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It’s nothing like anything I’ve ever bought for myself.
Based on the supposed measurements, it’s not going to fit my ass. Trust me – not even remotely.
And it gives me the heebie jeebies to think of the bat wing arm exposure.
And yet, I had to have it.

And it was on sale!
I mean, if you’re going to have something hanging in your closet for no good reason, it should cost less than $25, right?

I really don’t know what possessed me to buy it, other than I saw it online a few days ago and kept going back to it. I think it was my buried inner Fit Girl that dug out the credit card and pulled the trigger. Apparently she likes it. Because as much as *I* try to tell you it’s not my style (and y’all might think it’s hideous), truth is I don’t know what my “style” is. Let’s face it, I shop by size and a prayer. I pray it fits and I won’t hate it.

But this dress? I don’t know. It called to me. And I bought it.
And I *know* it’s going to bum me out when it gets here.
And I *know* it was a dumb thing to do.

But…I like it.

It looks light and swingy.
It looks like it’s worn by someone who smiles a lot.

I would like to the girl who wears this dress.

Here’s my day in a nutshell. It was crazy. Started the day at a work function at a hotel, had to hightail it back to work (grabbing lunch on the way because I had no ability to store a packed lunch at the hotel), take a few meetings, and then bust out in time to go pick up my weekly CSA veggie box.

7:30am – wake up begrudgingly. see weather. 90 degrees and humid. hair up? hair down? going to be with the entire department – what to wear?
result: cursed self for getting up late and not eating breakfast at home. hair down. pulled a “nicer” shirt out of the closet. cursed self for not doing laundry last night. cursed self for being fat and hating all available options.

8:30am – arrive at hotel. size up breakfast options. bagels? butter? cream cheese? jelly? pastries? muffins? unripe-looking fruit? juice? water?
result: chose half a bagel. warned colleague (silently, in my head) not to judge me for putting back half a bagel. toasted bagel. chose individual tub of cream cheese. used half tub and tossed rest. took small portion of grapes. counted grapes so I could write it down later. grabbed water. poured half glass of orange juice.

8:40am – where to sit? next to whom? should i stick to who i know or pick someone new? should i sit on the aisle?
result: sat at an empty table and let fate decide who sat next to me (secretly hoped that/wondered if someone *would* sit next to me). sat on the aisle in case I had to get up i wouldn’t have to squeeze by someone.

10:00am – onset of hellish migraine. wondered if it was due to (a) lack of standard breakfast accompaniment, diet pepsi; (b) the incessant drone of marketing idiots; or (c) the bagel carbs or juice/grape sugars.
result: cursed self for not eating breakfast at home

11:30pm – marketing drone announces there will be cookies available upon departure (apparently this hotel is known for cookies)
result: debate for a half hour whether or not to take a cookie. curse drone for saying “cookie” in first place

12:00pm – pass by table of cookies
result: take a cookie. curse hotel. curse lack of willpower. curse migraine.

12:05pm – get to car.
result: eat cookie. note it’s deliciousness. cursed self for not taking more cookies. curse self for cursing self for not taking more cookies. ponder how many calories i set myself back. wonder what to do for lunch. briefly ponder long john silvers because i already ‘ruined’ the day with the cookie. decide to get ‘healthier’ lunch

12:15pm – waiting on line at Barnelli’s.
result: get grilled tuna sandwich on wheat bread, no mayo, with house salad, dressing on side.

12:25pm – get to work, run upstairs, attempt to devour lunch in 5 minutes because i have a 12:30pm team meeting
result: decide not prudent to swallow lunch whole.

12:29pm – debate whether or not to bring my lunch to meeting – after all it’s listed as ‘lunch meeting’ in my calendar.
result: cruise by meeting room. all skinny people. only anorexic-looking Russian chick brought her lunch: melon balls. decide that the fat girl should not be eating lunch at the ‘lunch meeting.’ curse overall existence. curse decision to accept meeting invite. curse decision to have accepted this job offer 4 years ago.

1:45pm – return to desk to finish remains of cold sad lunch. ponder if i want ‘dessert’
result: chastise self for chocolate chip cookie. pop cinnamon altoid instead.

repeat ‘dessert’ debate 4 more times through afternoon

Exhausting isn’t it?

I didn’t mean to only eat 1200 calories today. Work was insane and I didn’t eat half of what I brought because I spent the entire day (um, including up to a few minutes ago) working on a presentation. Feh.

