The ice cream is calling me ....

(Huge rambling post ahead.)

I was moving things around in the freezer trying to make room for a bag of ice, and I found a flavor of ice cream that I actually looooove. Dammit. I'll admit, I grabbed a spoon and had one delicious bite of toffee cookie and fudge peace sign wrapped in creamy goodness before I stuffed it back in the freezer. But now I know it's there.

Not that I'm at all hungry, which means it would be even more pointless to eat it. I'm just depressed about the boy, and my period is about to start, and I'm sort of bored. None of those are good enough reason to eat it, of course. I brushed my teeth and started drinking diet Orange Crush soda to get the taste out of my mouth and try to forget about it.

I've also been doing my daily blog reading. It never ceases to amaze me how many different ideas there are out there about proper nutrition and proper "dieting." I hate that word. Anyway, it's just incredible how many plans are out there. And of course I'm not going to try to debate what's "wrong" or "right" or anything; to each his/her own. It's just funny to me that something that probably 50% of the western world is actively trying to do or thinking about doing (losing weight) has no hard and fast answers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, calories in/calories out, except the body isn't a closed and simple system and some people process different foods with different degrees of tolerance. It's just interesting, is all.

There are a lot of great inspirational blogs out there, and then some that I can't even stand to read because they're so whiny. Which probably sounds rich coming from me, with all my bitching about the boy, but I mean more "pity me because I'm so fat and it's so hard" whining. I have no sympathy for anybody fat -- because I don't think they fucking need it. If they let their size interfere with their lives, then that sucks for them, but unless they have an actual physical ailment that prevents them from walking or something, there's no reason for it. Yeah, society discriminates, it can be hard to find nice clothes, etc. But none of that should stop you from living!

One thing that's been bugging me lately when a blogger that berates another blogger for something and then goes and does the exact same thing. You can't be ragging on other people about how the idea of cheat days or carb cycling or taking a week off exercise or whatever is bullshit - and then post about doing the exact same thing! "You haven't lost enough weight by my standards to stop exercising for a week! By the way I'm taking a week off from my workout routine for reason X." or "I'm not a doctor and I don't know everything but what I'm doing is the only thing that works. Deal with it or you'll die a horrible disease-ridden death." Some people like that I do continue to read because they often have something funny or interesting to say, but that particular sort of thing gets under my skin.

None of any of that is important, of course. I'm just typing away to distract myself from ice cream. I'm also eating a peach. I dare.

I'm supposed to weigh myself on Sunday; it's That Day Of The Month. Unfortunately, it's also That Time Of The Month, so I may wait a couple of days to let the extra accumulated water weight go and let the intestinal issues settle. Sometimes that kind of stuff adds about five pounds to my weight, and at my first weigh-in I'd rather not see any higher of a number than I have to, thankyouverymuch. I'm pretty curious as to what the number will be, not that I'll be asking my scale-photo-keeping friend for it. I just want to know what the difference is. I'm not ready yet to know just how heavy a lardass I was/am, in numerical terms. It might not upset me, or it might completely unhinge me. So better to just let it slide for now, find out what the progress is, and at some point in the future I'll actually ask what my starting weight was.

Of course, I do like to fiddle with charts and graphs. I've already got a spreadsheet set up to track these things. At first I was going to just put in the number of pounds' worth of change every month, but then I decided that at the end it might be nice to have a chart that showed the actual values as they decreased. So I thought about putting in an estimate; I know I wasn't over 300, so at first I just plugged that in as a placeholder. But then I realized that means that every time I put in a weight change, I'm going to be associating it with a specific total weight which would be incorrect. So instead what I did was put in a ridiculous, huge number. I know I don't really weigh 1023435425 pounds. It's just a number to stick in for now, a number that means I won't be berating myself for being at a certain weight, and one that won't stick in my mind. Then, once I finally do ask my friend what my starting weight was, all I have to do is replace that number and the rest of the spreadsheet will adjust accordingly. I think it'll work well.

