Ho-hum day, uncomfortable underwires, daily walking.

Nothing particularly exciting happened today. My eating was fine; I drank a lot; I did forget to take my vitamins.

I may need to go down a bra size again; the one I was wearing today kept jabbing me in the armpit because it was slightly too big. But I also wore it yesterday too, so maybe it'd just stretched. That's kind of what I'm hoping for. New bras are expensive and a pain in the ass anyway. Not to mention, right now I'm wearing a 40. If I'm really already down to a 38, then it may not take long to get to a 36. After that is where it gets scary ... because 36 is the lowest band size Lane Bryant carries, and I have no idea where to get a bra smaller than a 36. Other than Victoria's Secret which I am reallllly not a fan of. But I shouldn't even think about that now, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Once I get my almighty tax return, I think I'll buy a pedometer. I'm quite curious about how much I walk every day at work. The last time I had one, when I was working at Lane Bryant, I was walking five miles a day!

The chocolate pusher.

We have a regular customer at my restaurant who loves to bring in baked stuff for us. I don't really know his whole story; he spends a lot of time at the bar, but he doesn't drink. He just talks to all of us. He's not creepy, which is a nice change from some of our bar regulars. He's always bringing in cakes and pies he's made at home, glowing with pride and clearly basking in our enjoyment of it.

Tonight, he brought in a flourless chocolate cake, with crushed raspberry sauce. He'd even used a stencil to trace a powdered sugar fairy and flowers on it. It was beautiful, and looked delicious. When I was done with my shift, he asked me if I was going to have some; I said I needed to have some real food first since I hadn't eaten all day (today was crazy hectic). When I was eating, he smiled at me from the bar and told me not to forget to save room for dessert. I just smiled with my mouth full, hoping he'd forget.

I almost made it out, too; then one of my coworkers brought up the cake and the guy's face lit up. He right away cut me a slice and drizzled sauce over it. Fuck. I didn't want to hurt his feelings! So I told him I was full and would take it home. Then I had a tiny, tiny bite, just the very tip of the slice, not even a half a spoon, so that I could give him the big smile and the compliment he wanted.

It really was a very good cake. I did bring the box home, because I didn't want him to see me throw it away. It's sitting on my oven now. I had planned to put it down the garbage disposal right away, but had to clear out the sink first. I did some dishes; I did some laundry; I watched some "King Of The Hill." The cake is still there. Even after tasting it, and it being delicious, and a nice slice of it carefully boxed up in my kitchen ... I don't really want it. I didn't have to talk myself out of eating it; it's as appetizing as the styrofoam box it's in.

And I don't know why. So I don't feel triumphant, or proud, or anything. Mostly ... puzzled.

Wardrobe; uncomfortable hope.

Yep, that's my wardrobe. Took up the entire width of my bed.

The other night I dumped out my entire wardrobe on to my bed and started sorting it. My entire wardrobe takes up a four-drawer dresser with two shelves on top, two closets and their two shelves, three 18 gallon plastic tubs, and 25 gallon plastic tub! I was just tired of reaching into my clothes and pulling out things that didn't fit.

So I sorted them in to four categories: fits now, almost fits, almost-almost fits, and 'yeah fucking right.' Oh, and goodwill. I might go through that last one again and pick out some things I might be able to sell on ebay. Some of it is horrible old clothes, but some is stuff like a pair of size 20 average jeans. I may be a size 20 again soon, but I will still have short legs. I seriously don't even know where I got those. And I'm never going to get around to taking them to a tailor to have them shortened!

As part of this, I tried on a lot of clothing that I'd either forgotten about completely (seriously, there was a denim skirt in there that I have absolutely no memory of buying!) or just hadn't tried in a while. And damn, was that blow to my self-esteem. I knew about 3/4 of my wardrobe was slightly tight; but it turns out it's more like 90% is either a little tight or just doesn't fit at all.

And it's not a bunch of  'skinny clothes' either, from high school or something. I got rid of most of those several years ago when I decided I wasn't going to put myself through the diet rollercoaster anymore. These are mostly clothes I bought when I worked at Lane Bryant. They're already fat clothes. And it did really bum me out that night, made me feel quite hopeless. And that's when I realized that I was actually starting to hope that I might really truly lose a lot of weight.

Fuck. I've been down this road before. Multiple, multiple times. There's really no reason for me to think that this will be the time that I actually get skinny and stay that way. The statistics are absolutely not in my favor, and I know that. I didn't start out trying to become skinny; I just wanted to wear my cute clothes again. I feel like I'm setting myself up for failure by even pondering taking it further than wearing my favorite lacy corset top again.

