel like I have the proper safety net in place to give this a go.

I started off last Saturday, back from vacation, at 188. Today I am at 182.5. One is supposed to lose 8-13 pounds on phase 1. From prior experience, I tend to lose more toward the 13 side. It might seem like a lot to lose 5.5 lbs. in 9 days, but I actually expected a little more. Well, turns out a low calorie beverage I've been enjoying about once a day actually has 35 calories of fructose (not HFCS, just regular fruit sugar) in it. Oops. Also, I enjoyed a few vodka-soda water drinks over the weekend. Those are off-plan, but I kind of felt like the weekend wasn't special without some kind of little treat. So I am not going to have any more of the low-cal beverage until I'm done with phase 1, and no more alcohol for the rest of the week (I only planned to have it on the weekend anyway).

Also, I started off last Saturday with a strong emphasis on vegetables, but then got tired of all the shopping and cooking, and reverted to mostly protein snacks. I'm sure I'll lose weight this way, because it sounds like the Atkins plan, but it is not a sustainable diet for me. I need to get used to buying and cooking my own meals, especially with vegetables, if I am going to keep this up for the long term. Part of Phase 1 is getting used to the basic foods of your new way of eating, before adding an apple here and brown rice there. Veggies have always been a struggle for me. Even ones I tolerate just fine, I seem to have some kind of mental block against cooking them up. Some kind of dread that reflects back to my childhood? Who knows. If I could afford it, I would get hypnosis to tell me I want to eat vegetables. For now, I'm going to try to have full meals in mind a day ahead, so I am prepared to cook and eat plenty of veggies.

Why do I want this?

I didn't get around to exercising yesterday even though it's supposed to be my primary means of losing weight. I had to come back to "why do I want this?" I get so down during the day that it's hard to take a moment and think about why I'm doing what I'm doing. Yesterday there wasn't anything I wanted for lunch, so I had cheez nips. And croutons. And then some brownies. And beer. Okay, yuck. Even when I was in front of the TV stuffing my face, I knew that was not the sort of lunch I wanted to be having. I told myself I wouldn't eat the rest of the day. I ended up only having an apple for dinner, and only went over my daily points by one. But it's hardly a victory. I ate like crap, it just happened to be low enough in calories. I'm usually big on fiber, too, but the stuff I ate had very little nutritional value. It's not like I have so much to do that I need convenience food. I'm practically drowning in time. I just don't want to spend it in the kitchen, necessarily. The day before, I almost ate a whole thin crust pizza! I was so high over my points values that it made me cry to write it down the next day. I have got to stop sabotaging myself!!! I CAN do this!

So why DO I want this? Honestly my top two reasons are to be hot and to feel more comfortable (socially and physically). So it's shallow. So what? Those are my reasons. Some people want to pick up their grandkids, etc., but I just want to look damn fine on the beach. I live walking distance from the beach but rarely go because I am insecure about my looks. That has got to stop. I still have that picture on my desk of the flat stomach that pissed me off because mine used to be pretty flat like that. I mean, not Victoria's Secret model perfect, but at least good enough for a knitting pattern or something! I am going to be so mad at myself if I continue to fail this way. There must be something in my subconscious that stops me from going balls out on this. I would love to try hypnosis once I get some more money. Maybe that can counteract the voice inside telling me to put off trying for another day.

My stinkin' sister-in-law's wedding is in almost 3 weeks. I have to pull it together and start eating better. That means I have to cook my own food. I also need to be exercising twice a day, not every other day like I am now. Thankfully I am healthy enough to do this. Before, I would have done extreme calorie restriction, but I know that's not going to work because it will slow down my metabolism. So I am going to stick to my minimum Weight Watchers points and get in as many exercise points during the day as I can. Okay, I'm starting to get pumped for my workout. This is going to feel good and it's going to make me look good! I am going to enjoy this! This will bring me closer to my goal!

