I’m supposed to eat one or the other today, but I don’t know which one I want.  I have frozen berries, I could make a smoothie/sherbert snack.  I also have very yummy bread; I could have toast with cream cheese and tomatoes, or with peanut butter and cinnamon.  It all sounds delicious; I don’t know what I’ll do!  For now it looks like I’ll have some more coffee, and think about showering and starting the laundry.  Its back to work tomorrow, after 3 days off.  I have to get some lunches together, boil some eggs for breakfast, and prepare myself for 5 days in a row of rising at 3 am.  Actually, I’ll probably have to get up a little earlier than that, since my car is broken (I’m trying to sell the piece of junk - for parts!) and my 10 minute drive to work is now an hour and a half walk, or (hopefully) a 45 minute bike ride.  Just got the bike on Saturday, so tomorrow will be my first morning taking it to work.  I’ll leave early, just to time the ride.  I have to get to work by 4:30 a.m.  I don’t really mind having to do this, because the forced exercise is exactly the sort of motivation I need.  We live really close to town, so anything else we need is with walking distance, and the bottom of the stroller can hold lots of groceries!  And we’ll save money on gas.  I really wish I didn’t have this stupid broken car though.  I bought it on craigslist, drove it for less than a day, before it broke down, and I can’t afford to fix it.  grrrr.  anyway, it must be a sign that i don’t need a car right now, i can manage without it.

Totally binged last night.  I ate like 3 or 4 blueberry cereal bars, plus a bowl of cereal, plus chips and salsa, plus about 4 oz of dark chocolate.  And I was supposed to be on my last day of Phase 1.  I think I was just feeling down yesterday.  Having all this trouble with a broken down car, and I was exhasted and sore from walking to work the day before.  And my boyfriend is away in Florida for a memorial service, so there was no one here to ask me what the hell i thought I was doing.  So, I binged.  But today, i woke up and ate a good P1 breakfast, fasted thru lunch, walked 2.5 miles with trenton, came home and cleaned and cooked dinner.  feeling hungry now, at 8:15 pm, think I might have a blt lettuce wrap for a snack, and maybe some yogurt since I missed a second dairy serving today.  Got my beans in at dinner, with the mexican casserole.  Have a bottle of wine to crack open once the kid’s in bed; gotta say I’m looking forward to it.  Even though I’m not supposed to drink on P1, I still had beer a few times, plus wine another night, and sake the night before binge-night.  I bet the sake was a trigger, cause I’ve never had issue with beer or wine.  I still lose even though i consume, so no biggie here.  i never get cravings from it though, but i rarely drink sake.  I hope i’ve identified the trigger, cause i don’t want to go binging any time soon.

Today was supposed to be the first day of Phase 2 for me.  I woke up, and ate about 6 of these jelly filled shortbread cookies that I bought at Trader Joe’s yesterday, for Trenton.  I am so disgusting.  I really wish I hadn’t done that, I knew that I shouldn’t even as I was reaching back in the box for more and more.  But, I did.  Now I have the spins, and the heart-beating-to-hard feeling that I get when I eat too many carbs/sugars.  Like that time I ate donuts for dinner, and thought I would pass out or my heart would explode afterwards.

So, right now I’m trying to decide if I should just forget the incident and move on to P2 tomorrow, or do P1 for a few more days just to make sure I can handle P2.  But, really, if I couldn’t handle this after 2 weeks, what is going to change after a few more days?

I am so strong and convicted, confindent and a good decision maker in all other aspects of myself and my life.  But when it comes to my eating habits, I’m as weak as my drug addict mother.  I really really hate and loathe this part of me.  I want to overcome this.

Hi.  My name is amanda, and I’m a fat chick.  I have always been overweight, for as long as I can remember.  I come from a meat and potatoes family, lacking creativity and nutritional guidance.  As a child, I lived with my mother, who would try to instruct me in the art of “stomach muscle control”.  She thought that if you held your stomach in at all times, you would appear thinner.  My mother did a lot of psychological damage; she is a drug addict and was verbally and physically abusive.  My answer to my problems was to eat and eat.  She would leave me alone for hours at night, and I would eat boxes of cereal and sugar cubes.  She still denies this fact.

At age 12, I went to live with my dad.  Although there was more support from that side, my step-mother didn’t know much about nutrition either, and she struggled for years with the weight she gained from her pregnancy with my brother.  They all led pretty busy lives, and no one knew how to deal with the fat depressed girl in the bedroom upstairs. I would alternate between bulemic/anorexic behaviors: starve, binge, binge, purge, starve, etc.

Fast forward to post-high school.  I moved out, got an apartment, and became a vegetarian.  I was broke and rarely ate, and dealing with depression on my own.  I lost about 20 lbs, mostly stress and poor nutrition.  I did give up my daily candy bar, which I think helped a little.  At this point I weighed between 170 - 175.  I stayed that weight for the next few years, while learning more about cooking, vegetarianism, and better nutrition.  I still felt fat.  I never liked what I saw when I looked in the mirror.

Eventually I decided to become a vegan.  Still horrible at relationships, I broke up with any and everyone who cared about me.  I hurt those who loved me.  I drank a lot, and smoked a lot of pot, and ate a lot.

Enter boyfriend, sean.  At 23 we met, and were friends/co-workers/neighbors for about a year before one night when we had nothing better to do, and had sex.  After dating for a few weeks, we realized we were pregnant.

Enter 80 pounds.  That’s how much I gained with my pregnancy.  I was huge, it was horrible.  The strain on my back and legs left me crippled after a day of work.  I would come home and rest, and then be unable to walk.  I remember crawling to the bathroom, crying in pain.  I had to visit a chiropractor 3 times per week to be able to walk comfortably.

I had given up veganism at the beginning of the pregnancy, because all I craved was eggs and ice cream.  I ate a lot of ice cream, and pizza.  I ate whatever I wanted, because I was vomitting a lot, so I figured it didn’t matter how much I ate.  When I stopped vomiting all the time, I still was eating all the time.  My stomach became a disgusting road map of stretch marks that looked like scars from a run in with Edward Scissorhands.

My son was born in July of 2006.  I weighed 250 lbs the day before he was born.  It took me until May of 2008 to become completely fed up with my body and myself, and I decided to start the south beach diet.  I joined their website for a free trial membership, and the day after mother’s day, I began Phase 1.  At this point, I weighed 212 pounds.  I lost 12 lbs during Phase 1, and continued to lose 1-4 lbs per week until I hit a plateau of 177-180 lbs.  This is the weight I had maintained for years before, and when i stopped losing, I stopped paying attention to the plan.  I got to a point of eating whatever whenever, although it was still a lot healthier than before.

Now it is May, 2009, and I’m ready to try again.  I have 2 more days on Phase 1, where I have gone so far from 182lbs to 174.6 lbs.  I want to lose this last 25 lbs, to get me to a healthy weight/BMI for my height and body type.  I like to post in the 3FC forums to help keep me motivated, and since relocating to Northern California, I have been walking a lot more.

My stomach is still a yucky mess.  It will probably never be the same again, but I’m afraid of surgery to restore it to normalicy.  my boyfriend (baby daddy) has been very supportive of my efforts, and he never made me feel bad about myself at any body stage.

I still hate my body, but I like it a little better than before.  I just want to be healthy, and not have a tire around my waist.  and thinner thighs - I’ve always had these big ole thunder thighs and i want them to go away too.