I'm trying to look at this week at my aunt's house as a sort of vacation. That would probably be easier if I hadn't been on "vacation" since the last day I worked, which was July 3rd. And it's not a vacation foodwise. But I'm trying to use the time away from my house to reset my moping, mourning, lovesick mind if possible. So far I haven't had much success and in fact spend a big chunk of today crying. Maybe if I'd been working I wouldn't have felt so terrible. Of course, I felt pretty awful when I was working, I was just too tired all the time to really feel it. An hour drive to work, eight hours on the phone dealing with jerkfaces, an hour lunch, an hour home (if I didn't have to stop anywhere) ... it was just too mentally fatiguing to process anything else.

And come Monday I'll be starting another hideous fucking call center job. I keep telling myself it's just for now, it won't be forever, it's just until I get my claws into something better. I was hoping that something better had been found, and I haven't gotten a yes or no yet on the job I want. But honestly, that's just not how my life works. There are people who breeze into great jobs, people who happen to meet their perfect person at the perfect time and fall in love, people who have things easy. And of course there are people who lose everything in house fires, their spouses leave them, their kids are in jail, all sorts of awful things. I'm neither; I'm in the middle. I do okay, but nothing ever falls in to my lap. I get the occasional break, but it seems on the occasions where the universe does throw me a bone everything gets fucked up in fairly short order. That's just life, I guess, and I'm not saying mine is horrible. I'm not saying anyone should feel sorry for me, or that I even feel sorry for myself (except about the boy). It's just the pattern of my life for the most part so I try to be realistic about it. Then again, I did once stumble and fall face-first into the most awesome and fun job I've ever had. And the company shut us down a year later. But it was a good year!

Woke up empty.

I'm curiously numb today. Not sad about the lack of response to a pathetic text sent in the middle of the night. Not happy about ... whatever. Not angry about anything. I am full of nothing. And a pizza made on a low carb tortilla, and a bunch of water. And some cantaloupe.

Hey look, numb has been replaced by miserable. I think I spoke too soon yesterday about not binging because I knew it wouldn't help, because right now the idea of hopping in the car and scooting through McDonald's for chicken nuggets, french fries, and a chocolate-dipped cone sounds like the best thing ever. What will it solve? Nothing. Will it make me feel better? No. Why do it? I don't know exactly. It just sounds like a really good idea right now. I've been trying to distract myself from feeling rotten with tv, books, games, Facebook, texting friends (tried to get someone to go out with me but nobody wanted to), and just general stuff but it isn't happening.

I keep feeling my fat, reminding myself that it's more squishy than it used to be, and that there's a little bit of a hollow in front of my hips, which is the first place I ever show any weight loss. Also, the right straps on my biggest bras keep slipping down, which means I've lost a little weight around my ribcage too. I don't really feel anything about this any of it, though. I don't get any satisfaction or excitement from it. No sense of pride or anything. It makes it hard to stay motivated, or even not actively unmotivated, which is probably a more accurate description of how I am anyway.

I cooked dinner at home; in fact I haven't left my house today. It wasn't as relaxing as it sounds though because, y'know, I'm crazy.

Well, that went okay.

I didn't clarify in my previous post that my dad only tends to analyze my food and bug me about my weight if he notices I'm not eating "normally." Other than that he'll make an occasional comment but has learned to basically shut the hell up because I refuse to talk about it. But if he smells dieting ... it's on.

Anyway, it wasn't bad. For dinner he made a big bison burger patty with gouda cheese and we shared it. He also made corn on the cob, and had some leftover carrots and potatoes he'd cooked with a pot roast, and some cheese-filled garlic breadsticks. Here's what's interesting about my dad: he's concerned about my weight, and yet he piles food on me. I said I wanted one potato; he put two on my plate. I said I didn't want any carrots (I don't like them cooked), he tried really hard to get me to eat some. Then he decided to make the corn too. Then he offered me the breadsticks, and I said I had plenty. But he plopped on one my plate anyway! And keep in mind we each had a half a pound of freaking buffalo too! I scarfed the buffalo burger - was delicious - ate the corn, and gave the rest to the dog.