Blegh, getting motivated again

This Saturday at Weight Watchers the instructor talked about motivation. It was the first time I had been in a couple of weeks, and I really needed to get motivated again. I told myself I was kind of following the plan, but I wasn't tracking or counting or making sure I got enough fruit, etc. I had a late night Jack In the Box binge again, which I foolishly do about once every other month. I ate way way way too much! So I definitely needed to get my motivation back. One thing I decided to help is to use the idea of an anti-charity. I heard about it on one of those news lite shows in the morning, where this website is doing it. Basically, you have certain values, and you decide that every time you engage in an undesirable behavior, gain a pound, etc. (whatever you decide), you donate money to an organization that stands for the opposite of what you believe in. I am strongly pro-life, so from now on for every dollar I spend on Jack in the Box, I will donate a dollar to Planned Parenthood. That should get me to think twice when I have the munchies. It seems that no matter where I live, there is a Jack in the Box a few blocks away. Hopefully this means that problem is behind me.

As for the rest of the stuff I eat, I still needed re-motivation. I seem to be motivated by fear, so since I already AM this fat, there's no motivator of "I don't want to get fat". However, I just learned that my flaky and inconsiderate (but thin and beautiful) sister in law is getting married in a month in another state and wants my husband and I to be there. So suddenly I have a very good reason why I need to ramp up my weight loss efforts. Sitting at the computer writing about this isn't the optimal way to lose pounds, but I am going to include a picture in this post. In a month, I'll post another picture and hopefully there will be a noticeable difference. My plan is to make sure that I don't get tempted to cut calories too drastically so my metabolism doesn't slow. I'll keep eating my allotted 25 points a day, try to use as few of my weekly flex points as possible, and exercise like crazy. I was up 30 lbs. from last year, now it's 26.5. So I am hoping that I can lose 16.5 in a month (hey, reach for the stars) through sensible but rigorous means, and disguise the other ten by wearing flattering clothes.

I was starting to suspect that my antidepressant was causing weight gain, but also I was getting more depressed and it wasn't working. So I went to my psych, and he switched me. I've only been on the new one, Lexapro, 2 days now. He said SSRIs don't cause weight gain, but I have no idea why he thinks that since it seems to be the medical consensus that weight gain is one of the best known side effects. Anyway, my emotional cravings are back to normal—they had been higher for a couple of weeks—and I am feeling a little better. Don't know if that's placebo effect, or maybe because I got a new computer game :P but I'll take any improvement I can get.

Well I don't think anyone reads this anyway (it's just as well) but here is the nasty picture of me weighing 181.5 at 5'5".

A little progress

I took some Benadryl last night and it made me so groggy I forgot to set my alarm for my Weight Watchers meeting this morning. Oops. So I weighed in on my home scale for this week.

SW: 185

CW: 178

GW: 135

I am so jazzed that I made it to 178! I wanted to lose 2 lbs. a week to be at 165 for our anniversary. I actually lost 3 lbs. this week, so that gives me a good head start. I needed a short motivational mantra to tell myself when I didn't feel like following the program, or when I felt like vegging out on the couch with a bag of chips (or chocolate chips). I asked Yahoo Answers for motivational phrases, but didn't really get what I was looking for. Then I came up with one all by myself. "Today is the last day I will be this fat." Some might see it as a bit harsh, but to me, it encourages me to take it a day at a time and not to let one slip-up ruin the whole day or week. Even though I need to lose an average of 2 lbs. a week, I am not setting goal weights for every week, because that can backfire with me. I end up having some kind of slip-up, and then I tell myself that I'll never reach the week's goal weight so I might as well just stuff my face. Then the next day or week, I am tempted to starve to get back on track. That kind of yo-yoing is not healthy, but it is what I have done in the past. I am pleased to say that this time I have consumed a fairly consistent amount of calories from day to day. Yay me!

Once I lose 10 more, I will have so much more to wear. It seems to be coming off mainly my hips right now, so my pants will be the first to come back to me! Hooray!

Thought about it…

I took a bath and thought about how I'm feeling and what I wrote, so time for a quick update.

