Aug 8, 2008

I am modifying my original goal, which I set  back in March.  I was going to lose 100 pounds by Jan 2, 2009.  I didn't (yet).  I lost 15 pounds and don't really see hitting that 100 pound goal as planned.  Who knows?  I might, but it doesn't seem realistic.

Now I plan to lose 100 pounds this school year.  When the kids are in school, I have something like a routine and I thrive in routine.  I will have tons of time to myself and I work better without an audience in this case.

Monday, the kids go back to school.  Today is Friday.  I still have not regained the 15 I lost before, so I consider that a good start. 

Monday goes hard core.  This time, I actually can feel it.  I want to do it and be done and not have to feel obligated to obsess.  It's much easier to maintain weight loss than to achieve weight loss.  I know, I've done all of it.

Here's my starting photo.  I nice side pic of me:

This was taken on July 11, 2008.  I figured I'll post a new one in 3 months. 

I feel bad I failed in yet another weight loss goal, but I'm looking forward and not backward.

July 25, 2008

The good news is that even with going on that brief vacation, I have not gained back any of the 15 pounds I lost.  The bad news is that my extreme lack of exercise and total lethargy as of late has caused my body to change its arrangement in a most unpleasing way.

If I didn't look so damned old, I'm pretty sure people would be asking me when I'm due.

So needless to say, exercise is on the horizon, set to start Monday.  I keep putting it off because even though none of my many options are positively hateful, I really don't want to do it.

These days, I sleep in until around 9am, then lounge and check emails while I eat my breakfast and then spend the day shifting from doing a little housework to doing a little sitework to whatever the evening happens to bring.  I doubt I burn up an extra 500 calories even throughout the day above and beyond what it takes for me to live and breathe and digest the food I eat. It's so hot and previously, the smoke was so bad that I ended up moving very, very little.

I know I will feel better when I start exercising, so I am dedicated to doing it (but I don't wannnnt toooo).

I also know how responsive my body is to exercise and that in just a couple of weeks, I'd be seeing some pretty impressive results.

For now, I just want to sleep. 

Eric (my husband) and, I think, most naturally skinny people cannot imagine how a person's weight can get away from them.  To them, it's a matter of seeing the scale starting to creep up and then running a couple of extra laps and cutting back a couple hundred calories a day until it's back under control again.

I know it's hard to imagine, but situations can conspire to get you into places you never expected to go.  You are shocked to see the scale says 160 when you swore that you'd never, ever go over 150. A few months later, it says 221 when you swore you'd never go over 200.

Pretty soon, you've gone from just a few extra jogs around the track and a couple fewer bagels to a whole major ordeal that is years long to get back in shape.

By then, it's so daunting that a lot of the time, you just want to quit and be happy being fat.

Sometimes, my heart hurts over the way I look and sometimes, I just don't care.  I think I've stopped even looking in the mirror below my boobs most of the time.

It's a very emotional situation, no matter how you analyze it.  Emotions are what gets us into this.  We crave the immediate gratification and intense reliability of food when times are tough and because it never lets us down, we are drawn to it like a moth to a flame.

We convince ourselves that we deserve this, that people who don't love us when we're fat don't deserve our love or our attention.  There are so many excuses we give.

Tra la.  It is what it is.

In short, I'm stable, but I need more work...a lot more work.

My blood pressure is great, but I'm tired all the time and spend most of my day just wanting to hide from everyone and everything.

Environmental situations conspire to keep me awake off and on through the night, so I never really feel caught up, no matter how much I sleep.

I look for the silence inside me because the world outside of me seems so loud and imposing and needy.

I find myself praying that the motivation and energy and force will come around again, like a brass ring on a merry-go-round, that I can just grab and win the day.

The body I have belies how I feel inside.  I don't feel fat.  I feel lithe and graceful and beautiful.  Maybe if I loathed myself more, I would be more motivated to lose the weight.

Next week I will write, filled with accountability, about my adventures in Exerciseland.

When I was looking for a new webset for this (who really thought I wouldn't get bored with 10 words or less, let's see a show of hands?  mmhmm  thought so), I was reminded that there are so very many weight loss journals and journeys out there, all trying to find their way, praying that this will be the time and that this will be the way that it will happen.  Praying that once it does happen, it will stay happened.  Wondering if we will need surgery or how many months or years it will take or if we will ever have anyone flirt with us again or if that boat has just sailed for the last time.

Will we spend our whole, entire life dealing with the issue of weight loss?  Will we ever have a moment when it's enough and we can relax and not think about it for a while or will we forever have to be chained to a treadmill and a calorie counting book? 

When can we just be?

"Just being" got me into this situation, but is the punishment a life sentence?

I am at a critical time of my life, turning 47 in just about 6 weeks and really wanting to be shed of this extra weight.  I'd love for Eric and my kids to see what I look like thin and to feel proud that I accomplished this amazing thing.

I want them to say, "Remember when Mom used to be fat?"

If we can invent a communications device that interprets signals from a fucking satellite in space, why can't we create a pill that will remove excess fat and tuck up the loosened skin real nice?  How about putting some funds toward that instead of sending spaceships to Mars?  Help out people in the here and now rather than whatever might be going on with a distant red planet!

When the best thing we have going for us is a procedure to keep us from using the majority of a major body organ, then there's a real problem.

Yes, another weight loss journal.  How many does this make for me?  About 15 or so, I think.

Always I believe it will be the last one.

We'll see.