Breakfast wasn't an issue, I'm never hungry when I wake up. I had a glass of milk, and we headed out. We had lunch at a restaurant, and chicken and salad didn't raise any eyebrows. For dinner he made steak and baked potatoes, and I ate some of the small potato. I was tempted by the white cheddar Cheez-Its. And his bowl of mini candy bars. And the ice cream. But I didn't have any of it.

Of course, on my way home I got all weepy and upset and nearly engaged in some emotional eating. The only thing that stopped me from making a pit stop at Perkins for my favorite kind of pie was that I'd been crying for an hour and knew I looked like hell. Oh, I know eating won't solve anything. I know it won't create a magical answer to my text messages and make my unrequited love .... requited. I still want to order up some subs or go for tacos or something, because I'm sad and nothing is making me feel better. Of course, I know that in the end food won't either. I'm just sad and feeling hopeless. I hate that I feel like this because of a man. I keep waiting for it to pass, to not feel like my life will never be complete again without him. It's pissing me off.

Anyway, it's two in the morning and I haven't gone crazy on carbs yet. I'm truthfully not sure how I've managed the last few weeks. I don't really have any concrete reason for wanting to lose weight -- other than so some more of my clothes fit. I feel like I'm largely stumbling along in a state of numbness when it comes to my eating, and I sort of wonder what will happen when that wears off. If that makes any sense.

My damn ankles hurt.

I think I'll be taking those shoes I wore yesterday to Goodwill. They're normally really expensive running shoes, but I got them for $10 at Ross. I got them because they were silver, white, and purple and I thought they were really cute, but ouch. Of course, some of it may also be due to the fact that I haven't done any activity in a long time, and the last time I did I didn't weigh as much. My eating didn't change but damn did that desk job have an effect. Which I knew it would, but then I got swamped under my the things going on in my life and I just couldn't care.

Anyway, hat's the only side effect of last night's exercise I'm feeling. A friend asked me how I felt today, like I was supposed to be all energized or something I guess. And I know for some people exercise releases endorphins that make them feel good, less depressed, etc. They just make me cranky that I'm sweaty and hot and feel like my entire head is pulsing. Oh well!

At least so far today I'm not having any cravings. Cravings require thought or desires, I think, and I feel totally empty of either today. I've got four hours before my date gets here and I have a bunch of stuff to do around the house -- probably only an hour or so, but it seems absolutely insurmountable, possibly because I just don't feel excited about him coming over. I don't feel much of anything about it. It's not really even a date; he'd just be a source of sex. And it is so not like me to be hesitating about that. Joys of depression/heartbrokenness I guess. The thing that pisses me off is that for a while, I was doing pretty okay. Then one of my best friends got engaged and it's like a dam of jealous misery cracked open in my head. Gotta run out eventually though.

Had leftover LC mac and cheese with chicken for breakfast; a glass of milk and a peach for a snack. Realized I don't say nearly as much about food as a lot of bloggers do, but that's really on purpose. Part of me wants to write everything down and weigh and measure and track it just for curiosity's sake, and because I'm the type who likes to look at charts and graphs. Maybe I'd lose weight more quickly if I went there, but I know that obsession lies that way, and with obsession comes a lot of mentally unhealthy things that I know will just cause me more problems in the end. Besides, what am I going to care about more when I look back at my blog in a year, or even a week: what was going through my head, or how many baby carrots I ate?

I did some cleaning - my house looks pretty good right now -- and was feeling a little more optimistic about the guy coming over. Then, about thirty seconds before he got here, I saw a piece of paper under my DVD player and wondered what it was. I pulled it out and found it was a receipt from when I went to the grocery story to get supplies to cook dinner for my ex the first time he came over. Really just fucking excellent timing, that. Now that the guy has left after an awkward hour or so, I feel sad and empty and like hopping in my car and going to McDonald's. I know french fries won't fix anything. Neither will chicken nuggets. But I want some form of comfort and don't feel like I have anything else available. I don't know why that kind of food feels comforting, especially since after eating it I feel like there's a rock in my stomach and I'm pretty disgusted with myself.

