Gettin’ Fine in 2009

I’ve been absolutely hating myself lately.  I just hate that I can’t find the motivation inside myself to do what I need to do to get this weight off.  When we know that so much in our lives would be better/easier/healthier if we could just take off some pounds, WHY IS IT SO HARD???

I know that hating myself is not helping.  We’re supposed to love ourselves and care for ourselves as we would care for others.  But I just don’t.

I proposed to one of my sisters a week or so ago that we “diet for each other” — in other words, I would eat what I knew would give the results I  would want HER to experience, and she’d do the same for me.  She didn’t really get it, I don’t think, and I don’t know if it was weird, but I totally thought it would work.  I am just better at doing for others than I am for myself.  Well, the hard things, anyway.

So I’ve been bingeing again this week, feeling desperate because summer is almost here and I still have barely any clothes I can fit into and breathe in, and everything I have to wear to work is hideously ugly, and I feel like my husband is losing faith in me because I’ve started and stopped yet again.  It all just adds up to constant pressure — self-induced, but pressure nonetheless — and maybe self-induced pressure is the worst kind, because you can’t escape from it.

I watched Helen, the 48-yr-old, become The Biggest Loser on Tuesday night, while I sat and ate out of a half-gallon of maple walnut ice cream.  One of my friends says that it seems dumb to her to watch a show about losing weight; she thinks it’d be like her watching a show about smoking (she quit smoking recently).  I laughed when I heard that, thinking “Nah, it MOTIVATES me!” — but this week I was eating ice cream while watching, and a couple of weeks ago it was those 2 loaves of bread.  Maybe she has a point after all.

I’m casting about for ways I can re-motivate for the new week that starts tomorrow (<–gee, there’s a common diet trap, right?  Why not “start” right NOW?)  Should I just stop thinking about losing weight completely for awhile?  No, because I tried that last week and all I did was eat.  Should I do something drastic, like start taking the Alli I bought?  I don’t think that will do anything for me, because I don’t believe all fat (in food) is bad.  Should I spend big dollars on starting with my personal trainer again?  Spending big dollars on anything hasn’t seemed to inspire me much in the past … I’ve tried that plenty of times, too.  Treadmills, personal trainers, gym memberships, every piece of home exercise equipment ever sold on an infomercial–I’ve pretty much tried it all.

So where do I go from here?  My head knows that it’s not how many times we fall that counts–it’s how many times we get back up.  But I’m just so weary of trying.

What I ‘ve come up with for this week is this:  Before I eat ANY crap at all (Domino’s cheesy bread, bags of Dove chocolate squares, creemees, whatever–I will first drink an entire glass of either water or V8 juice.  Then if I still want the crap, I can have it.

I’m also going to try to get out for some walks this week.  What worries me about that, though, is that walking bores me silly.  I haven’t mastered getting songs onto an MP3 player yet without a lot of hassle, so I just go with no music, and it’s just boring.

That tells me that this might not be my best approach to getting more physical activity in.

Maybe I’ll just worry about getting the food back under control for a bit first.  Maybe I take on too much by trying to reform my eating habits AND my activity habits all at once (in addition to dealing with the stress of my job and all the other usual daily stuff).

If only it weren’t such a constant, seemingly overwhelming struggle.

I just re-read some of my earlier posts today, since it’s been 4 months since I started writing. I saw that at one time I’d said I had an idea for something that might motivate me more than just the scale. The title of this post says it all:

BURN THOSE BLEEPIN’ BIG BLACK PANTS!

I cannot WAIT for the day I can do that. It’s all I wear, ever — black pants. Corduroy, velvet, denim (stretch, of course), linen, or my personal most-hated type: “PDK” — polyester double knit. UGH. They’re so horrible. I can only imagine how my co-workers might describe me to a new employee — “She’s The Woman in The Black Pants.” That’s what my work wardrobe consists of. Black pants (because nobody can tell we’re fat when we wear black pants, right?) and an assortment of knit mock turtlenecks, all the exact same style but different colors, in winter, and an assortment of plain, solid-color tee shirts, all the exact same style but different colors, in summer. I never wear skirts, ever — look at the earlier post with the photo of my legs, where I said the hosiery industry was after me to be a model, and you’ll understand.

So pants it is.