In a rather contradictory way, I'm looking forward to 2/10, which is when I'm going to properly weigh myself.  I know that daily weighs mess with my head; I know that weekly weighs are almost worse because what if that one particular day I've still got a gutful of food, period water retention, whatever. But a month seems like a good number.

Vitamins make me hungry; comfort food.

I took my first dose of all my vitamins last night with my dinner. Strangely, about an hour after eating, I got really hungry again. My stomach was literally growling! Happened again today. I can't imagine what it is about my vitamins that would make me hungry again so fast.


Something happened at work tonight that made me really freaking angry. The combination of already being hungry and being pissed made me start thinking evil little thoughts. Thoughts like ... "chocolate, I haven't had chocolate in weeks" and "it wouldn't hurt to order pizza, just one night of pizza wouldn't do anything" and then "I know food won't fix this but I still really really want some cake."

If I had stayed at work, I honestly don't know what I would have eaten. But I was so sick of everything in that place that I just left. I came home, albeit by a longer route because I was still debating with myself if I was stopping somewhere for something. I knew if I got home, I would be too lazy to go back out for junk. So I pointed the car home, where I ate some carrots and the half a chicken breast I had left from yesterday, and I drank some Diet Orange Crush and watched television.

I'm still royally pissed. But I don't want chocolate anymore. Or not much anyway.

I also feel like getting on the scale for some sort of 'validation', which is stupid because my worth has nothing to do with my size and that's an old fucked-up attitude talking.

$100 and 15 hours.

I've spent $100 on supplements in the last week. Yikes! But I've got 2-4 months worth of Coromega, multi-vitamin, mixed vitamin E, chromium piccolinate (for insulin receptor sensitivity), magnesium, and potassium. I realized today I only have two more days' worth of my Prozac (the little blue ones), going to have to get a refill. I also got some melatonin and valerian root, because my sleep schedule is just totally fucked up. Tylenol PM would've been cheaper, but I don't like how it makes me feel so I'm going to try this and see how it works.

I'm a little irritated; I just looked at my new bottle of magnesium, and it's the same damn magnesium oxide as the old bottle! The sent me the wrong stuff, by the same brand. But I already opened it! Damn. That'll teach me to be excited about my supplements and tear right into them.


Just ate the other chicken breast I cooked last night, when I realized that I hadn't eaten anything in 15 hours. Before changing my eating, when my blood sugar wasn't regulated, I would've had a crazy blood-sugar-crash-induced crying jag about eight hours ago. I'm not feeling any different physically, but my moods are a hell of a lot more stable without the roller-coastering blood sugar!

I've been noticed; vitamins.

A woman at work turned to me today and said, "I meant to tell you last night, you look like you've lost weight." Bloody hell. If she noticed, that means the next time I see my mother or father they'll have noticed too, and I'm just not up for that conversation.

I know for most people it's a compliment. But I just hate hearing it. Before it was because I was ashamed because it implied they were aware of how fat I was. Which was silly, because how could anyone not see? So it's not that now. Maybe because I don't know how to respond to it. I try to just say thanks, even though I don't really think it's a compliment (but I know most people think it is). But people just don't like to leave it at that, they want to know if I really have, how much, etc. I find it all very tiresome.


My Coromega, potassium, and magnesium arrived today! I also went to the store and got some vitamin E. I've never taken that before; but I figured I could use the extra anti-oxidants. Especially since I struggle to eat enough produce. I like fruits; I like a very limited set of vegetables. I keep trying to like other ones -- I keep trying peas, sprouts, zucchini, squash, blah blah blah. The only vegetables I really like are broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, mushrooms, tomatoes (I know, technically fruit), green beans if barely cooked, and limited amounts of lettuce and baby spinach. I've always been a really picky eater, which is why I think I need to take a fistful of pills every morning! I'll also need to get a new bottle of multivitamins -- I didn't realize how old mine were, I thought I'd got them sometime last year but they expired in May of last year. Ack.


Made garlic parmesan chicken fingers tonight; I'd have preferred to bake them but haven't gotten my oven fixed yet, so I fried them in a bit of olive oil instead. Love those monounsaturated fats. I also used a couple of tablespoons of flour since I didn't have any almond meal which I'd usually use. Haven't made those in a very long time, forgot how delicious they were!

Too tired to write.

