Ermahgerd.

Didn't realize how long it's been since I posted. It's been a trying couple of weeks, for a lot of personal reasons. I'm not proud of it, but I did a fuckton of emotional eating. Or sometimes emotional not-eating. There were days I binged, days I didn't eat a single thing, days where I barely ate but it was all carbs, and days when I ate exactly as I should have.

The last three days have been good, almost accidentally. I didn't plan my meals, exactly, and I didn't think much about what I was eating. I just went to the store and did my shopping mostly on auto-pilot, and turns out my auto-pilot knew what I should and shouldn't purchase. Of course, the fact that I'm exceedingly broke and can't afford to go out to lunch with my friends at work etc definitely helps.

I'm settling in to my new job; I'm liking it so much I'm pretty much waiting for the other shoe to drop, honestly. It seems too good to be true. An easy job, a nice environment, friendly people, all the overtime I can work, decent pay .... they must require a blood sacrifice every couple of months, right? There's got to be something wrong with it.

Because it's going so well, I'm kind of terrified of the fact that I feel like I'm fighting off a cold -- attendance is a huge thing at this place. I've got a few of the little symptoms I get when my immune system is fighting something. Normally I'd drown myself in fruit and as many vegetables as I can stand ... but all I have left is one nectarine, half a pint of raspberries, and some frozen peaches! And since I have no money, and won't get my paycheck until Friday, and won't be able to take it to the bank until Saturday, I'll just have to hope my body can fend this off with enough sleep and fluids, I guess.

If I can manage to fight this off, and not come down with anything until the second week of November, that would mean I had gone an entire year without a cold, which is something I've never managed in my life before! Here's hoping.

Color me surprised.

I had a feeling as soon as Blogger showed a massive spike in pageviews that Al had linked to me again. I'm not surprised that once again he's assuming things that aren't in the entry (never said a bad day of eating was 3500 calories, he added together example of different days; I don't believe I've even stated my height which is not five feet), assuming I'm lying (If I weren't "coming clean" about the treats etc I wouldn't have explicitly listed the junk I was eating), and using the old one-size-fits-all-calories are everything method came up with 7,500 calories a day for a week to gain five pounds (another figure he pulled out of thin air, when did I say anything about five pounds in a week).

Really, Al's response is an absolutely perfect example of the point of what I said in that entry: People assume if you're fat, you're eating massive amounts of food all the time. It doesn't matter what you say. As I've said repeatedly, I have absolutely had my binges. Plenty of them, in fact. I was not eating healthful things. No denying that. But the plain truth is that my average daily intake of strictly calories is nowhere near what people would assume by looking at me. I'm not "lying to myself and posting it for the world to see." I have no reason to lie to myself. I am fully aware of my size, my eating choices, and their consequences. I have no reason to lie to anyone reading this completely anonymous blog. But, again, I'm fat, and my statements don't tally up with the old calories-are-everything belief, so I must be lying. Or too stupid to realize what I'm putting in my own mouth, or too deluded, or whatever. It couldn't possibly be that there's more to weight and metabolism than strictly calories, nope. Couldn't be that I have blood sugar and insulin resistance issues, and the consistent intake of sugar was keeping my insulin chronically high which prevented any fat from leaving my cells (because, you know, that's one of the things that insulin does). I must be just a liar. Even though I'm stating that the choices I made caused that situation, I'm still not "owning up" to it somehow.

Now obviously a lot of people have lost weight, and even a lot of it, strictly by counting calories. I'm not saying it can't or doesn't work. I'm saying it's not the only factor for everybody. For somebody with insulin resistance, eating low-calorie and high-carb at the same time is going to make weight loss exceedingly difficult. Even if you need fuel, if there's a bunch of residual insulin in your bloodstream because of  massive sugar spike that's only very slowly coming down, it's going to block the mechanism that moves fat from the cells for use. Eventually the insulin level will come down, and fat from cells would begin to be released -- unless you eat a bunch of carbohydrate again, of course, which is likely to happen when you start feeling tired and cranky because you're running on empty because your body can't access your stored fat for energy. Now, if your metabolism is functioning normally and you don't have any issues with insulin resistance, that's a different situation.