Okay, that was a strange experience. I went into my bathroom to get a Qtip. The medicine cabinet is mirrored and has three doors, and one of them was not quite shut. It created an awesome optical illusion (identifiable tattoo blurred out!):

I've tried before to use those online predictions of what I'd look like if I lost a lot of weight, but they've never inspired me because that's just something on the computer. But I stood there for several minutes looking at this, wondering if it was something I could accomplish. Who knows. But it was an interesting experience. And stopped me from pursuing junk food too. Instead I cooked a couple of hamburger patties with some jack cheese, popped them on a sandwich thin (those things are awesome), and had some carrots and cherry tomatoes too. Go me.

I got bored a couple of hours later. Since my floor was freshly vacuumed, and my house was reasonably cool, I whipped out an old yoga CD thinking I'd do some relaxing stretching. Yeah, that lasted about five minutes. I couldn't focus, for one thing, and for another I forgot how much the woman talks. And how much I hate downward-facing dog. 

Today I woke up feeling nothing ...

... except a craving for Qdoba. All I want to eat is a bowl of rice and three-cheese queso and chicken and green salsa and sour cream. This is product of the fact that I freaking love Qdoba, and also because I last ate about 24 hours ago. I've been hungry since I got up, but nothing sounds good. Except, you know, the burrito.

Yeah, yeah, somebody's probably gonna wanna bitch at
me about it and tell me how unhealthy it is. Go for it.

Well, for a while I wanted pizza. Then pancakes. Then croissants. If I just ate something I'd feel better, but I don't feel like I could choke down anything I have in the house. So I drank a lot of water, and I read, and eventually -- once Qdoba was closed! Avoidance is key for me! -- I went to the grocery store. Forty dollars of fruits, vegetables, dairy, and such later, I came home and made myself a little pizza on a low-carb tortilla. Honestly, I didn't expect to enjoy it very much. I expected it to be a pale substitute that made me crave the real thing more. But it was surprisingly satisfying. I feel alright now. Will have a peach later on, I think. And my next meal I think will be .... hell if I know. If I even get hungry again I'll figure it out.

I've basically just had this window open all day to type whatever popped in to my head, which has been a lot less than the last couple of days. That's not necessarily a good thing, though, because it's basically because I've been pretty depressed all day. Oh, just low-level depressed, not sobbing or anything. Just sort of feeling empty and nothing. It's actually sort of a break from my misery the last few weeks, but that doesn't mean it's healthy.

If I did more social stuff, I'd probably feel a little better. But it's hard to set anything up, because I feel like it's hard to even carry on a normal conversation. The last time I went out with a friend I hadn't seen in a while, I started telling her what had happened with the ex and I started crying in the middle of the restaurant. Embarrassing. Sometimes people will be in the middle of telling me something and I'll be struggling to understand, not because I wasn't paying attention, but because it felt like my brain had forgotten how to decode their words, usually because some thought about my ex or something had sort of halted my neurons.

I feel like doing what I did the last time I felt like this, the last time my life felt so empty and up in the air. I used to put my little schnauzer on her leash and walk for hours. We'd just wander our neighborhood in the dark, every night, until I finally dragged us home. It felt right to wander aimlessly. Sometimes I sang to myself. Sometimes I talked to my dog. Sometimes I cried. Other times I was just absolutely silent. I don't know if it really helped; it didn't keep my weight in check nor did it tire me out. But I find myself wanting to do it again. Unfortunately, that was about seven years ago, and it's not something I've felt comfortable doing since. The town I moved to after that had a state prison in it, and I didn't feel safe wandering the streets at night when felons were regularly released there. Then I moved back to my old town -- but the opposite end of it, and to get to a well-lit, safe area I had to walk about a mile up a road with no sidewalk and no streetlights. Where I live now, there's enough gang activity to make me uncomfortable roaming at night, even though none of it is really in my area. I wish I could move back to my little wood-floored house in the quiet, safe neighborhood where I used to wander.