I just couldn't stay asleep for very long last night, so I don't feel rested. Then we were really busy at work, so I'm ready to snuggle in to my bed for the night. Thought fried chicken fingers sounded delicious tonight, but instead I had grilled. Should drink some more water first; I did a little better today, but not much.

I hope my order of vitamins comes soon; starting to get leg cramps because I've run out of potassium.

Ketosis and a jiggly pannus.

When I woke up this morning, I thought I must have been sleeping with my mouth open. I had a strange stale taste in my mouth. But it didn't go away after brushing my teeth, or even eating. It was starting to bug me. Then, while I was wandering around at work, it suddenly dawned on me: that yucky taste in my mouth is from ketosis. So that tells me two things: I'm burning fat, and I'm not drinking enough water or I wouldn't be tasting it.

Drinking enough water has been a struggle for me, mostly because of the cold. When I'm at work, I'm fine. But at home, where it's cold because I'm trying to keep my gas bill down, I don't want to be drinking ice water. And warm water hurts my teeth (weird, right? Makes drinking hot tea during a cold miserable!). So I pour myself a glass, and then it takes me a really long time to drink it. Sipping it isn't working; I might have to resort to chugging.


One of the first things I notice when I start losing weight is that my belly fat starts feeling really squishy. I generally feel softer all over. Some of it is de-bloating right at first, but I think so of it is shrinking fat cells too. It's interesting; usually my belly fat is very solid, and doesn't wiggle around when I walk. Then I get these little hollows right in front of my hip bones. And for some reason that makes my hanging fat even jigglier, I guess because there's less securing it to the fat higher up.

Had another day of not eating a whole lot; I got my protein in, and ate some carrots and kiwi because I knew I needed some produce, but I always find it difficult to eat when I'm not hungry.

I don't know how people do it; caving to the scale; vitamin E.

Yesterday, I think I ate maybe 700 calories. I just wasn't hungry. And today, I woke up feeling absolutely terrible! Not hungry; when my blood sugar is regulated, I actually rarely get hungry. I just felt ... off, like I was getting sick. I felt run down, lethargic, generally crummy. With how I was feeling, I really don't know how people can eat that way on a daily basis -- I don't know how I did it in sixth/seventh grade (I don't know what my calorie intake was, just that I was eating once a day. I probably would have progressed to full anorexia if my mother hadn't been paying attention. Anyway.). I made sure to eat a little more today, so hopefully tomorrow I'll feel better.


I dragged my scale out from under my kitchen table tonight; I guess I wanted a little reassurance. My jeans felt tighter today than they did yesterday, and because my carbs and food in general were very low I know it's not an actual gain. In fact, from a couple other physical symptoms I know I'm ovulating and that's when I start retaining water every month, so I really shouldn't have given it a second thought. But I did, and I dragged out the scale. It's the end of the day, I'm bloating, and I was wearing clothes, so I know it's not really an accurate reading--which is why I'm not updating the side bar. Still, it read 266, so at least nine pounds down in two weeks. I'm going to try not to let the curiosity get to me again for a couple more weeks.


I finally found a brand online of tocopherol/tocotrienol vitamin E, but damn is it expensive! Going to check my local vitamin store before I order it, just in case they have another brand that's not so pricey. I could get regular vitamin E, which is to say the d-alpha-tocopherol type, but it seems silly to only take half the compounds of an antioxidant.

Why low carb, and genetics.

ETA: Since Allan decided to waste god knows how much of his time reading and mis-interpreting this post, I suppose I'll clarify. I say at the beginning of this post that low-carb is the healthiest way for me. I did not say I followed it. Knowing doesn't always equal doing. That ought to be obvious to anyone who can read, when I describe what I was eating and blatantly say it was not healthy. My own fault for being unclear, I suppose. Also, I'm 29, and I was 17 and had been through Weight Watchers, calorie counting (my mother counting them for me, really, as I was 8th grade), Susan Powter's low-fat stuff, rinse and repeat, when I discovered low-carb. It works when you do. I didn't do it. I didn't say I was doing it the last 12 years. I just said I didn't pay attention to calories. God forbid.
And lean sirloin is perfectly healthy.

I've been thinking about the different weight loss plans out there, and their various levels of success. For the last twelve years, I've known that low carb is the healthiest way to go for me. Because of this, I've pretty much not bothered, ever, to count calories. It's been a bit of a shock, as I peruse diet boards, to read so much about calories.