In any event, it doesn't really bother me on a personal level. I've had worse things said about me by nicer people, as my father would say. What bothers me are the societal assumptions about overweight people, which is what I said in the first place.


I spent Friday, Saturday, and Sunday up to my eyeballs in wedding cake baking, which sort of turned into a disaster. Things were fine until the cake stand broke. And there was no air conditioning in the hall and the bride flatly refused to have fondant over the buttercream, even though it would have looked much nicer and withstood the heat better than smoothed buttercream (and been a hell of a lot easier on me). I wasn't happy with how the cake looked, but at least everyone told me it tasted great.

I haven't been paying a goddamn bit of attention to what I've been eating since .. er .... going on a week, I don't remember exactly. No excuse for it other than just not caring. I definitely feel shitty, though. My allergies are worse, my moods are unstable due to the see-sawing blood sugar (wheee, let's not eat anything for 24 hours and then gulp down a burger and fries!), and food doesn't taste as good. I'm going home tomorrow (wedding was 100 miles away), and will even have a little money for grocery shopping, so I'll be stocking up on meat, cheese, fruits, and vegetables again. I'm not expecting to have any weight loss this month, but I would like to undo any damage I've done this week and at least maintain the 12 pound loss from last month.

Feels pointless.

I haven't been awake long today, but so far I just feel like it's completely pointless to try to eat well. I don't feel any different, any better. With the overwhelming abundance of crappy, quick, easy, sometimes delicious food, the idea of me avoiding it for long enough to make any true difference seems utterly laughable. And even if I do, then it just means more time avoiding it to maintain that difference. It all seems like a epic waste of time today. I'm assuming it's another by-product of PMS. But it makes me want to binge. That urge got worse when I went to try to donate plasma and was told I was put on the nationwide permanent deferral list -- because two of their employees couldn't find the same fucking vein I donated out of for literally months on end at the center in my old town. I was wicked pissed. I needed that money.

By the time I went to Walmart to get a money order for my rent, I was all set to get a box of macaroni and cheese and some cheap ice cream. I even wandered the food aisles a bit and then just left because I it wouldn't fix what was wrong. I feel bad about myself, but making myself feel physically sick wouldn't change that. I'm pissed at life, but ice cream won't make it better.

Of course, really the deciding factor was really that I'd just sucked down so much water my stomach felt uncomfortably full. If not for that I might be munching down on some potato chips right now -- I'm craving them, which is really weird since I almost never eat chips.

Ugh. Scratch all that. My second trip out did not go well.

I confuse myself.

I don't understand my psyche at all. While I was unemployed and had no prospects, my dad was in the hospital, and I thought I would never hear from the man I love again .... eating properly was pretty easy. I had a few days where I stumbled, but generally I was okay. Now my dad is home and much better, I'm working, and I heard from and even saw the boy again ... and I've been on an emotional eating bender. What the fuck? What is wrong with me? How does life heading in an upward direction trigger this kind of stupid crap?

Today I've managed, although mostly because I've been sick and haven't eaten much. I don't have anything left in the house I shouldn't eat, so tomorrow is looking up.

Well, this has been interesting.

It's been a crazy few days; there's the new job, which still largely sucks but is at least a job. Just exhausting me. Plus I was having a really hard time because there's a guy in my class who reminded me of the boy just enough to make me sad. And he kept talking to me, too,

And then my dad got put in the hospital again. First they thought he had c-diff after his time in the burn unit. Then it was friggen' e. coli. Then he wasn't responding to the meds like he should have, so they did a colonoscopy. Considering my grandmother's colon cancer I was terrified. Found out today he does not have cancer! He's got ulcerative colitis. Sucks, but much better than it could have been.

And then ... the boy is back. I don't know in what ... capacity, I guess the word would be. He had a fairly good excuse for part of the time I didn't hear from him. He literally wasn't able to answer. But he also knew it was going to happen and didn't warn me. And he left me hanging for weeks after that was over. So I'm not very happy about that. Of course, I wasn't his girlfriend at the time, so I suppose he didn't owe me any explanations. Other than he knows from experience that it fucks me up when someone vanishes and ignores me. So I'm still a little hurt, and I still don't really trust him. I'm sure he'll be around for a while and then flake the fuck out on me again. But I love him and couldn't refuse to talk to him or see him. Well, obviously I could have, but I didn't want to. I fully realize the idiocy of this, but right now I feel like it's worth it because after spending one night with him I feel better than I have in months.

