I hate salad.

But I ate it. *grumble* All I wanted after work tonight was an order of boneless hot wings, but I restrained myself and had a steak caesar salad. No croutons. Booooooorrrrriiiiinnnngg.

But I know I'll feel better about it tomorrow.

Company came, and they brought sugar.

My biggest weapon in the fight against eating shitty food is simple avoidance. If I don't go places where it is, if I don't buy it, it won't bother me. My second strategy is simple obsession. I have to obsess and think about not eating things constantly, because otherwise I honest to god forget I'm not supposed to have any chips and salsa that are just sitting out for us at work and I start munching them without a second thought.

Well, both those went right out my window when my cousins showed up to stay for a couple of days. The combination of just enjoying hanging around them and having a good time, and of them being all "hey! let's go get ice cream! Let's make beef stroganoff for dinner!" and me being all "Whatever you want!" because I can never say no to them ... well, it ended in another two days of poor eating.

But they left today, and I took the extra junk food to work tonight, so my house is a safe zone again. Of course, I'm supposed to go to their house for a couple of days next week and they live on like 90% carbs, so .... that's a problem for next week. I need to keep that problem, to whatever extent it manifests, to those two days I'm at their house, rather than falling in to the "oh, I'm just going to eat crap on Tuesday, I might as well eat junk until then anyway!" trap. Yes. *resolve*

Pouty entitlement.

My schedule is screwy as always, so I went to bed at nine this morning and got up at four in the afternoon. So I haven't eaten yet, partially because I'm fighting with myself. My mood today is very spoiled child-like; I feel like dammmit, I DESERVE chocolate, or ice cream, or whatever the hell else I want. That extends to non-food things too. Basically I'm stomping around my house pouting like a five year old. I know it's stupid. I know if I order up a pizza, or go buy ice cream, or whatever, that I'll regret it. I just have to try to keep that in mind.

ETA: Realized my feelings were probably largely motivated by not having eaten anything in 20 hours. Drank some milk as a quick fix and already feel better! So silly.

I ate properly today.

But it sure made me cranky.

Also a few days ago would normally have been my weigh-in day, but I've lost my damn scale! When I did a major kitchen re-arrange last month I stuck it somewhere, and I cannot figure out where that somewhere is. I live in a two bedroom duplex so there aren't many places it could be ... so I guess I put it somewhere REALLY safe!

Pwned by cake.

A few posts ago, I was talking about not letting my baking projects derail me. I had two this week, one a cake I'm actually being paid for (no fucking way!) and the other for my grandmother.

The first one was no problem. It was a new recipe, so I did have a bite of the extra layer that fell apart. Not a problem. The second ... the second was a super, super chocolatey cake, because that's what my grandmother loves (All told that thing has 1 pound 3 ounces of chocolate, plus the equivalent of 8 more tablespoons' worth in cocoa.). I'd made it before, but I made a couple of adjustments to the recipe so I again tried a bite of what I shaved off the top to shape it.

I should have just trusted it was good, because that one taste of chocolate sent me totally over the goddamn edge. The last two days, I was possessed by the god of cake. All I could think was cake, cake, chocolate, cake and chocolate, chocolate and cake ... and that spawned cravings for even worse things. At least chocolate has antioxidants. There's no redeeming value to french fries.

I'm not sure why the first cake didn't unseat me but the chocolate did. Guess I'l have to rely on others to be my chocolate testers from now on, because I clearly cannot be trusted.

Predictable.

Yesterday went about like I thought it would (half good, half bad), but today was another thing entirely. My damn period decided to start early, which in retrospect I should have seen coming. The first couple of days are so uncomfortable, especially when I have to move around, that I just don't want to eat or even drink anything. It was half-past midnight before I ate today, because I felt so nauseated and unwell before work, and then trotting around doing my job felt like my innards were bruised and being shaken.

Predictably, when I got done with work and the gross feeling started to pass a little, I was so ravenous and unstable from blood sugar swings that I gorged on french fries and bread. I should have forced myself to eat earlier, but I thought I could handle it. Instead I self-justified right into fast food. Dammit.

Well, that went badly.

I had good intentions, but my grandma kept handing me biscuits and shoving key lime pie at me. And while it would of course have been better for me not to eat them, I just couldn't deal with The Diet Talk that would explode if I showed even the slightest regard for what I was stuffing in my piehole. She's always looking for any excuse to try to give me diet "tips". If I say I had fruit from breakfast she launches in to how it's so good for your weight and so low calorie and I have to be all "Oh, it was just all I had" so she'll shut up.

