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!)

TMI

I mentioned in a previous post that I had sent a picture of the scale to a friend of mine, because I wanted documentation but I didn't want to know the number myself. Well, yesterday my curiosity got the better of me a little bit and I told her, "I just want a yes or a no, that's all - is the number on the scale 300 pounds or higher?"

I shouldn't have asked, because she thought she was being encouraging by telling me it was "just under." I said "That's not a yes or no answer." and she thought I didn't understand, so she said "It's just under 300." I was like, "I know that, the point is I just wanted to know yes or no."

So, now I know that I'm closer to 300 pounds than I've ever been in my life. I don't know what constitutes "just under" - one pound, ten, twenty? Considering this is a woman who didn't think she was thin at 117 pounds, I have no idea. And I love her to pieces, I know that she was only intending to motivate me by telling me it wasn't "that bad". But Christ on a pogo stick. If "just under" means something like 295, the amount of weight I'd need to lose to a 'normal' size just jumped significantly, and that is depressing.

Of course, the fact is that nothing's actually changed except my own knowledge!

Dreams are depressing.

I woke up today from a dream about my ex. It was a good dream, which just makes it all the more painful to wake up and remember he's cut me out of his life without even saying goodbye. Then I got an email - not even a call but a fucking email - telling me I didn't get one of the job I interviewed for. Then I waited around for an electrician all day, finally called my landlady and she admitted she never called him. Fuck.

I'm really down today, and everything feels absolutely pointless. I haven't eaten anything because I haven't been hungry, or when I was for a few minutes I had zero desire to cook anything. I'm hungry now and all I want to do is jump in my car and drive two blocks to Qdoba for a bigass carbfest of a burrito. And chips and queso. What would it solve? Nothing. It would make me feel better temporarily to sit in the a/c, drink a bunch of cold Diet Coke, and read while eating something delicious. I know it would feel great at the time. But then I would have spent money I can't afford to, and undone the few days of good eating I have lined up. I guess I just sort of feel broken today, and like there's no point in fixing it.

I know, I'm a whiner. I hate feeling like this. I'm trying to snap out of it.

(Shortly after writing this I started doing some cleaning, never my favorite thing. But I'm noticing a difference in how I feel already. Bending over still isn't terribly pleasant because I do have a bunch of blubber in the way. But it doesn't hurt internally like it did a week ago, either. I'm sure a lot of that has to do with simple fluid retention, but it's still slightly encouraging.)

Too far ahead.

I'm falling in to my usual trap when it comes to trying to lose any weight: I start thinking about how hopeless it is. The last time I knew my weight, I'd have to lose 150 pounds to be at a "normal" weight. That's according to the BMI chart, which I think is complete bullshit - but regardless I'd still have to lose a fuckton of weight to even get out of the obese category. And then the mere idea of maintaining ... I know myself. The chances are astronomical of me losing any significant amount of weight and keeping it off. So what's the damn point? I feel really down about it. Even if I just lose enough so most of my clothes fit again, what are the chances I can maintain that loss? 

I'm just not good at sticking to things. I rarely finish projects. I just run out of steam. That's one reason I haven't told anybody outside this blog - and the one friend with the picture of my atrocious weight - about changing my eating. It's also why I haven't told anyone, anyone at all, that I've started working on two separate story ideas for novels. I have a friend who would love to hear that news, because she's always on me about how I have a gift and I shouldn't waste it, and how she's jealous of how easily my writing flows. But I don't want to tell her, because I don't want to disappoint her when I don't finish either of them.

I know this all sounds extremely self-defeating, and anybody I said it to would tell me that my attitude shapes how things will come out, etc. I'm not even disputing it, really. But I've been this way for so long, and I've been failing to finish projects for so long, that it doesn't seem pessimistic. It just seems realistic.

So why am I trying this at all? Today I don't know. I guess I'm hoping that maybe I'll lose enough weight that my clothes will fit, maybe I'll overshoot the mark a little, and then when I balloon up again go through the process again. Which seems stupid. But .... I guess I'm just conflicted today about a lot of things.

I still ate properly today though. And I'm about to try to write some more. The story I've been typing is at 3280 words. That's more than I've written in more than ten years, aside from blogging.

Resisting.

Well, I restrained myself when I went out, despite my friend desperately trying to push chocolate mousse on me. That was good. When I got home, I decided I was going to do some cleaning and re-organizing. I did some vacuuming, then unhooked my computer. Then I saw I'd missed a spot, so I plugged the vacuum back in to the same outlet .... which lit up blue for a moment and then all the power in my living room, and half of my kitchen, died.

I about lost it. I was right on the brink of a meltdown, because the outlet my fridge was plugged in to was one that went out and I couldn't drag the fridge across the kitchen to a working outlet. It's a million degrees here lately so I thought all my food was going to spoil. I also have no tv and no internet. I was livid. If I'd had any ice cream or anything, I probably would have eaten it, even knowing it wouldn't fucking help. Luckily, I had no such things here.

I calmed down once I remembered that my dad had given me a heavy-duty extension cord, so I have that running across my kitchen now to power my fridge. Not the safest thing, but hopefully it won't be for long. I also have the world's most obnoxious coaxial cable stretched from the one port that carried my internet to an outlet in another room, so I at least have internet access. Luckily it's wireless so my laptop can pick it up.

But I'm almost certain my landlady is going to claim that nobody is available tomorrow, because she won't want to pay Sunday rates to have an electrician come out. I think it's just a blown fuse, should be pretty simple to fix; but I can't find the friggen fuse box to check. The circuit breaker, yes; but the fuse box is well-hidden. Aggravating.

