i <3 carbs

another carbless day down... another cheeseburger salad, 2 low-fat beef hot dogs, crunchy green beans and none of the pretzels my husband offered me ninety nine million times.

cheeseburger salad? is DELICIOUS. maybe i just think that because i failed (FAILED) to eat or pack breakfast and lunch with the recovering actor & our friend ended up being at THREE PM (but her hair looks UH-MAZING), but my. god. that salad was so good.

and, yes, allison, i've thought about raw foods. i like the idea. but i get really, really cranky if i'm hungry and i can't eat something warm. i dunno why. it's a charming little quirk.

so... tomorrow afternoon we're heading to dc for a family reunion. i'm actually meeting a lot of my dad's cousins for the first time in my memory. i'm just going to try not to fuck up.

is beer on south beach?

on a total whim i decided to try the dreaded PHASE ONE starting, ya know, yesterday. it turns out that i WAY don't like enough protein foods to keep that up. yesterday i ate 1 scrambled egg + white, 3 hard boiled eggs, tons of lettuce, greek yogurt, a tomato, a cheeseburger patty, some canadian bacon, peanuts, "crunchy green beans" which i'm pretty sure are vacuum fried and three leffe browns. WHOOPS. (the peanuts & canadian bacon were totally my drunk food after our visit got cut short.)

i lost. go figure.

so, now i totally get how the whole no carb deal works-- of course, i'd never do it long term, but i have two family reunions in the next three weeks, and i wouldn't mind being a bit thinner for the second than the first. upshot? i made my famous frosted sugar cookies for the reunion this weekend and i've only eaten half of one.

barely related: do you ever get smacked in the face with a culture shock? telling my therapist about how hard it is for me to do south beach was met with a blank look and "so... what? does the south beach diet require a lot of protein or something?"

stayin' the same, stayin' the same!

i had this whole post written in my head about how my husband's step-sister is constantly forced to defend her weight loss to her big, italian, eat-more family (the opposite of my big, italian, eating-disordered family).

"are you losing more weight?" her grandfather will demand-- she's about 5'2" and maybe 115.

"nope, stayin' the same," she replies, every single time, "stayin' the same."

she lost 30 pounds of weight watchers a couple years ago, baby weight from her now 5-year-old daughter.

the end of the story was going to be about how I'M "stayin' the same, stayin' the same" and i wish it would end. but i gained 1/2 a pound. whoops.

"how much?"

as you know, when people notice my weight loss, i tend to be vague about things. "are you losing weight?" usually gets a "seems that way" or "i do what i can" or something like that.

and that's what my husband's (much thinner than last time i saw her and eating a bunless burger) cousin got last night. and then she followed up with a whispered "how much?" and, frankly, i didn't know what to say.

when i reach my end point, i intend to have the number of pounds i lost tattooed on my hip-- i reminder of where i came from and how hard i worked so i'll never, ever, ever gain it back. ideally, that number will be 101 or even 111 (HA! can you SEE me 125 pounds??), but 91 will be acceptable, too. at that point, i think i'll be very willing to say how much i lost. i think. but currently? i'm still running a good 4-5 (okay, today it's 6) pounds into the "obese" bracket, and then another 20 overweight, and honestly, my frame is somewhat small, so at least another 10 could be done without. at THIS point? this forty-more-to-go point? do i REALLY want to tell people i've lost nearly 70 pounds?

ummm, not really. because i don't want to see the wheels turning... seventy pounds? but, she's still so FAT! how much did she weight BEFORE??

nearly 240 pounds. on a frame that's meant to hold as little as half that.

fortunately, her little boy whacked his cousing with a foam sword just then and she took off after him, so i never had to answer.

just... so WEARY

the husband and i had a long talk last night about sabotaging and self-sabotaging and fat and feeling good in one's own skin.

which? i do not.

he feels good about me in my skin, but then again, i weigh nearly seventy pounds less than i did when he married me, at least 40 pounds less than i did when he proposed to me and a solid 20 pounds less than i did when he met me. so, as far as he's concerned, i'm looking downright MALNOURISHED.