I don't know why it freaks me out so much for people I know, especially family, to know I'm trying to lose weight/start with the diet talk. But it always happens, and since I still can't figure out what about it sends me of a scared, angry sugar binge, I'm trying to second coping mechanism: I just ate the biscuits (although not the third one she tried to feed me after she'd already ordered dessert!) and the pie, and I did enjoy them. But tonight's dinner was perfectly back on track, without even a second thought about it.

Of course, tomorrow I have dinner with my father and his horrible girlfriend, and god knows what she's making. So I might get to do it all over again tomorrow -- because as bad as my grandmother is, my dad is even worse because his "encouragement" always comes across as more "finally you're going to do something so you're not embarrassing to be seen with". Even though he's never, ever said that to me -- but his attempts to motivate me always have this undertone of relief on his part, and it just gets tiring.

Ugh. Families! They scar us all in different ways I guess!

Tomorrow comes the challenge.

Every six weeks, I take my grandmother to get her hair done. We always go to lunch, usually to Red Lobster. It doesn't matter where we go; everywhere there's going to be things that are full of carbs. So I already know that tomorrow I'll end up weighing my options against my desire to appear to be dieting to my grandmother, who will then start "helpfully" telling me about Weight Watchers and how she's so proud of me and assorted other stuff that will lead to me having one of my meltdowns. Fuck.

Ready to climb the walls.

Everything today seemed like it was just a little harder than it should have been. I hit every red light, there was never any ice in the bin, little things like that. I was super cranky all night, and I let it affect my food choices. I had a few boneless wings, and I also had a little bit of cake -- I'm getting paid for a cake this weekend so I was experimenting with fondant last night, so I took another cake in to work. I did need to have a bite, because it was a new recipe and I can't trust my friends to tell me if it sucked. But I didn't need to have the entire inch-wide wedge.

Still, neither of those are enough to do any harm. I can tell because they didn't trigger any more sugar cravings -- and that cake sat in plain view all night and I didn't have any more -- and I didn't feel funny like I do if I have too much sugar. Those choices probably didn't help me accomplish any goals, but at the least they didn't hurt.

I'm still super irritated with the entire universe though!

Sugar cravings hit hard today.

All I wanted to do after work tonight was hoover an entire gallon of ice cream. I'd had chicken and vegetables at work like a responsible person, and I managed to make it through the grocery store with succumbing to the lure of chocolate or cookies. But I wanted it so bad I could already take the sugar on my tongue. So annoying.

Two down, infinity to go.

The last two days of eating properly haven't even been that difficult. I need to not get ahead of myself, I do that a lot. I'll start thinking too hard about how long I have to be 'good' in order to achieve x, y, or z, and it feels impossible. For now, I need to just focus on day by day, rather than any sort of big picture.

I'm actually sort of ashamed at myself for even falling into the "must lose tons of weight" mindset again. I keep slipping in to it, and I know exactly why: a guy. But said guy has never given me any indication of interest, and really there's no reason to think that any amount of weight loss would change that. We've known each other for more than a year now, so if he was going to like me that way, he would already. I guess it's just a triggering issue for me. So I have to constantly fight myself to NOT think "I need to lose 100 pounds" every time I consider what I'm eating. It really accomplishes nothing but bumming me out!

I'm baaaaaack!

Oh thank god, I finally have a computer again! The last couple of months have been, well, pretty hellish without it. I'm a total Internet junkie, so only having access at the library was killing me!

The bad news is that the last month I have gone completely insane with my eating. God knows how much damage to my progress I've done. I could spend ages justifying why I just ate two entire thin crust pizzas, and why yesterday I ate nothing except an absolutely giant bowl of alfredo and regular noodles, but the fact is I just need to stop. There's probably been a different trigger for every damn day (except the two I ate properly!), and instead of trying to work on whatever imaginary big issue I have, I need to come to grips with the individual daily challenges.

As of right now, there is nothing in my house for me to eat that is not reasonable and within my plan. Okay, except for the cake I made, but I'm covering that in fondant and taking it to work tomorrow so I won't be eating it. The challenge will be that at work I can order whatever the hell I want. And also that aforementioned cake will be sliced open and taunting me with its marbly, chocolate buttercream-y goodness. But I need to get used to that. If I'm going to be a semi-professional baker, I need to not let the things I bake have such sway over me.

THAT will be a continuing challenge for sure.