The old mantra of "eat less, move more!" makes me want to tear my hair out. I, and my mother, and various other people I've known, are living proof of the fact that it is not always as simple as "calories in, calories out". That's not to say there're aren't people it works for -- and certainly there are fat people who eat impressive amounts of food, and when they stop, they lose weight. But I suspect that those people are genetically inclined to be thin in the first place!

If it's all as simple as the math of calories, to have maintained a weight of 275 I should have been eating at least 3000 calories a day -- and that's setting aside the face that I waitress, so I spend hours a day walking, walking, walking. Not intense exercise, but steady.

In reality, a very typical day for me was a peanut butter sandwich (two slices of whole grain/seed bread with maybe 3TBS of peanut butter) and maybe 2 cups of milk for breakfast before I went to work (815 calories). At work I'd often have an order of boneless wings -- those are 1160 calories. When I got home I might drink some more milk if I still felt hungry, but more likely I'd start drinking water and  Diet Coke. That makes my caloric intake a little under 2000 calories.

If I didn't feel like eating before work, maybe I'd have the boneless wings (1160) and a dessert (840). Then maybe when I got home I'd have my favorite quick meal, macaroni and cheese. I'd usually get the Velveeta Shells and Cheese 2% because I don't like the really thick sauce (660). That's 2600 calories.

On a day when I didn't work, I'd probably have peanut butter sandwiches and milk twice if I didn't have anything else in the house. That's 1630 calories. If I did have something else in the house, like stuff to make beef and broccoli (usually without the rice), I might hit 2500 calories.

Hedonism Bot. How droll.

If calories were all that mattered, I should have been losing a pound every couple of days, rather than staying steady. Am I saying that what I was eating was healthy? Fuuuuuck no. I'm saying that according to the math of calories, I shouldn't have gone beyond 230 pounds even at the caloric intake I was eating over the long term. And once I got above that number, I should have been dropping weight.

It didn't happen, so obviously there's more going on with my biochemistry. And I think that same something goes on with a lot of fat people, because despite the stereotype, not all fat people spend their days like Hedonism Bot. Some? Yes. Have I had my share of binges? Hell yes. But I've known a lot of fat people who have been in the same situation as me.

But wait, it's simple math! So we must be lying! We're all filthy lying fat people who secretly keep a bag of chocolate coated bacon on hand at all times. Pfffft. Anyway, that's why I do low carb instead of counting calories. When I was a teenager my mother and I both did the calories thing, and the low-fat thing, and we both went and got fatter. So much for math. We don't have a history of diabetes in the family, but I think we must have insulin resistance because low carb works like a charm for us.

My mother is a large part of the reason I came to peace with myself as I am, actually. Not because she ever felt okay with being fat; she was constantly dieting. But since she was about a size 20 most of my life, and since I do not fucking eat that much, I figured there must be a genetic basis. The rest of my mother's family never go above mildly plump, but my paternal grandmother has been on Weight Watchers as long as I can remember, and my dad's sister as well.

How strong is that genetic basis toward being a fatass? I don't really know. My mom actually starved about a hundred pounds off a few years ago -- literally, as she couldn't afford food and wasn't telling anyone how desperate her situation was. Now that she can eat, she's at about a size 10 -- very slightly plump, which she hates and it always bemoaning. So, despite my very strong views that I don't have to change because I'm perfectly healthy and anyone who doesn't like me because of my weight can take a long fuck off a short pier .... I am curious. We'll see how long the curiosity lasts.

Someone at work was having boneless wings for dinner tonight, and the smell got to me. I had two of hers; and I admit I rolled the 60-carbs-per-order around in my head for a while, because I seriously love them. I could happily eat them every day. In the end, I had steak and vegetables. I didn't even have any of the English toffee my boss offered me, and then left on the counter for everyone to scarf. I can't really attribute that to willpower though -- I grind my teeth in my sleep and they were sore today, I knew a bite of that would cause intense molar pain.

So my food for today was an EAS low-carb shake because I didn't have time for breakfast, two boneless wings, a small lettuce/tomato/cucumber/ranch salad, a 7 ounce steak with asiago cheese, and a cup of steamed broccoli and carrots.

Need to remember to get some Vitamin E ... why in the fuck is it so difficult to find natural vitamin E with a tocopherol/tocotrienol mix?

Jumping the gun.