(i am NOT malnourished.)

but i still weigh at least 10 pounds more than i did the whole REST of my life-- since i was about 13, i'd say. you know, the years when you're really getting a handle on this life-in-my-body thing? the years when you REALLY discover your fingers and toes and one droopy eyelid and where your ass ends and how low-cut your top can be before you look like a ho? that part of my life i spend between 155 and 165, but more on the lower end. PLUS, i still had a babyish shape then in some ways. my waist didn't used to be SO defined, but now i'm distinctly hourglassy. my boobs used to be shapeless lumps of fat, but are now pretty specifically breast-shaped. know what that leaves? fat arms and wide hips. NOT how i expect my body to be. not how i want it to be or even how i'm used to it being. i fear i'll have to go to the middle-range of the "healthy" range for my height to get some damn definition in my legs and lose the math teacher arms. but i'm nowhere near that.

i'm still, after more than two and a half years, just trying to make it back to where i BELONG. and the fact of the matter is that is infinitely harder when there's reece's pieces and pasta and good italian bread in the house and somebody is suggesting ordering in or japanese or bagels.

it's not his fault. but i can't help but think, did i already choose between my body and my heart? did i already make the choice that excludes getting this under control?

or am i just weak?

what i REALLY wanted

usually i have 1/2 a whole grain english muffin, 1 egg + 1 white (scrambled), skim milk and 1/2 tbs butter (split between the egg pan and the muffin) for breakfast. at which point i am FULL. but this morning, my ass was dragging from an emotionally exhausting 14-hour day, and i just asked my husband to toast me 1/2 an english muffin planning to eat a 0% yogurt at work.

well, as i wandered into the kitchen to butter up my muffin, i had a flash of inspiration. i put some all-natural peanut butter (with the oil poured off when i bought the jar) on it. i took a bite. amazing. just then, my husband asked if i minded if he took some of my uncle sam's fiber cereal for snack since we ran out of fruit (um, that is, he only got to pack 2 servings today instead of 3). "oooooh," i said, "you should totally put some chocolate chips in that."

and then i looked at my peanut-buttered english muffin half with one bite taken out.

and i added 8 semisweet chocolate chips to it.

and it was the single most satisfying breakfast i've ever had.

i'm really making an effort to eat what i REALLY want lately. it helps me prevent a binge. see, like if i ate my usual breakfast, i'd be stuffed, but i'd want a piece of candy with my coffee at work an hour later. sometimes my yogurt-n-uncle sam's does it for me for lunch, sometimes i really want a chicken caesar salad. sometimes a cup of jersey blues thrills me at 3, and other times it really needs to be a veggie egg roll. but if i eat that breakfast, that lunch or that snack? i may still get the other thing. or i may try to satisfy myself with another (additional) food that doesn't do it, and another, and another, and next think i know: ben & jerry's and lay's originals.

so, i'll put 8 chocolate chips on my english muffin. where's the harm?

how to not eat your fair share of a pint of ben & jerry's

my husband is not the very best of influences. i take full responsibility for my part in running out for a pint of cinnamon bun swirl, but it wouldn't have occured to me on my own, ya know?

but, lucky for me, our copy of maxim arrived yesterday. so i paged trough it, like i always do looking for the jokes and that last-day-on-earth bit while we popped open the pint.

i think i ate more than one serving, but nowhere near the two that was my fair share of the pint. because... wow. how do you sit around and eat ice cream while your husband is looking at models over your shoulder??

naturally, i wish i hadn't eaten the ice cream, but i had a migraine and frankly, it sounded GOOD. okay? it. just. sounded. good.


42 sit-ups, 24 push-ups (girlywise) and 45 minutes on the bike. making progress.

hate to say i told you so

only, i don't. because i did. tell you so. 168.2 is a LOVELY number. so, SO much nicer then 175.0. a number achieved through one day of pushing water and super-clean eating. this will probably be my low until next tuesday, but i'm going to try to incorporate the method behind the tuesday drop (tm) into the rest of my week.

regardless, how much do you LOVE that "6"??