Last weekend, just before my latest “gotta do something about myself” moment, I realized with horror while searching the piles of clothes in my room that I had not one thing that I could put on that Monday AND STILL BREATHE IN for the ~10 hours/day that I’m dressed for work. The Jaclyn Smith 2X, made-upside-down black velvet stretch pants (the nap of the fabric runs the wrong way, so you can’t smooth them down; you gotta smooth them up) from KMart that I’d been LIVING in since our office Christmas party last year (when I realized how very comfy size 2XL elastic-waist pants can be even after a nice buffet!) were practically threadbare from being worn nearly every day for 4 months, plus they’d gotten so short from all the washing that I had to take the hems out; I was actually wearing them with the raw edge at the bottom, hoping nobody would notice. Plus a co-worker with whom I regularly commiserate commented last week “you’re going to have to make those pants into velvet shorts soon”, since it was about 80 degrees that day!

The combination of those 2 things shocked me into a run to the mall for some pants I could breathe in, “style” be damned (which was a real switch, as you can tell I’d been a real slave to fashion up until this point).

And what did I end up with as a result of that trip? Two pairs of size 20W Alfred Dunner black polyester stretch pants with elastic waists — freakin’ ALFRED DUNNER!!! You know, that awful section in J.C. Penney where all the “Women’s” polyester tops with the giant flowers and tacky sequined appliques live.  THAT’s where I’m shopping now. (Although I must admit, I was relieved that they were at least “only” size 20W, since I’ve been up to a 24W at times in the past.)

So now I’m living for the day when I can make a huge bonfire; invite all my friends; toss on all the Big Black Pants; and watch ‘em BURN!!!

I knew it’d been awhile since I last posted, but … nearly 3 months?!?  Sheesh.

I have not done well.  I went very crazy, in fact, with the eating.  One Tuesday night  a couple of weeks ago, I sat on my couch watching The Biggest Loser.  Before the show was over, I had consumed not one, but TWO ENTIRE LOAVES of bread!  I’m not kidding.  One loaf of raisin bread - plain, cold, right out of the bag - and one loaf of “Portuguese bread” - that heavy, soft blob of doughy goodness that they bake right in the grocery store, so the smell assails you when you walk in the door.  

That’s a good reminder of why one should never enter a grocery store hungry.

I don’t know how I did it.  I just kept eating and eating and eating, way past the point of comfort.  And this while I watched other people sweating their brains out and being weighed in front of the whole world?!?  Geez.  Sometimes I amaze even myself.

Anyway, last time I posted, I threatened to post a photo, but I never got around to it.  So tonight, I took a brand new one. 
Brace yourself.

(I named the photo “Holy Cow” for a reason.)   Yup, that’s me, in all my sports-bra glory.  

I hit a high of 222 early in April — I was so horrified that I took a picture of the scale with me on it at that weight:
 

But things are looking up again. I’ve just completed my first 5 days (ANOTHER first 5 days) of “clean eating”. I started this week at 217.  Today I was down to 211.  So I’m back on the wagon. 

I had gotten SO desperate that I needed something extreme to force myself to stop with the destructive behavior.  My knees, hip, and back were absolutely killing me, and the scale wouldn’t stop climbing.  So I came up with something kind of shocking - I actually swore on a beloved family member’s life that I would not eat any junk food, sugar, or white flour, for a minimum of 7 full days.  I still have to do it through this entire weekend.

That sounds terrible, but boy, did it work!  I was afraid to even have a cup of coffee!  My husband bought a beautiful box of strawberries, but before I could say anything, he had sliced them up and put sugar on them - so I had none.  I ate lots of salad this week with good stuff in it like black beans, avocado pieces, peach chunks, and chicken breasts.  (That new grilled chicken from KFC is GOOD!) Fruit was my dessert, and mixed nuts were the “junk food” I allowed myself.  All us experienced dieters know that nuts are MUFAs, and MUFAs help eliminate belly fat, so even those are a healthy choice. 

I got to the gym twice in the past 5 days, and tonight DH and I went for a bike ride after work.  (His chain kept falling off, so we didn’t go far, but we did a couple of miles.)  I can tell he’s trying to be supportive.  He made a couple of nice salads for me this week, too.

So, that’s where I am at the moment. 

I’m reading a pretty interesting book–The Body Fat Solution, by Tom Venuto.  He talks about how to program your subconscious mind to help you meet your goals.  I’m going to try some of his ideas.  I’ll talk more about that in a future post.

Thanks for staying with me.  Now that we got “the BIG reveal” out of the way (lol), I look forward to the day when I can post a fabulous AFTER photo.  I have a whole *bunch* of Befores … this time I want to make it all the way to After!