Friday Weigh-In and Days 33-37

To start with, I have resented this project all weekend.  I didn’t resent it so much when I was out of town in Pennsylvania a couple of weeks ago.  I simply said, “Oh well, too difficult to keep track…” and stopped counting.  So, it wasn’t like I didn’t want to count, it was just too difficult.

I found myself quite hungry over the holiday weekend and it really pissed me off when I would think, “Well, I can’t really have any more because of the calories.”  After being extra hungry for a day or two, I finally decided I would just eat and count the calories up at the end of the day, whatever they were.  In fact, I did write down what I was eating, but I have yet to add all of the days up.  So, you will get to know in this blog, just like I will, what I’ve eaten in calories the past few days.

Why was I more hungry than I had been lately?  I don’t know.  Could it be a result of the calorie reduction?  Maybe.  I do feel crappy when I eat too much.  Not crappy like when I would binge and feel guilt – crappy like my stomach would hurt and I’d feel sluggish.  That has been one advantage to paying close attention to portion size;  feeling less drag on my system.

I have found myself resenting all of the damned measuring!  The measuring of the food.  The drinks.  The weight.  So much measuring and it’s a pain in the ass.  I can see myself needing a day off from this now and then.  Maybe that will be a tact I will take, I don’ t know for sure.

Early in my relationship with my husband Robert, I was about a size 14-16. This photo was on a hiking trip when Amber was little.

I am also thinking of doing different things different weeks to see how my body behaves.  Like maybe one week having no sugar and dairy and meat.  Or one week  exercising for 30 minutes of aerobics every single day.

I have been racking my brain trying to think of exciting and effective exercises I actually want to do.  There have been times I have managed a routine, but it’s always short lived.  How do people do it?  How do they MAKE themselves get up and do the exercise when everything is just screaming “I DON’T WANT TO!”  Hmmmm?

I had a rough Thursday and Friday.  Thursday I was up all night. I couldn’t sleep due to emotional stress and decided around 4 am to step on the scale.  To my upset, I seemed to have stayed all but .01 the same weight.  I really was irritated.  I spent several days where I could barely eat or didn’t feel like eating much.  Last week I had a day where I ate under 900 calories in one day.  I was a bit upset that the weight hadn’t shed.  I don’t like feeling that way, but I have to be honest with you, I did feel that way.  I didn’t want to admit that I “gave in” and weighed myself early.  Not really early since it was the right day, but I hadn’t even slept yet, so in my mind it was an “early” weigh.  I surely didn’t want to tell any of you that Strong Confident Heather was disappointed that she didn’t drop three pounds.  I think some of the feeling came from the fact that I felt as though I really made some sacrifices with the food and there should have been some sort of result.  Then, I weighed myself later in the morning and my weight was lower.  I began to wonder if I’d moved while I was weighing earlier.  It really made me think about how the number makes me feel.  How much power it has.  Not that I wasn’t thinking of it before, but it was punctuated, you know?

I still wasn’t happy that I’d only lost a smidge even with the second weigh-in.  Then, I remembered something I read – that stress doesn’t allow us to shed weight.  That raised stress hormones keep us fat sometimes even when we are trying to not be fat.  They make our bodies sluggish and greedy with the fat.  It can make our blood sugar go wonky and our fat cling to us harder.  Here is an article if you care to learn more: http://stress.about.com/od/stresshealth/a/weightgain.htm

This is information I learned long after I stopped dieting.  I only just remembered it.  In retrospect, I think that maybe when I was younger and dieting all the time, that stress may have not only contributed to my weight gain, but also helped me stay fat once I got there.   I first got truly heavy during a very stressful period of my life – right before I got married.  Then the years following, with couple issues, money problems and two children – it was really a constant drumbeat of stress in my life.  No matter how often I dieted and starved and exercised to excess, I couldn’t seem to shed very many pounds.  Then I would get upset and binge and then sometimes purge.

When we got married, a few years into living together I'd gone up to about a size 18-20W. That seemed to happen over a very short period of time.

I have an anxiety condition.  This can’t be helping my weight.  I’m sure of it.  I think what I really need to focus on, like I’m pretty sure I wrote in a previous entry, is exercise.  I want to find some kind of exercise I can do almost every day to blow off stress and make my body strong and more capable.  I used to be quite athletic when I was a girl – I was a softball player and a gymnast.  I would run so fast through the grass hills I felt like my feet were barely touching the ground.  I climbed trees and hiked everywhere.  I felt strong and fast.  Then puberty hit and with it came all of the insecurity.

On Saturday I was lamenting to hubby that I wish I could get into an exercise routine.  Something fun.  Something not boring.  Something I actually want to do.  He said to stop making excuses and just do it.  Of course, this is the man who paid $39 a month for  a gym membership that hardly got used!  Besides, as he well knows I wasn’t actually making excuses, I was just thinking out loud.  Trying to get ideas.  What do I love to do?  What wouldn’t be such a chore to do?  I love swimming.  Maybe I could swim for exercise!  So, perhaps that is what I should do.  Join a place with a swimming pool and swim, swim, swim.  I love swimming.  It’s good for me.  I used to be great at it too.  I’ll bet I couldn’t hold my breath for a tenth as long as I used to.  Some mermaid!