My fifth wedding anniversary is in about 8 weeks. If I adopt the tough but realistic goal of losing 2 pounds a week, I can lose about 15 pounds by then. That would put me at only 10-ish pounds above my pre-unemployment weight (since I gained 30 but have already lost 4), which I can hide by dressing smart and using the right undergarments. I would be at 165 at that point. Until this year, that was my all-time high, so it's an important number for me. It's like coming back from the stratosphere and down to something that I've known and dealt with before. My anniversary doesn't seem so far away, and I was thrilled! to discover that I could get back to a manageable number by then. 185 felt unmanageable, and 181 still feels a little hopeless. But if I can get back to 165, I at least know I've gotten thin from there before.

Here's how I'm going to do it (pretty simply): I am going to stick with my Weight Watchers plan and track every bite, sip, and nibble. I am going to aim for the recommended amount of liquids, fruits, vegetables, and oils. No food is off limits, as long as I stay within my allotted number of points for the day. I am, however, going to try to avoid beer, as it makes me bloated and leads me to want to overeat. However, if I really crave one, it's after 6, and I have enough points to "afford" it, then I can still have one. Also, no more random swigs of wine or other drinks before 6. The reason for that is that a couple of times, I thought I'd just have a glass of wine with my late lunch, and then it relaxed me too much, and then I just kind of ate and drank and chilled the rest of the day. It's embarrassing for me to admit, but I have to cut out the denial if I really want to change, so there you have it.

Today, I'm having a sick day, but there are a few things I can still do. I can look up a Weight Watchers meeting for tomorrow to get me back on track. I can dig out my tracker and write what I ate for the past two days plus today. (I usually do my meetings and start my tracking on Saturdays, but I missed this week because of a graduation I attended, and then used that as an excuse to not track my points Saturday or yesterday.) I will immediately resume measuring what I eat and drink so that my tracking will be accurate. I will cut out the picture of the flat-bellied model that led me to all this reflection, and put it somewhere it can inspire me daily. I will walk slowly on the elliptical for as long as reasonably possible. And perhaps most importantly, I will keep knitting and cross-stitch projects by the TV so I have something to do with my hands besides mindless snacking.

I'm gonna do this!!!

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.

New Focus

I stopped blogging for a while because I changed my "no rules" approach to losing weight. Not that anyone reads or cares, but I have this thing where I change my approach all the time. It's something I'm kind of ashamed of, so I end up keeping it to myself whenever I change my own rules. I crave consistency in life, but sometimes things don't work and you have to try something else. The "no rules" approach was just too difficult for me. I continue to believe that it is a really good way to do things if you can. But there's being mindful and there's losing weight. I want both, but the latter does not necessarily require the former. I was using weight loss as a channel for learning mindfulness, but I think I need to learn them separately. Honestly, I want my jeans to fit again and the whole "be mindful in every moment" approach was just taking too long. I'm not looking for a quick fix, because I've had enough quick fixes to know that you always spring back to the way things were before. But I do need something that shows consistent results. For that, I joined Weight Watchers. I've been to four meetings so far and I've lost almost 4 pounds. I'm a little disappointed that it's not more, but the best part is that I am not fluctuating from week to week. It's always a move downward, no matter how slight.

I also had a big shake-up in my life. I don't want to go into too many details, but my husband and I were involved in a domestic dispute. The actual physical contact was mild (he picked me up and carried me a few feet against my will, and then I backhanded him), but for reasons I still don't understand, when I was alone in the bedroom about to go to bed, he called the police on me. Since he had slight redness from the slap, the police took me into custody where I spent three nights in jail. The prosecutor decided not to press charges and thought I probably shouldn't have been in jail. The three nights gave me a lot of perspective. I was all alone with nothing to do for the first day. Then a guard gave me some magazines that were two years old. I was cold, I had no pillow, the bright lights were always on, I had heartburn like mad, and I just cried and cried and cried. I worried about what this would do to my career. Even though I should have done it a year ago, I still have not fully processed my moral character application, which is a requirement to be admitted to the Bar. This is already a source of great shame and embarrassment for me. I worried that this would make it take even longer, that every potential employer would ask me to explain this incident. To my relief, it turned out that since I was released without a charge, nobody will find out about this unless I work at a high security government job.