I still haven't gone near the scale, but after discovering that my work shirt can go over my head, I pulled out another shirt of mine. It's a lovely lavender button-up, which is a great color for me; it has quite flattering seaming. The last time I tried to wear it, my stomach pushed at the buttons, the shoulders were uncomfortably tight, and the arms were torturous. Tonight, even though I shouldn't have tried it because I haven't been at this long, I pulled it out. It's not entirely comfortable; still a little tight across the tummy. The shoulders fit again; the arms fit, although barely.

In this case, it didn't do any harm to try on an old piece of clothing. It was encouraging. But I remember other times, in the past, when I would pull out an old shirt or something and feel totally despondent because it didn't fit. I'm hoping to be able to avoid that this time; after several years of working on my mental and emotional responses to clothing and fat, I think I'll be able to. Now if something doesn't fit, I'm able to say the clothing is the wrong size for me, rather than I'm the wrong size for the clothing. So hopefully if I get this urge to pull out some item later on and it's still uncomfortable, I won't throw end up on that emotional downslide that was so familiar in years past.

I've just ordered some Coromega; I know that omega-3 fats as very important, but I honestly cannot stand fish. I eat salmon maybe twice a year, and shrimp once. I keep trying to like the nasty stuff, and it just doesn't work for me. So, I'll pay $25 for a three month supply of orange pudding-y omega-3 supplement. It's supposed to help with insulin sensitivity among other things. I also ordered a bottle of potassium, as moisture got in mine and ruined it. And, after reading that magnesium oxide isn't a very absorptive chelate form, I ordered a new bottle with a better form.

I've re-read my "diet bible", so to speak, and there's an entire chapter in these on magnesium. I know if I forget to take my extra Mg for too long, I start getting migraines again. I also know it has a lot of uses in the body, including nerve transmission. What I had forgotten, or never noticed on previous reads, was that magnesium may help with chronic fatigue syndrome (that's an older study, just an example). I don't know that I have chronic fatigue; I've never been diagnosed with it. The times I've brought it up with a doctor, I've been told to lose weight. And I can practically hear people all across the world agreeing with that.

The thing is, my lack of energy started at a very particular point in time. I contracted mono in late 2000, and since then I have functioned in a state of constant tiredness. I was fat long before that; when I lost a significant amount of weight after that, it didn't help. I'm sure losing weight wouldn't hurt, but I really believe that something was damaged by that damned virus. But try getting a doctor to see past your weight! The first one I mentioned it to told me I must be diabetic; nope. Then it must be my thyroid; nope. Then I must have sleep apnea! Oh wait, except I don't! Anemia? Nope. And no, none of those are self-dismissed conditions, I had the medical tests.

(I had a doctor tell me once that the reason I couldn't breathe through my nose was because of my weight. If I thought he would remember me, I would take my CT scan and allergy test results and shake them in his stupid face -- turns out I'm allergic to 70/72 allergens I was tested for, and I had a deviated septum, a narrowed nasal passage [leading to my nostrils collapsing and blocking airflow], grossly enlarged turbinate bones, and a formation called a concha bullosa in the right side of my sinus. That surgery was the best thing I ever did for myself!)

Anyway. I'm going to try the magnesium and see if it helps. I no longer have insurance so I can't get an intracellular magnesium concentration test to confirm, so we'll just have to see how it goes. It would be really nice to feel like sleeping actually did anything for me.

I take it back!

My jeans that I wrote about a few days ago, that were uncomfortable, fit fine now. Thank god, since I don't like the Lane Bryant Right Fit jeans, my old pair developed a hole along the zipper seam, and the nearest LB outlet that carries the old style is an hour away. And I've not found jeans that are comfortable and look good in my size anywhere else.

My work shirt is a button-up, and I can now pull it on and off over my head without undoing the buttons. That's particularly handy at the moment, since my shirt lost a button and the replacement buttons I bought are slightly larger, so it takes a while to force them through the buttonholes!

Beef and boobs.

I rarely properly cook at home -- pretty much only on my days off, actually. The other days I have snacks/odd composition meals (cashews, cheese, and baby carrots; sliced turkey, milk, and kiwi; etc.) and then have steak or chicken or whatever at work after my shift. But today was a day off (thank GOD), so I got in my grannymobile and slipped and slid to the store, where I wandered the aisles of cellophaned meats trying to decide what to have for dinner.

I was nearly derailed at one point -- the meat department is next to the bakery, and I saw croissants. Fuck me, do I love croissants. Had the bakery been open, I probably would have bought one, because one wouldn't have been a problem carb-wise. But it was after 9:30, so the only available flaky goodness came in batches of five. And I know without a doubt I'd have eaten them all within the next twelve hours. They're just a trigger food for me. So I walked away and went in search of bloody, dripping meat.