Blech, eggs.

Another ridiculously hot day here. I'd love to put my window a/c unit in, but I can't afford the electric bill seeing as I have no job. But I made myself eat, and I made myself eat eggs even, which ... yuck. Not my favorite. But cheesy eggs with sour cream, and a while later strawberries and white peach, was a decent lunch.

Now the trick is to not each a bunch of crap when I go out tonight.

Not the best start ...

It's 6:00 and I haven't eaten anything today. I've had a Diet Coke and a few sips of milk. But god, it's just unbearably hot. 102 degrees here today, and it makes it hard to move. Food sounds absolutely unappetizing. I just have to be very careful that once it cools down, I don't end up binging on all sorts of crap because I'm out-of-control hungry!

ETA: I finally at about two a.m. cooked up some burger patties. I really hate the heat.

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.

Holy shit, I'm alive.

Not that I expect anybody is reading this. I don't care much. I just need an outlet for some things. I have a regular blog, but the thing is there are a small handful of real-life friends who know about it, and so I have to censor myself a bit which means leaving certain topics untouched. Actually, I know there are at least a couple of regular readers of my regular blog that I've seen on weight loss blogs as well, so it's entirely possible I'll be recognized by someone, but that's okay.

In the nearly-a-year since I last wrote, a whole fuckload of things has happened. I had sex for the first time in four years, with only my second partner ever, who became a regular fuck buddy. I made a wedding cake for 300 guests. I realized I like pain and submission with sex. My mom came home from Mexico, sans her husband but plus two kids that have no relation to her. I had a couple of one-night stands and went to a strip club and discovered I'm a little bisexual. I started arranging the WMW threesome my fuck buddy wanted and he abruptly quit answering my texts and then blocked my number. I turned 30. I had a kind of mental breakdown during the holiday season, anxiety attacks and severe depression and all sorts of fun stuff. I got a new, non-restaurant job, a full-time desk job, and started gaining more weight. I met a guy and started dating him, and even though he was the opposite of anyone I ever thought I'd fall in love with .... I totally did fall in love for the second time in my life. I got forced out of my restaurant job that I was trying to keep as a second income. I gained some more weight. The aforementioned second love dumped me. I continued gaining weight. I interviewed for an absolutely perfect, wonderful job and didn't get it. My mother had her thyroid removed after months of hormonally-induced insanity. My grandma had a stroke. I found out my teenaged cousin had been raped. My boyfriend sort of came back for a few weeks. I was forced into a promotion at work that involved moving to a department I fucking hated. The boyfriend left again. My grandma got diagnosed with terminal cancer. I gained some more weight. I had a threesome with a married couple. I filed for bankruptcy because of the $18k in medical/credit card/miscellaneous other shit debt I had left after almost ten years paying off the first $16k of it. I quit my job because I hated it/they were going to fire me over attendance issues anyway because three different cars kept breaking down during my 100-mile-per-day commute.

So at the moment I'm broken-hearted, unemployed, broke, depressed, and some unspecified number of pounds heavier. I'm wearing a size 24 jeans, which is bigger than I've ever been. I've gained a lot of weight in my stomach and in front of my ribs, not at all proportional. I really haven't looked at the scale because it's depressing. I can't even guess how fucking huge the number is. But I know that at some point I'll want to know. So I got on the scale and I pointed my iPhone at it, took a picture, and sent it to a friend of mine without ever looking at it. That's what I'm going to keep doing over the next few weeks.

I have nothing carby and unhealthy left in my house. I have meat and cheese and eggs and fruits and vegetables, and there's no excuse for me to buy anything unhealthy. I'm also starting to really want to exercise, which is crazy - I've never wanted to exercise, at least not in the last 11 years, because all my jobs have involved being on my feet 40 hours a week. But for the last seven months, the only exercise I've gotten has been sex, and to my surprise I'm starting to feel physically restless. Of course, that's at odds with my depression. It's also not something I'm likely to act on any time soon because of the blazing fucking heat this summer - I can't afford a gym membership, the temperature in my house is never below 80, and I don't live somewhere safe enough to go for a walk late at night when it's tolerably cool. Sigh.

But, for now, I'll start with the eating properly. Stay tuned, nobody who cares.

Yeah, I dropped off the face of the earth.

I've been paying zero attention to what I eat except for maybe a couple of days a month, after while it falls apart because I just don't care right now. Too busy caring about a billion other things. Someday.

Moving sucks.

The day after my last post, an opportunity to move to a bigger, better, cheaper house two towns away came up. And I jumped on it, even though it meant a ridiculous amount of stress trying to get my life packed up and moved in a little under two weeks. And then I got to the new place and ... it didn't work out quite like it was supposed to. Basically the place was a fucking pigsty -- and I got stuck with a bunch of my mom's excess belongings because, oh yeah, she up and moved to another country.

I'm not proud of it, but I've basically been eating anything not red-hot or tied down, as long as it didn't require cooking or effort. You can imagine how healthy that's been. I'm pretty disgusted with myself right now, but I also seem to lack the give-a-damn to do anything about it. I'm hoping once I get my kitchen unpacked, and feel like I can actually accomplish things instead of merely getting through my days ... I don't know.

I know I could've eaten properly the last three weeks. It would've been monotonous, boring, and irritating, but I could have done it. But at the same time ... I couldn't. I don't deal with upheaval well, even when I choose it. Mix it with my mother taking off (we talked every day and now I have no way to contact her) and I'm basically a fucking wreck and don't even know how to start to fix it.

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.