Really, I hate the town I live in now. I like my house. It's quirky and has lots of room for me and my pets. It's fairly cheap, and I'm overall fond of it. But the town I live in smells because there's a cattle processing plant, it's weirdly organized and I can't find things, and then there's the gang activity in certain places. There's a reason housing is cheap, is what I'm getting at. If I had the money, I would move. Maybe I should have, back when I had a job and they were still giving us bigass bonus checks. But finding somewhere that I can have the three cats and two dogs I've accidentally acquired is a pretty big challenge. And at the time I had money, I was happy.

Actually, I had an offer a few days ago to move back to the prison-containing town and live for a year rent-free. There were a lot of reasons to do it; money, change, being there for a family member struggling with some emotional issues. But in the end I just couldn't do it. The space I'd be crammed in to would be much too small, and because of the way the house is arranged I'd have no privacy. Plus I'd have to find a job down there, and then after less than a year bail out on it and haul all my things back to this area (100 mile drive), because in a year all reasons to live there would have gone to college or moved away, leaving me alone and without a place to live, in a town I don't really want to live in. And honestly, I feel like I'm just too goddamn old at this point to be uprooting my life like that every year, at least when it comes to jobs. My work history is bizarre enough already (I tended to work a lot of unconnected jobs consecutively).

I suppose because I'm unemployed and applying for jobs all over the place, it's normal that I've been trying to evaluate what my goals really are. In terms of a job or a career, I've never been one of those people who knew What I Want To Be When I Grow Up. Oh, for a while I thought I'd be a novelist. And I do love baking. But I never even knew what to go to school for, because I was so ... unfocused, flighty, whatever you want to call it. And there are plenty of people like that, but those people usually have something else they want. For example, they want to get married and have kids. Yeah ... I don't. I mean, if I were with someone and they wanted to get married, I'd do it for them. But I'm never spawning. Ever.

So I don't want any particular career, I don't want a husband, I don't want kids. I don't want any of the "normal" things society tells me I should. What do I want? I want to be happy. But what would make me happy? Fuck if I know. :)

But hey look, it's late evening (er, according to my jacked up schedule) and I've eaten properly today!

I think I'm going to be doing a lot of this.

I'm only a few days in here, but I have the feeling that -- assuming time allows, which right now it does since I haven't found a goddamn job yet -- I'll be writing a lot. The reason for that is simple: eating properly is fucking difficult. It's hard with all the ads for pizza and assorted other crap being thrown at you. It's hard when your well-intentioned friends push chocolate at you. It's hard when you're tired or lazy and just don't want to cook chicken breast when McDonald's is down the street. We all know this. It sucks. And writing about it doesn't necessarily help.

But what I think writing may help with is the high emotional content to my eating. I'm not nearly as bad as I used to be about it. I had some fucking epic binges, back in the day. Now at least my emotional eating tends to be having macaroni and cheese for dinner instead of chicken, rather than having macaroni and cheese and cookies and ice cream and chips and whatever random other crap I picked up at the store. So that's definitely good. But the emotional eating is still a problem, because I know that one episode of it can quite easily lead to a string of horrible days ending in giving up. I know this because of how my body reacts to sugars and high levels of starches. It's addictive.

There are things I can do to mitigate those emotional eating slips; for example, taking chromium definitely kicks up my insulin receptors and allows my body to deal with it better in a biochemical way. And drinking a lot of fluids helps keep the water retention factor down. My next meal being properly composed, that's another big one. But of course the best thing to do is, you know, not cause the problem in the first place. Which is where the blogging comes in, for the most part.

See, I love my friends. And I know they love me. But I also know that they're tired of hearing about me being heartbroken over my ex. They all think he's a douchebag and I should be over him. Most of them don't say that, but I can read between the lines. To be fair, for the first month or two I was upset, they thought he had been just a casual boyfriend. They didn't realize I was in L-O-V-E with him. I was embarrassed to admit it, and scared to admit it, and never did admit it to him. So my friends were in a frustrated mindset before I really told them why I was so upset. But still ... they're tired of hearing it. And I'm sort of tired of saying it, and I'm definitely tired of feeling it .... but it won't go away. I still feel heartbroken over him almost every moment of every day, and it makes me want to reach for the comfort food because I don't really have anything else to comfort me.