Anyway, a side effect of all the changes/emotional ups-and-downs this week is that I had another burrito freak-out on ... Tuesday? I forget. Anyway. I've had one meal a day that was waaaaay too high in carbs, every day. Except yesterday, because yesterday I hardly ate because I was too upset/confused/excited/nervous.

Some of the issue was lack of planning, too. If I don't pack my lunch the night before, I'm going to end up buying junk because if I come home I'll have a hard time going back to work plus I just get distracted and don't eat anyway and then I'm so hungry later I eat things I know damn good and well I shouldn't.

I have the weekend off, so hopefully that'll help me get back on track by being at home and eating what I have here.

Days and days.

Nothing noteworthy happened today, other than I couldn't fall asleep until about 9:30 this morning and when I finally did, I managed to sleep for five straight hours. That's like a miracle for me. Wondering if I might be able to fall asleep just a tiny bit earlier tonight for a change.

I've spent most of the day reading one thing or the other. A lot of it has been from a blog by a doctor who's written a lot about low-carbing. I knew he wrote a blog but I never had read it before. Lots of interesting stuff.

Holy hell, I actually fell asleep at about 11:30 last night and slept (more or less) until 5:30. That's the first time I've slept at night in months. Of course, I woke up with a screaming headache and went back to sort-of sleep until 3:30 because the pain just kept getting worse and worse despite staggering up for pain killers, allergy meds, potassium, and magnesium. I had a small glass of milk, a hunk of cheese, and a peach, too. When I finally dragged myself up, I started thinking about the short time I was awake yesterday, and I realized I didn't drink that much water. So I was probably just seriously dehydrated. I've had some turkey and cheese and some NutThin crackers and several glasses of water, and I do feel a little better. The pain is starting to recede back to once spot, at least, whereas it was squeezing my whole head before.

I ate pizza and ice cream today. Fuck. There was no reason to do that. There was plenty of other stuff I could have eaten. My cousin ordered pizza and I just dove right in. And then had a "what the hell, already fucked up" moment and had some ice cream. Not very much of it, but any is too much. Dammit. I'm paying for it all now though, I've spent most of the last couple of hours in the bathroom. My intestines are not happy with me! I guess I can hope that some of the dreadful carbs just passed on through!

I'm heading home tomorrow, finally; I've enjoyed my week here, because I always like spending time with my cousin, and it's been sort of like a mental vacation. My angst about the boy has been way down (although I suspect when I go home and back to my normal life it'll come rushing back), I've done a lot of reading. Haven't done any non-blog writing, which I really had planned to do, but just never felt like it. It will be nice to be home, though. We're a close family so I don't feel uncomfortable in their house, but of course I'm more comfortable in mine.

Of course, I'm absolutely not looking forward to starting my new job at 5:45 in the fucking morning on Monday. Why the fuck do these fucking call centers do their training classes at such stupid times? It's goddamn idiotic. That's not when any of the regular shifts start, so what's the point? This job is just going to be hell. I just have to keep trying to find something less hellish. Like stabbing myself repeatedly in the kneecap with an icepick.

Rambling on down the road.

A friend took me out for dinner tonight, and I found myself mindlessly munching on chips while we talked. That's the downside of having spent so many years not restricting my eating at all: sometimes I truly forget I'm not supposed to eat something. Of course, I wouldn't trade that for the self-hatred, self-flagellation, and general fuck-up-ness I lived with daily before. Anyway, I stopped eating the chips when I realized it, so that was good.

I've been feeling sort of mindless hunger all day. I just had some Almond NutThins crackers with turkey and cheese, but I still feel like eating and I don't really know why. I feel a little bit of physical hunger, but mostly it's just the sort of gnawing urge to .... gnaw. I'm going to chalk it up to boredom or hormones or something. Or it could be from the carbs/wheat in the chips, maybe. There is definitely something about certain carbs that trigger stupid hunger in me. Potatoes not so much, rice not so much, even desserts don't really. But bread and bread-type things totally do me in.