TUESDAY weigh day

okay. that's. fucking. it. i'm not posting my weight on mondays anymore. it's tuesdays for me. i *heart* my scale on tuesdays. mondays it just makes me want to cry.

this weekend? i fucked up. my sacred moon time, a friend from my drinkin'-and-smokin' days (who kinda grates my nerves), a fight with the mister, make-up take-out, an early morning movie, a restaurant i don't really like... excuses. here's what i ate this weekend:

• friday lunch was a sausage & egg sandwich at sbux
• friday dinner was veggie fried rice at home
• saturday breakfast was a wawa hash brown, eggs, easter pie, 2 play-pretend mimosas and some home fries at home
• saturday dinner was pizza and fries take-out
• sunday breakfast was pretzel nuggets with cheese product, coke zero and reece's pieces at the movies
• sunday lunch was popcorn
• sunday dinner was zucchini fritte, caesar salad and a small chicken bryan without the lemon-butter sauce with broccoli at carrabas
• sunday dessert was pound cake & a latte at my parents' house

okay, so where did i go wrong? FIRST of all, i didn't maintain anything that resembles a normal schedule. second, i ate mostly food prepared outside of my control. third, most of those things included absolutely no ingredients found in nature but loads of salt. i also flopped on water and exercise. so.

i DID go right a couple places. after eating a hash brown first thing in the morning on saturday, i went easy on the home fries. i skipped the bread at carrabas (um, but ate half my husband's fried zucchini & salt). i skipped the LOVELY spread at my 3pm meeting on saturday knowing that my husband would be hungry when i got home.

so, i'm on to ANOTHER crazy week. class is ongoing, plus i have to prep for a family reunion in the dc area next weekend (this involves baking seventy-two million of my famous soft, frosted sugar cookies), and lots and lots of other shit.

but i will not fuck up. and i'll post my weigh-in tomorrow. and it WON'T be 175.0.

push-ups

i hate hate HATE push-ups. they're my sworn enemy. they are THE non-scale victory. the one i'm dying to accomplish. i want to be able to do them military-style and one-handed and with my feet elevated (not necessarily all at once). i also want to be able to do, like, a hundred sit-ups with a 50 pound weight on my chest. and run five miles. and wear killer 5 inch heels.

but it's mostly the push-ups.

last night i did 22 girl-style push-ups. and then 36 unassisted sit-ups. and half an hour on the bike. and my homework (er, half of it). i hope that having set my alarm to work out 4 days a week until mid-august keeps me on track. this class is kicking my ass from here to... somewhere else. far away. i'm exhausted EVERY DAY, drinking two or three coffees (hey! it's good for you now! prevents/slows/reverses alzheimer's! which i have a family history of! it's never too soon to moisturize or drink coffee, i always say!) but i'm not letting my eating fall of track. that would only make things worse.

this is a crazy weekend. tonight, i have to finish my homework, clean my kitchen & bathroom and grocery shop. then tomorrow i have brunch with a friend (i'm giving her tons of my too-big clothes) and a meeting for an event i'm volunteering for. sunday is am harry potter and pm inlaw dinner. and then? it's fucking monday again.

but this weekend? i will not. fuck. up.

more on the other perspective

okay, so ellen commented on my last post that she feel more confident buying indulgences when she's otherwise on track than when she's otherwise off track but buying a whole cart of healthy foods.

interesting.

i talk about food now. i'm a foodie and an excellent (if i do say so myself) cook. at every family gathering my husband's uncles ask me which baked good i brought, and they can usually guess just by looking. friends of friends jump at the chance to come over for dinner because they've heard that a weeknight dinner at our apartment is not to be missed. i'm highly critical of restaurants and very, very picky about where i'll eat. foodie, here. surprised? how'd you think i got that fat??

but i never talked about it. i never told an aunt about a great recipe. i never told acquaintances that i have a cooking blog. i never told a waitress that HELL NO i will not be sharing my dessert crepe! i never admitted that i LOVE cooking and practice baking. i never said out loud that i intend to make my second career of running a bistro/bakery with local artwork for sale and an admirable craft beer selection.

because, GOD, look at the FAT GIRL. in love with FOOD.

and now... i do. i happily tell in-laws what i've named my imaginary bistro and that my mother is going to retire to make my pie crusts. i revealed my food blog as my website on facebook! i eat wonderful, fresh, delicious foods and serve them to my guests. and TALK about it!