And of course, there's the stress of being jobless. And the fact that my grandmother is dying, I really haven't even begun to process that shit yet. And all the other little and not-so-little things that make up the ups and downs of life. Basically, I just need somewhere that I can announce "I FEEL MISERABLE AND HEARTBROKEN TODAY AND I HATE THE WORLD!" without feeling like I'm dragging down the people who care about it. Even if nobody reads this (or nobody but Amy, hi Amy), that's okay. It's there. It's written down. I have documented how I feel and have let it out in some form other than talking to my cats like a crazy woman.

Actually, I sort of feel badly for anybody who does try to slog through all of the crap I'm bound to throw out. It's gonna get awfully boring and repetitive. But that's the beauty of blogging - I can say whatever the hell I want, but you don't have to read it! And maybe some would say all the crap I'll spew doesn't belong on a weight-loss blog, but here's the thing: it influences how I eat, and how I feel about myself. If I'm not at least mildly mentally healthy, I'm not going to make any progress on the physical side of it.

(Made no progress on the story, btw. I read instead!)

Writing so I don't eat.

See, right now is a perfect example of why I came back to this long-neglected blog. It's 6:45 a.m. and I haven't been to bed yet. This is partially because I stayed up all night yesterday and then sort-of slept from 11a.m. to 7p.m. But it's more because my brain is running in circles and I'm feeling miserable, and I knew that if I went to sleep before I was utterly exhausted, I would end up sobbing in to my pillow. And my friends have to be tired of hearing this shit -- even if any of them were awake. Furthermore, a couple of them are severely fucking irritating me with their responses, and of course those are two that know about my regular blog.

It's nothing earth-shattering; it's nothing a normal person my age hasn't gone through several times. But it's only the second time I've been in love, and the first time I've been dumped. I am not fucking dealing with it well. For example, I know he's on his way to work right now. I know he'll spend all day outside in the godawful heat, because he does landscaping. I know he'll be all tan and muscular from months of work, and that he's got a new tattoo I haven't seen. And I know I'll never see any of this, because I haven't seen him in three months and he hasn't communicated with me at all since June 11th. And it makes me sick to my stomach. It also makes me feel helpless, and hopeless, and that makes me want to drive to McDonald's for some greasy, carb-laden, nasty junk food, because my emotional eating has been completely out of control since December.

I know it wouldn't fix anything. It doesn't matter what I eat; he doesn't care about me. A couple of my friends, when I say things like that, have tried to tell me I should use it as a reason to lose weight so if I see him again I can rub how good I look in his face. I gave up on trying to explain it to them, but that's stupid in several ways: 1) I probably won't see him. 2) That's incredibly high school. 3) He loves big women. His ex before me was even bigger. Losing weight would make me less attractive to him.

Another of my friends is completely "in love" after dating a guy for about two weeks, and keeps talking about how "it's scary to give your heart to someone completely." I want to fucking throttle her every time she says something like that, especially when I just poured my heart out about how much I'm hurting and she answers with, "I wish I could make it better. I just had the most amazing day with my boyfriend and then we had sex all night. But it's scary to give your heart to someone completely." Gah.

And another one, when she asks how I am and she can tell I'm sad, thinks it's appropriate to lecture me about how I met him. We met on a sex site. I wasn't looking for a boyfriend, he wasn't looking for a girlfriend. It just ended up that way. But this friend always jumps in to, "I just think you were really looking in the wrong place. You can't expect to have a real relationship with someone you meet like that!" Never mind that it wasn't supposed to be any more than sex. He's the one who took it anywhere else -- and if as soon as we'd had sex he'd changed, that would be one thing. I'd write him off as a jackass and move along. But for two months after he kept telling me how I was so special, how he couldn't wait to see me, how he was so glad he knew me. And I've tried to tell her, every time, that I'm well aware you don't go on a sex site intending to find a boyfriend. But instead of acknowledging that however we met, I've had my heart broken ... she just lectures. I've hardly talked to her the last couple of months because of it.

Time for this stream of consciousness to end, because I have to take my grandmother to a chemotherapy appointment. But at least I spent the time typing instead of binging.