A couple of interesting things occurred to me yesterday. The first is that at this time of the month, I usually have an absolutely gigantic cystic acne bump on one side of my chin or the other. It hangs around for a week or so, generally healing up and turning back in to normal skin about a week before another pops up. Well, this month I don't have one of those things! Oh, I still have a little bit of acne happening, most likely because I haven't had the money to get the face wash and lotion that really make my skin look good. But the Great Red Spot didn't put in an appearance this month.

Also, and this is slightly embarrassing to even admit ... but, well, I'm sure plenty of you have encountered this before. Especially when it's hot, or if I wear heat-trapping pants, I get this sort of rash-like thing under my stomach. It hurts like a burn when it's exposed to air, but it also hurts when anything touches it. And it's a wet rash, that really doesn't smell nice. The only thing that helps it is putting ice packs under my stomach, or coating the entire area with calamine lotion. I figured it was just a rash until I had a bad bout of it going in to sinus surgery, and it totally cleared up for a while after the lovely course of antibiotics I had afterward. That was when I figured out it was some sort of bacterial/yeasty thing. I've always cleaned under my flab, because I hate to be sticky and sweaty at all, but it would still happen when it was really hot out. I figured out that if every other day or so I wore bikini-style underwear that go under my stomach, it would sort of draw the moisture away and it wouldn't happen. If I wore briefs for a while, especially in bad heat, it would start to crop up a little.

I didn't realize it under yesterday, but in the last month I haven't had any issues, and I haven't been wearing the bikini underwear because I've only got a couple of pairs left and I don't know where one of them has ended up anyway. And I haven't had a single problem! Not even the day I went to the rodeo in jeans and lovely summer heat.

The only thing that's changed has been what I eat. The lack of giant acne makes sense; the other I guess is because .. um ... I don't know. Better body chemistry in general, maybe? Anyway, I'm certainly not complaining! Wonder what else will happen ... or not happen. I know a lot of people say they sleep better when they eat better, or that they're more energetic, but that never happens to me. Not anymore, at least. The first and second times I seriously restricted my carbohydrate intake, I felt like shit for a week and then I felt fucking amazing. I still remember exceedingly clearly one evening when I was 17 (the first time I tried eating this way), and I was running across the lawn to my car and I felt so light and so incredible, I'd never felt better in my life!

Sadly, that doesn't happen when I cut out carbs now, and hasn't for a long time. I had the misfortune to contract mono my second semester at college, and goddamn, did that stuff fuck me up long-term. Before then, I'd sleep four hours a night or so and have plenty of energy. I ran around like your typical normal teenager (and was still fat). Then I caught mono, and spent six months sleeping about 20 hours a day, unable to wake up or function properly even though it seemed like I'd had such a mild case of it. The doctor I went to didn't even diagnose me with mono; it wasn't until my boyfriend got so sick I ended up taking him to the emergency room that we figured out I even had it.

Anyway, since then I'm just chronically fucking tired. I thought it was because I was working too hard with school, etc. Then I thought it was just because I was fat. I dropped fifty pounds and was still exhausted all the time. I was exercising a lot too, and never got that endorphin rush or increased energy most people report. I had my thyroid checked, and my blood sugar, and my iron levels, and all sorts of stuff, and nothing ever came up as a reason for my exhaustion. I got on Prozac for my depression, which didn't help my physical exhaustion but at least keeps my brain running okay. I'll seriously be on that shit forever. I had sinus surgery to correct a bunch of issues, which did help a little, but not much. I had a sleep study done. I've had the blood tests re-done every year or so, and they're always normal. It's incredibly fucking frustrating.

Man, I ramble sometimes. The point is that I don't feel physically any different since changing my eating. It would be easier to do this if I did feel better. It's annoying.

Well, I guess it was bound to happen.

I woke up pissed the fuck off at the world, and that rapidly descended down into tearful misery. I did a bunch of errands, and then on my way home had a "fuck it all" moment and decided that god dammit, I wanted a freaking burrito. I wanted to sit in air conditioning, eat, drink Diet Coke, and read, and fuck everything else. So I went to Qdoba and I enjoyed the hell out of a burrito and an order of chips and queso. And I did enjoy them ... while I was chewing.