(Sidenote: Someday I'm going to bake my own croissants. They're a massive pain in the ass, but I like a baking challenge.)

I ended up getting these awesome 3/4 pound packages of very thinly sliced "sandwich steak" for $2.50 each -- I love the clearance meat bin. I fried one of the packages up in olive oil, cooked some LC Dreamfields penne (great stuff!), and coated it all in roasted garlic alfredo sauce and parmesan. Delicious!

ETA: Since Allan decided to make a post specifically about my dinner, I thought I'd clarify that when I said "all" I was being figurative. I was not literally saying I had 3/4 of  pound of meat for dinner -- I mentioned the size of the package only because it was a good deal. Even if I did eat all of it, that's 450 calories because that was the raw weight. Oh holy Jesus, I'm going to explode and start destroying cities with my fatz.

One thing that drives me crazy about weight loss (or gain) is how little it takes to change my bra size. I always seem to lose or gain inches around my ribcage first, and it takes less than ten pounds to alter my bra size. I spent today hitching my tits back into my favorite bra, which I think I'm going to have to pack away because the girls are falling out the bottom. Right now that's not such a big deal, since I have a stockpile of bras from my days working at LB (last count was 19!).

This one is a 42D; I have in my collection 42DD (in a certain style that runs small), 40DD and 40D bras. Below that, I'll have to start buying new ones. That ought to be interesting. I haven't been below a 40D in .... well, I don't actually know since I wasn't properly fitted until I worked at LB. But I'm sure it's been a long time. I'm not sure how my actual breast tissue will respond to weight loss either; the one time I dipped below 200 pounds I don't think that I lost any size. But I don't really remember, but I hope that's correct. I'm vain enough to want to keep my meat balloons.

On loss being noticed.

After three years of knowing me, my friends at work can't help but notice my eating has changed drastically. They can hardly fail to notice the lack of boneless hot wings and the replacement of carrots for chips with my spinach dip. But I haven't told anyone I'm dieting. What I've said is that I'm cutting out wheat to see if it helps my allergies. Which isn't a total untruth; I may have a wheat sensitivity. But I just don't want to go into the diet thing.

For one thing, they've all heard my spiels about being fine the way I am -- not because I walk around looking for ways to bring it up, but from the kinds of conversations that come up in three years of association. (Usually it's got something to do with my use of the very word fat: "Excuse me .... c'mon, I'm a fat girl, I can't fit through there!" "You're not fat! Don't talk about yourself that way!" "HAHAHA! I weigh 275 pounds, I'm fat. It's just a fact." etc.) So to start talking about dieting, well, that's going to come across as hypocritical. I don't feel hypocritical, because I know my reasons; but I just don't want to try to explain it all.

I also don't want to get sucked into the conversational quagmire that is "diet talk". You know, the conversations that go in endless circles about calories or fat grams or carbs and "good" days or "bad days" or "cheating" or whatever ... women use it as a bonding mechanism, but I really don't want to do that. It's not my actual friends I'm talking about here, but coworkers in general. I also don't want to know what Cindy Lou thought was the greatest weight-loss trick in the book, because after my many diets in the past I've heard them all -- and so many of them seem to skirt that eating disordered line.

Of course, if it goes on for any length of time, change will occur, and people will notice. I'm hoping it'll be slow enough that people won't start asking questions. At my size, small losses aren't very noticeable, so this ought to be doable. If necessary, I'll continue wearing my larger clothes longer than necessary to mask it. Because I fucking hate that "have you lost weight?" question! I hate it!

For one thing, it's so often paired with "you look great!" Implying that "looking great" can only be a function of weight loss chaps my ample ass. Also, it's nobody else's business if I'm losing weight. This is my personal skin, and what goes on under it doesn't involve anyone I don't choose to involve. Also, there's the fact that people, or more specifically women, feel the need to keep talking about it! If they'd just say "Have you lost weight? Yes? Okay." that would be one thing.