So, I think I’ll look into swimming as my exercise.

Then, there’s today.  Today I have been in a weird mood.  I tried to break the mood by going to Torrid and trying on a sexy black mini-skirt.  Meh.  Didn’t like it.  It didn’t fit right. It gapped in the back and was too long.  Plus, I wasn’t in a sexy-body-loving place, so it looked terrible to me.  I didn’t get it.  I did however buy a Wonder Woman tee.  Wonder Woman is my favorite.

I started today off logging things dutifully, but later said “FUCK IT!” and ate some mini-Reeses peanut butter cups with some marshmallows on the side.  I had a sweet tooth!  I am a sensualist!

I don’t think my current feeling about the calorie counting is permanent.  I think, like all things for me, it is a cycle.  I think that my hormones and mood have everything to do with how hungry I am.  I think my stress level has everything to do with some of the outcome I am looking at.

Some dieters annoy me with their stupid slogans, like:  Eat to live, don’t live to eat.

That is LAME!  I mean, do these people do everything this way?  I look at food like sex.  I don’t LIVE to have sex, but I sure as hell love it and it sure as HELL makes life more pleasurable!  If I knew that I could only eat 1800 calories per day for the rest of my life and that none of it could be something delicious, sensuous and pleasurable – well, that would be the same as telling me  that I can only have sex once per week for the rest of my life and it all has to be the same way.  FUCK THAT!

During my pregnancy with my second child I gained over 50 lbs.

Anyway, here I am, restless and hungry and stressed.  Do I feel like counting a calorie?  One single calorie?  NO!  I sure as hell don’t.  So, whatever today started off as, it ended up in a place that I’ve been the past few days – sick of counting calories.  However, I know that I will not remain in this state.  I know myself well enough to know that my feelings will change.  Probably tomorrow.

This is how I am with everything.  As Robert says, “Heather, you never do anything half-assed.”  And that’s true.  However, I can back off from something if I feel like it and not feel guilty either.

I do want to be able to hike for hours without getting winded.

I want to be able to swim for a long time and feel free.

I want to be flexible and strong.

I want to be capable and mobile.

My weight does inhibit me in some ways.  This is not an easy thing for me to admit, but I guess today is a day of admissions.

I feel a bit weak for not giving up the peanut butter cups today.  It’s true.  In the olden days I would be crying or puking them up.  I don’t feel that way today.  Today I feel a little weak and mostly resentful that I can’t just enjoy a damned peanut butter cup.  I also feel a little vulnerable when I have to come on here and admit these things.  I know what people think of fat folks.  I know what fat acceptance folks think of these thoughts.  It’s like sticking my neck out on the chopping block.  But, I’m here to make discovery.  About food.  About fat.  About health.  About being the best Heather I can be.

This past week’s data:

Weigh-In Friday

This Friday: 252.5

Last week’s weigh in was 253.8

First day weight: 259.7

Loss this week: 1.3 lbs

Loss total: 7.2 lbs

***

Calorie Totals By Day Number

Day 33 – 1875

Day 34 – 1855

Day 35 – Did not get a full day total.  I was at Artomatic and ate a hotdog out of hunger and desperation – WHERE THE HELL DID THE FLY CARTS GO!?!  Every single time I was at AOM this year there was NO FLY CART!

Day 36 – Did not get a full day total.  Like the day before I started out recording, but by dinner I had lost interest in recording and even indulged in things I wouldn’t have if I had been counting closer.  Did I stop counting so I could indulge without having to KNOW the calorie number?  Hmmm…I wonder.  I did eat THREE medium bananas this day!  I was SO HUNGRY!  From PMS?  Hormones?  Stress?  WHAT?  I just don’t know.

Day 37 – Today – I did the same thing – running around seems to make me less likely to keep track and especially when I already am not in the mood to do so.  Tomorrow – back on track.  In the old days, that would have meant that I needed to get back to my weight loss goals.  To think about all the thinspiration I could.  Put unflattering photos of myself on the fridge.  Look in the mirror and belittle myself.  Make myself throw up or exercise until I drop.  Starve myself for several days to make up for my “mess ups” or go to a group to “forgive myself” for my screw up so I don’t stay off of the wagon – or, um, the gravy train?  Just kidding.

In any case, tomorrow I feel like I will be in the mood to record everything I should.  I should be home and working dutifully and therefore will have much control over what I eat and how many calories are in it.  Plus, I won’t be tempted by mall food or hotdogs.

Stay strong everybody.  Keep telling yourself you are beautiful.  And make sure you do the healthy thing too!