As soon as I stood up though, I realized I felt like I had a bowling ball in my belly. I had a crampy sort of feeling under the right side of my ribcage. A few hours later, I felt gassy and was spending a lot of time in the bathroom. That's what happens when you slam down 200g of carbohydrates after a monthish of behaving (or at least behaving better than that, for fuck's sake). I wasn't that sick, but it wasn't pleasant, and it wasn't worth it.

It was bad timing, too, because an hour or so after that I headed 100 miles south to stay at my aunt's house for a week with my cousin. This is bad because they chow carbs like nobody's business. It's worse than my dad's. There are things I can eat -- already here, plus what I brought -- but there's also a surplus of things I shouldn't eat.

This is where being really picky comes in handy, though! See, of all the junk in the house ... it seems I lucked into not liking most of it. I normally love macaroni and cheese, but they have this weird organic brand that tastes vaguely like cardboard. I love ice cream as much as the next fatty, but not the flavors they have. I didn't spot any cookies or cakes. The corn Chex cereal won't be a problem -- rice checks might have been, but I don't much like corn Chex. The tortillas they have are corn, another thing I'm not big on. They do have one bag of chips that look delicious (tuscan herb and parmesan) and two bags of pretzel bites. One is sour cream and onion flavored, so blech. The other is four cheese. I like Ramen noodles, but I don't wicked crave them. Nor any of the generic flavored rices or pasta packages. I'm sort of amazed.

It's always bugged me how my aunt and cousins eat. When my younger cousin was fourteen, she was on a swimming team so was practicing six days a week in addition to horseback riding, archery lessons, gym class, and being a growing adolescent. One day I watched her eat dry Cheerios and a banana for breakfast. For lunch she packed a fruit roll-up, some chips, and a thing of Ramen noodles. Dinner that night was spaghetti noodles with tomato sauce. The next day, she had the same breakfast. Lunch was a treacle sandwich (syrup on bread for anyone who doesn't know), some squishy fruit snack things, an apple, and some cheese-flavored crackers. Dinner was leftover spaghetti.

I don't remember what she ate the third day, but she came home complaining that her leg muscles were tired and hurting. I suggested maybe she needed some protein to maintain her muscles, and maybe some vitamins and minerals, since she'd had 99.9% empty carbs for at least three days. She looked at me and shrugged ... and had Ramen noodles for dinner. Ahrg.

Her sister wasn't much better then, and their mother .... well, let's just say she's got a shelf full of diet books, another full of workout videos, a bunch of unused gym equipment, and several bottles of "homeopathic" HGC "hormone" diet supplements. And eats just like her kids, all the time. With the addition of a respectable amount of alcohol.

Anyway, I was expecting there to be a lot more tempting awful crap, but I might just make it out of here in decent shape. I mean, I know that no matter what food surrounds me it's my choice what I eat. But it's definitely a lot easier to not eat Cheetos if they're nowhere near. Avoidance is definitely my key strategy!

Dammit.

I already blew through all my carbs again, and I've only had .. well, my first meal of the day, so breakfast I guess. In fact I probably had about twenty grams more than I should have (and I feel like I have a rock in my belly). I really need to stop doing that. I know that, regarding my insulin levels which is what LC is all about, it's much more effective to spread them out throughout the day, plus it allows more flexibility in the rest of my meals. Not to mention, it's very easy to end up having all my carbs at one meal ... and then have them again at the next. And that would obviously just undo the progress I've made. I've been down that road many times in the past. I need this time to be different. To achieve that, I need to not put myself in to situations where somebody else is providing the food or where I feel like they're going to comment on what I eat. That's been a lot of the problem this last week, because I've been around family so much, at the hospital, etc. Luckily this week is looking better in terms of that.

Have to admit I am feeling a little hopeless overall though. I'm still feeling deeply sad. Honestly I'm impressed I've had as few problems with my eating as I have, the last couple of weeks. Maybe I'm finally maturing or something. Or maybe I'll end up flaming out horribly like I have before, haha. The fact that I'm wickedly craving McDonald's french fries is not encouraging. There were many nights before when that urge would hit me and I'd just zip up the street for some. It's unfortunately a very short trip for me. Way too convenient. But I made myself a little pizza on my last low-carb tortilla, so I'm not hungry anymore, so there's no reason to eat anything else.