But instead it's more of the conversational quagmire -- have you lost weight? that's so great! I'm so fat! I need to lose weight too! how much have you lost? how long did it take? what are you doing? oh I tried that once and it worked/didn't work/made me sprout tentacles out of my ears. My aunt's cousin's sister's roommate lost like 200 pounds though and she looks great but it was just so hard and I thought that Weight Watchers would be better so I signed up for that but the points thing is really confusing and I have this book but what if something isn't listed or what if it's wrong like I had cheese enchilladas yesterday and they were in the book but what if this place's recipe was different how do I really know how many points it is and then I got on the scale today and it said I only lost a half a pound and I was SO GOOD yesterday so there must have been something in those enchilladas because everything else was perfect and it just upsets me so much and I know my Weight Watchers coach said to only weigh myself once a week but it's just so hard and I want to know what to expect when I go to the meeting because I don't want to start crying in front of everyone especially the women who've got those neat pins because they've actually KEPT it off and I just don't know how they do it it's so hard but they're just so inspirational and I want that to be me one day because you know my mother/father/some relative died of heart disease/diabetes/falling on a bear trap and of course you know that happened because he/she was so fat and I just don't want MY children growing up thinking it's okay to be so gross and fat like I am I just can't believe I let myself end up here!!11!!

You know I'm only partially exaggerating! And honestly it's just boring to me. So I try to avoid it. That's not to say there aren't constructive, quality conversations; I wouldn't even bother to look at any WL blogs if there weren't. But the average conversation about weight loss? Please.

So, here's hoping I can hide it and keep appearing fatter than I am! Not often you hear that, huh?

I was able to wear my one-size-down jeans, the 22s, to work today. They're not truly comfortable, like I said yesterday; when I sit down I still feel a little like my guts are being squashed up in to my ribcage -- but they're fine as long as I'm standing up, so they were great for work.

To journal? To weigh?

Every diet plan ever tells you to measure your food, keep a food diary, and watch the numbers carefully. I've done that in the past; usually I use DietPower, which I think is an excellent program. However, after a couple of days of careful tracking, I start to be obsessive. I start fiddling with nutrition graphs, watching the weight graph incessantly, and generally I become neurotic about it. It occupies all my thinking.

This time, I haven't been keeping a record of anything. After years of various stages of low-carb eating, I know roughly what the carb content of the things I eat are. I know if I eat an ounce of cheese and have two cups of milk for breakfast, and then have chicken salad on romaine for lunch, and finish my day with lunch meat, cheese, and mayonnaise (today's food), the only appreciable carb amount was in the milk. If I have a kiwi or some baby carrots with dinner, I know there's a little more there. The exact number isn't really important to me.

Conversely, last week when my father wanted to go to our favorite Chinese restaurant and I had pan-fried dumplings and cheese wontons, I knew I was over my target. So there's no point to knowing the exact amount; it didn't really matter. What was important was that my next meal was the appropriate composition, and the next, and the next.

After my intial weighing, I also shoved my scale into the back corner under my kitchen table where I just won't see it often. No matter how I try to tell myself that daily numbers aren't important, only long-term trends, etc., that stupid number still upsets me whenever I make a weight-loss attempt. If it's higher by a pound, it's depressing. If it's lower, it's not low enough. For whatever reason, I'm not able to frequently weigh myself without edging closer to those disordered eating tendencies I've run in to before. So I'm just not going to do it. Oh, at some point my curiosity will get the best of me and I'll jump on the damned thing. But until that point, I'm not going to track it. I know where I started; hopefully I won't know exactly where I am weight-wise for a long time. I am going to take pictures, but not post them -- without comparison photos it seems like pointless voyeurism!

So this time I haven't been doing any tracking of anything. I may later, if I find myself often making choices that don't fit with the plan or if I find I'm not getting results. But so far, this approach is working. My size smaller jeans aren't comfortable enough yet to wear, but at least I don't have to lie down to button them anymore. The weird feeling of fullness is also a little less, but that may be due to simple water loss. We'll see.

Getting to this point.

After realizing that being fat isn't the be-all-and-end-all of life, I lived quite happily for several years. It took some time to get rid of the morality I'd attached to food -- good food, bad food, "being good", etc. -- and I did that basically by eating, for about three years, whatever I wanted whenever I wanted it. And I actually didn't gain much weight at all, I hovered right around 255.

It was a really good time for me mentally; I needed it. The story I've written in my last three posts is by no means complete; I flirted with eating disorders more than once, but that's a separate story. So for me to stop having stupid responses to food, comfort binging and then reflexive dieting, etc., took a long time. I'm still not 100% sure I can follow any sort of particular diet without sliding back in to a very unhealthy mindset.

So why am I even doing this? Well ... I don't entirely know. For the last year or so I've had occasional diet urges, but couldn't be bothered, quite honestly. No matter what diet you follow, it takes a lot of effort. Add to that the fact that I don't think I'll even have a significant long-lasting impact on my weight, and it seemed pointless. It still does.