I was so furious with my husband for putting me in this position when he knew the damage it would cause. There was really no explanation for what he did. Sure, I did not do the right thing when I slapped him, but involving the police? Aside from his physical size and strength and ability to protect himself, I was not even threatening him. At first I just wanted to leave, to go far away from my life and make a new start. I figured I could find an apartment in Texas or Idaho or someplace for $500 a month until I got a job there. The second day, I woke up thinking, why should I leave? I love my city, I love where I live. I was not the one at fault here, I was the victim. Why should I have to pack up and leave in shame? Let him find somewhere else to stay. I fantasized about the day I would get out--lying low until he went to work, and then surprising him at the office with a big red suitcase packed for him.

I wondered how much he knew. After all, the only phone call I made was to cancel a doctor's appointment I had that week. Nobody had to know. But in the back of my mind, as much as it would have been easy to hate him for it, I couldn't. I would have had fewer tears, more resolve, more fire in my belly if I could hate him. But I pictured him and how he must be. He probably wasn't able to eat. He probably didn't even watch TV. He was probably just sad, that way he gets when he just wants to sleep until everything goes away. I hoped he was sorry for what he did, and I worried that I couldn't take it if he wasn't. The more I obsessed about what he did and what he was doing and what he was going to do when I returned, the more I realized that he is my world. I've never had a friendship like the one I share with him. We don't communicate very well, but we'd been working on it. Sometimes we just understand each other so well, like two halves of the same person, and sometimes we seem to have grown up on different planets. He has shown me so much outside of myself and the world I knew. How could I hate someone with whom I shared the deepest friendship I'd ever known? I missed his smell, his puffy lips and his warm dry hands with the bruised knuckles. I missed the way he says words like "tour" and "jewelry". I missed the mystical eyes that couldn't be assigned a particular color. I was so nervous coming home. I didn't know if he was prepared for it.

I was released at dawn on a Wednesday, and I walked home. Funny they were more than willing to escort me there, but I was on my own to get home. I thanked fate for not sending me to the county facility—how would I have gotten home then, I wondered. I slipped into our apartment, grabbed my purse in the entryway, and slipped out again unnoticed. I took my car down to the ocean bluffs, walked to a coffee shop, and then strolled along, waiting. I still didn't know what I would do. Would I pack him a bag? Would I leave? Or would I give in to my sentiment and see how things went? On the way back home, I stopped to get gas, just in case. My card was declined, and I paid cash. When I got home, I spent an hour in the shower. Could I wash off the shame I felt for the situation in which I had found myself? I looked up my bank statement online. Overdrawn. Great. There goes the apartment in Texas. With my checking overdrawn and my credit card maxed out, I also worried how he would react when he found out. Would he wish I had stayed in jail, where at least he didn't have to provide me food and shelter? I decided to wait a few days, because now, suddenly, I needed him even more. I checked the fridge, which contained burgers, steaks, and beef stew. I guess he took advantage of the situation to eat the things I didn't buy.

Then the phone rang. I picked it up, thinking it might be him. It was his matter-of-fact matriarch grandmother. She wanted to know if I needed money for my moral character application. Clearing my throat and wiping away tears, I told her that I didn't want to accept her money without telling her the truth about my relationship with her grandson. I skimped on the details of the fight, but told her that I had spent the last three nights in jail and I wasn't sure where the relationship was headed. Her advice was just what I needed. In her straightforward way, she told me to be an adult and not to run away from my problems. She said all relationships have their struggles, especially when two strong-willed people are involved, and that it would be worth it to work it out. Then, without any sentimentality, she said she would send the money anyway, implying that she knew I would stay.

Still not ready to talk to my husband, I e-mailed him at work and asked if he could schedule a session with our marriage counselor that day. He replied immediately and was able to do it. We met with the counselor and talked a little, and I knew that things were going to at least be safe and civil at home. I was satisfied with that for the time being.

It's been a few weeks now since all this happened. He kept me waiting for an apology, but he finally gave me one. I told him about the money and we worked out a financial plan that will carry us through until I start getting paid more. I feel that we have treated each other with so much more respect and kindness since this situation. We both saw how blessed we are and how much we have to lose if we don't make this relationship work. I was always taught that God can use bad situations to accomplish something good, and I am seeing that firsthand now.