i feel like i'm *allowed* now. because i'm not as fat. (still fat, mind you, just not AS fat.)

what do they see?

yesterday, i was sad about my greek-style yogurt, grape tomatoes and banana lunch. none are foods i particularly enjoy, and i'd been having a rough day. i felt sad. then i felt stupid for feeling so sad. then i decided to carefully consider my options (i work in the food capital of the world) and get something that didn't disappoint me.

i thought and thought and thought and decided on a veggie egg roll. so i called the chinese place at 3pm and ordered one. (my deal with myself re: take-out at work is that i HAVE to call and order. not stop in, CALL. i have a phone phobia and it helps me evaluate whether i REALLY want it.)

when i went to pick it up ten minutes later, it was still frying. the son of the owner/operators was working-- i guess because he's out of school for the summer-- and much older than the last time i saw him. maybe 14 or 15. i wondered, what does he SEE?

does he see 5'3.5", 170 pounds having a mid-afternoon snack of deep-fried? i doubt he sees a woman, down over 60 pounds, making a conscious decision to supplement her healthy lunch. does he assume i had lunch two or three hours earlier at one of the dozens of other fantastic local restaurants, or does he figure i forgot to eat lunch and now it's 3 so i'm just grabbing a snack (as i sometimes actually do). do people assume it's laziness and gluttony that's turned me into a size 14? when will i stop being a fat person? my friends (girls mostly, but one guy who's lost about 50 pounds [off a 6'5", 300 pound frame]) call me "skinny" like it's my name... but if they didn't know me, would they think i was thin? not a chance. normal? maybe. fat? well, i am, right?

my "6" went away, as it was bound to do (but i SAW it. it was THERE. it's gonna be back soon!), after pizza & fries for dinner... and a chocolate junior. it was, after all, bastile day. but i pushed my water and managed 18 girly push-ups and 30 unassisted sit-ups (no husband holding my feet) followed by a pretty weak 15 minutes on the stationary bike.

and i studied and did all my homework. that counts for something, right?

the tuesday drop

sometimes, after a bad weekend (and let's face it, when has one been GOOD?) i get my act together on monday and drink an assload of water. i actually envision myself peeing out fat-- disgusting but true.

(i think that's a major part of a mainstream diet, you know, The Crazy Diet.)

and then i experience what i call "the tuesday drop." it's when i magically drop, like 4.8 pounds overnight. HA! other weeks, it happens on wednesday or thursday or not at all. this week, it was tuesday. right on schedule.

and i saw a 6.

water. water. water.

weekend job?

weekends are my downfall. really. it's because... i dunno. i guess it's because i have very little willpower? or perhaps because i happen to be a foodie who's not a work-outie. dude. i fucking LOVE good food.

last night, i could have done without the seconds of quinoa salad (with basil fresh from the garden, perfectly-- ACTUALLY-- vine ripened grape tomatoes and roasted pine nuts. i probably didn't need the bowl of blueberry cobbler, either. and saturday? was a bad. day. iced coffee and pop tarts was my breakfast of champions at noon. no, i don't have pop tarts in the house... i went out to get them. a taco salad including some of the shell and a bag of m&m's at the movies that i refused to share. then we share a pizza and fries while a girlfriend and i drank peach teas (the kinds with schnapps) and bitched about the menfolk.

saturday was not good.

i know why, too. it's because my husband went out tuesday, thursday & friday night and then again saturday morning. (i had class wednesday night.) it was definitely an anomoly, but when i'm alone? i eat.

perhaps i need a weekend job to keep me on schedule.

daily fluctuation

if i were weaker-minded (or perhaps just having one of my weaker-minded days) i would worry. i ate MORE OR LESS normally yesterday and fluctuated up 1.2 pounds.