But honestly, it'd be nice to be able to wear my fun clothes again. In the last six months my body apparently got sick of its set point and I jumped up to about 275 pounds. I basically have nothing to wear except one pair of jeans and a handful of casual shirts. I could go buy new things -- if I had any money, but I really don't. I spent it all on a dream vacation in November! It wouldn't take much weight loss to be able to wear my favorite clothes again, so we'll see how I do.

Also, the last couple of months, I wake up feeling like my entire abdomen is bruised. I also have a strange .... full feeling a lot of the time, like a combination of overeating, constipation, and a pre-period swollen uterus. (How's that for a mental image!) I'm not 100% sure, but I suspect that my body has finally begun packing fat into my abdominal cavity rather than "around the edges" so to speak. It's kind of uncomfortable! The fat around the edges is also making it a little difficult to get comfortable enough to sleep, something that didn't happen a few months ago.

And I'll admit that there's a part of me that still wants to be "skinny". Just to see what it feels like, I guess. Will it ever happen? I don't know. But if I can at least wear my clothes again, that's a start. We'll go from there.

Getting better.

When I was 24, I weighed 250 pounds (ish), and wore a size 22 jeans. Well, I started out the year wearing a 24 or 26, usually from WalMart, with the ends chopped off because they were too long. I also wore huge baggy t-shirts. I had a few nicer tops, and maybe one pair of slacks; I knew of Lane Bryant, and shopped them sometimes, but didn't wear most of my nicer clothes. I was fat and gross, what did it matter?

In June of that year, a string of random events lead to me getting a job as a keyholder at a Lane Bryant. And there, something amazing happened. I met women who were fat, but who didn't cower in their houses, ashamed. They had lives. They had husband, boyfriends, sex. They had friends, and jobs they loved, and activities they enjoyed. They had fun. And they didn't hate themselves, complain constantly about how fat and gross they were, and they didn't diet constantly. I had never encountered such a thing. I was amazed.

It was an incredible awakening. For the first time in my life, I came out of my shell. I started to think I had worth now, not -100 pounds from now. I started talking to people -- to the point where I never shut up now.  I stopped dieting. I went out. I had friends. God, I had fun. I spent a huge portion of my wages from LB right there in the store, buying a plethora of awesome new clothes -- $3000 worth. And I had a 40% discount! Suddenly, I started to see my body as it really was, instead of the blimp-like proportions I imagined. I stopped dieting and started getting really irritated when my family members gave me well-intentioned grief about my weight. For the first time in my life, I was happy.

Sometime later, I stumbled across Shapely Prose and other fat-acceptance websites. I had stumbled half-way into fat acceptance without even realizing it. The more I read, the more irritated at our society's weight obsession I became. The more I started to see examples of how fat is vilified, how fat people are mistreated, and how women especially are treated by a society that implies they should be invisible (the thinner the better) unless they're extremely sexualized. I won't go in to more; the reading is all out there for anyone. I got in to arguments with people sometimes -- at work once, a male coworker "jokingly" told a female coworker that dessert was going to go straight to her thighs. I got right in his face. It was a good time.

But basically, I stopped believing that being fat was a moral failing and that it doomed me to die of a heart attack at 30. And I was happy.

To be continued.

The dark days.

I've been fat my entire life, except maybe when I was really little. Actually, I remember at five years old running in to the house, very excited to show my mom that my tummy was flat. At five years old. How sick is that?

I was really only chubby until high school, but I felt like I was the whaliest whale in the universe. When I look at pictures of myself at 14 now, I'm disgusted. I don't know what size I was, but I know I was not fat. But because I grew hips and tits before most of the other girls, I was teased mercilessly for being a lardass.

In high school it got better, honestly; but by then the damage (by other kids, by my well-meaning but slightly moronic father, and by my desperately dieting mother) was already done. I hated myself; I hated everything about my body. I thought I was fat and useless and that nobody would ever love me, let alone physically want me. Basically, I was miserable.

I dieted off and on, but always gained the weight back. My biggest "success" was getting back to a size 14 once when I was .... 21, maybe? But then I stopped dieting and regained all the weight within a month. That was the last time I really stuck to it and lost an significant amount of weight. After that, I mostly just gave up and was fat and miserable. I felt like my skin was slick and oily and repulsive; I felt like I waddled; I felt like everyone who looked at me instinctively hated me.


To be continued ....