I haven't worked on my story in more than a week. I opened my laptop to do so the other night, and then decided my time would be better spent applying for more jobs. I have the shitty job in the hopper, I have a possible return to my restaurant job pending, and I have an interview for an awesome job Friday. But I don't want to end up with just the shitty job, so in case I can't go back to the restaurant, or in the likely event I don't get the awesome job, I want to have other irons at least near the fire.

Forgot to post this last night!

Grandmas and their recipes.

Went to see my dad tonight, and didn't think food would be an issue. Dinner with him is usually pretty simple: some sort of meat, some sort of vegetable, some sort of potato. When my aunt is there, it tends to be a little lighter, maybe just salad and meat. What I didn't count on was my grandmother being in charge of dinner ... and making homemade chicken noodle soup.

Dammit. Now, I know I could have refused to eat it and dug some cheese or something out of the fridge. But I didn't, for two reasons: one, I didn't want my grandma to cry, and she takes it personally when her grandkids don't eat her cooking. And two, I would have had to come up with an explanation why, and I am so not comfortable with my family knowing I'm dieting. The focus of every conversation becomes dieting, and dieting "tips", and success stories, and supportive-but-dickish comments about how they're so glad I decided to "do something about my body." My grandmother and aunt will go so far as to call me up to check on my progress. It's just a disconcerting amount of attention being focused on what I eat, and it makes me completely uncomfortable.

So, I ate the chicken noodle soup. With the big fat starchy noodles. I suspect I'll feel like shit when I wake up, between the carbs and the sodium, but tomorrow is another day.

Trainwreck of a day!

Okay, maybe trainwreck is overstating it. The day at the rodeo was actually pretty fun despite my exhaustion -- I hadn't see some good ole steer wrestling or anything in years and I really enjoyed it. The day was marred by my father being admitted to the hospital for a burn from three days earlier that he didn't take care of, but that's a whole separate clusterfuck.

Foodwise, not a good day, although I didn't go completely nuts. But today I actually feel okay. No crazy cravings, not bloated as fuck, maybe a little more tired and snotty than normal but hard to tell if that's from carbs/wheat or from exhaustion/sunburn.

Had a surprising moment while leaving the rodeo. When I did the first C25k workout the other night, the minute long runs seemed absolutely interminable and I hated every second. I didn't realize quite how much of that was the awful shoes I was wearing though! My grandmother has knee problems, so she hitched a ride on on a golf cart to get to the car. There were other people who needed a ride so I said I'd walk. In fact I jogged behind the cart for about two minutes, and wasn't even out of breath which astounded me considering my walk/run the other night! I mean, I wasn't keeping up with the cart or anything. And I'm aware that two minutes isn't much. But still, I was surprised that after no sleep, in the heat, after my shitty experience the other night, that I wasn't gasping and red in the face.

I need to try to get enough rest today to do the first C25k workout again; being awake 27/28 hours straight and then not really sleeping that night either has really wiped me out, hopefully I can make it up today.

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*

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!

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.

Still computerless.

And it's driving me bonkers. If prostitution was legal, I'd turn a trick to get the money to fix my damn computer.

Okay, not really, but I'm super irritated.

I was doing well on the eating front until I stupidly got on the scale last week. I ought to know better. No matter if the number is good or bad, it sends me into a spin. I thought I was prepared for it, but I obviously wasn't. If it's bad, I get depressed and eat. If it's good, I feel pressure to continue and I get depressed and eat. Gah.

Well, that was fun.

When most weight loss bloggers drop off the face of the earth, it's because they're wallowing in a puddle of their own tears and Twinkie wrappers. And I haven't been having a perfect run of it, but that's not why I haven't been blogging. No, my reason is simpler: my damned computer died.

I still haven't gotten it fixed; I don't know when I'll have the cash. So I don't know when I'll be regularly blogging again, but I hope everyone out there is doing well and I'll see you as soon as I get my personal system is up and running again!

Sugarfest.

The last two days, I've been acting like a petulant child who doesn't want to eat her vegetables. Instead I've been eating sugar. Not even because I was craving it -- just because every time I looked at a chunk of meat it seemed so deeply unappetizing. I should have just forced it down!