OMGDOESTHISMEANANYANDALLFOODMAKESMEFATTER?

uhhh, no. but diet soda make me puffy, we know this. as does my husband's heavily-salted cooking. (mmmm, but turkey burgers, new potatoes and corn on the grill while i make flashcards from my accounting notes? FUCKING DELICIOUS.) and i STILL haven't worked out. i suck monkey balls. but weekends were made for letting the mister sleep in while i relax with a book on the stationary bike, right? right.

has anyone enjoyed a light frappacino lately? years ago, when i first considered the switch, they were GUH-ROSS, but lately they're tasting perfectly nice... i think they used to be made with aspartame but now it's a splenda/sugar blend. well, i get my weekly sbux treat today while i make gre vocab flashcards. bliss. (ps: i <3 learning new words!)

rinse & repeat

well, another drop. water, water, water. i guess that's the answer. i'm a bit lower than i think i've been even in recent lows. maybe a this-time low? but i try not to focus on the daily numbers too much. what i do like to focus on? is my 14s fitting again and my skin clearing up. whew. i look forward to posting this weight on monday (why, yes, yes i DID stop losing regularly when i stopped writing & posting weights regularly, why do you ask?) and seeing this trend continue.

an improvement

i was best friends with my water bottle yesterday, despite the anxious feeling of my throat closing up. i drank about a liter and a half. i ate dinner because, well, i made one of my favorite meal for my husband. remember october/november? when i was so anxious i couldn't eat? the last big drop? uh huh. my accounting class starts today.

in any case... my weight did one of those nice overnight drops, so perhaps it was water i was retaining, not chips, burgers, pasta, beer and cheesecake. i have a lunch date today, so i will be eating-- and early enough that i won't be able to puke it up when it's time for class.

did i mention i've never, EVER, attempted to learn anything like accounting before? i majored in ACTING for god's sake. i'm one of those artsy-fartsy types. i *do* accounting every day at work, but i've never tried to *get* accounting. or get an a in accounting... which is what i really, really need to do.

who's the boss around here?

yeah... not me.

i didn't fuck up, except for the not-working-out part. unless you count buying 70 pounds worth of pet supplies. i was within my calorie limit and PRETTY good on my nutrition goals (would have been better if we weren't out of whole wheat pasta).

but i'm +1 anyway. and no, it's not the time of month. just... lucky. i'm really angry and feeling very much out of control. honestly, i was so upset this morning, i didn't eat breakfast or pack lunch. i'm drinking my coffee now (black with a blue packet) and not feeling the food thing AT. ALL. i'm not pushing it right now. check back tomorrow.

oh, and i have an earring stuck in my ear. it's a 1/10th carat diamond (read: EENY-TINY) with a threaded back... that i stupidly used one of those backs that looks like a pawn (on the chessboard, i mean) with after i lost the right one. HALP!

is it still march?

because i still (actually, again) weigh what i weighed at the beginning of march. wtf, man?

two weeks ago i was withing spitting distance of the elusive 169.8. well, okay, maybe not SPITTING distance, but two pounds! i was two pounds away from the one sixties! and what happened? parties. cakes. lazy days. fourth of july. beer. the usual.

so now i'm sitting here, in my 16p jeans where two weeks ago i was in 14s. i'm sitting here feeling lumpy and soft instead of tight and strong. i'm sitting here thinking about 165 and the makeover the recovering actor is going to give me (btw: black eyeliner? is a must.) at ulta and all the money i'll spend on make-up. i'm sitting here thinking about the family reunion we're going to in dc-- my dad's first cousins and their families, people i probably haven't seen since i was 10-- and how i want to feel there. let me tell you how i want to feel there:

ONE. SIXTY. FIVE. (and extra pretty with my new face!)

we all know how it is, if you gained it in a weekend, you can lose it in a week. this will be a big loss week. it WILL. because i'm going to the track monday, wednesday, friday, sunday. because i'm eating whole foods, rich in protein and fiber, and drinking only water, coffee and unsweetened skim milk iced coffees. because i'm doing 15 minutes on my bike, at least, every single day. because i'm doing push-ups and sit-ups on tuesday, thursdays and saturdays. because I'M THE BOSS HERE, GODDAMNIT!

so the goals for this month:

• whole foods rich in protein and fiber
• water, coffee, skim milk
• daily workouts
• 1200ish calories
• don't fail accounting 111 (back to school on wednesday for the first time since 2006!)
• weekly (at least) blogging

and coming up...

1. 165 by july 31
2. 145 (healthy) by halloween
3. 140 by thanksgiving
4. 135 (goal) by christmas

my mantra: i'm not going to fuck up today.