Is it better to starve your stress than eat it? Typically I tend to make sweet, sweet love to the vending machine when bugging out about work. Today was different. But is it better? I don’t know. HUNGRY!

I had watermelon and Fage yogurt in the work fridge, dammit! Fat chance it’ll be there tomorrow.

Eat or sleep?
Eat or sleep?

Gah.

Throughout my attempts, there have been a LOT of people who tried to help me.

The elementary-school friend who wrote up my first ‘self improvement’ plan. And yes, I’m serious – ELEMENTARY SCHOOL.

The best friend who bought a Bally’s membership with me – even though she really couldn’t afford it – so I’d have someone to go with.

The bawdy friend who’d go walking with me and come over to my apartment to do Richard Simmons videos with me (and cuss out Richard right beside me – God bless her).

Then there was the Weight Watchers era, and a slew of friends (both “live” and “virtual”) who tried to root me on. Who asked me about my weigh ins, cheered the weight losses, and consoled the slip-ups.

The career girl friend who actually offered up the help of her own trainer.

The therapist who truly wanted to help me figure out what my root issues are. Even her woeful replacement who dispatched me to a psychiatrist for a Wellbutrin prescription and tried to shove Medifast down my gullet. Sigh.

The trainers I hired on my own – Trainers Barbie and Catherine Zeta (as christened by moi because, of course, it wasn’t enough that they were fit but they had to be gorgeous too, right? double sigh).

While some of these folks are still in my life, they’re on the periphery – by and large they gave up on me for giving up on myself. Some I left behind because it was easier to avoid vs. own up.

Lately though I’ve been reminded that I’m not alone. That there are people who somehow manage to love me despite my neuroses, and who still want to hang in there despite my worst flaws and abandonment/hibernation tendencies.

Lunch with beloved sweet friends yesterday helped remind me. They find a way to cut right through to my heart and it warms me immeasurably.

An e-mail today from a nutritionist friend helped seal the deal. Here I have this amazing friend who wants to help me – for free – and I got so caught up in my own issues that I’d avoided reporting in. I felt guilty I was wasting this fantastic gift. i felt she didn’t deserve a “client” like me who wasn’t putting in her all. I tried to “give up” and give her an out. And damn if she refused to take it. She writes in part:

I’m not going anywhere and I’m not letting you *give* in – this is a long process because it’s more than just switching to brown rice ya know?

Let me re-iterate something to you: this will not be easy and you do not need to be perfect for this to work…there is success in every small thing we accomplish.

So, I’m not letting you stop –

I’m not letting me stop, either.

I’ve pretty much abandoned this space for the past two months because I didn’t feel like I had anything worthy or new to say. And in the time I’ve been gone not much has changed except for various fits and starts and stops. Story of my life.

I met friends for lunch today. Friends I do not see or talk to nearly enough. And as typically is the case in these outings, I feel like I have little to contribute to the conversation. I feel like nothing every really happens in my life. I am the Queen of Status Quo. And even when I’m not…even when I’ve embarked upon The Next! Great! Weight! Loss! Adventure! I feel my own eyes start to roll about it because…nothing ever happens with it.

One of these dear friends said to me, “I’m incredibly frustrated with you…but I get it.”

I’m incredibly frustrated with me, too, and I don’t get it. I could easily write out 100 reasons or motivations I have to change my life – in so many areas – but I came to admit today that, as miserable as they make me feel, they’re apparently not miserable enough reasons to spark permanent change. AND I DON’T KNOW WHY BECAUSE THEY ALL PRETTY MUCH SUCK MONKEY BALLS.

My other friend, the Logical One, can’t understand why I stop. That makes sense…it’s not logical, so I don’t expect her to get it. Why do I stop the one thing that works for me, the one thing that is helping to put me in a position to permanently strip those reasons from my list? I don’t know.

Am I afraid to fall off the wagon so I just purposely step off?
Do I truly not believe that I have these problems?
Do I honestly believe that if I just close my eyes, tap my toes, and utter some Harry Potter catchphrase that I’ll awaken to a whole new life?

It’s weird. I would tell you that I feel like my life is on autopilot, that I just go and do my thing without care or concern or thought. But that’s not true. Every day I make a million decisions that put me at odds with what I say are my goals, that I say are my truest and deepest wants. There’s nothing automatic about that, or wait, maybe there is. Maybe I’m so used to giving up that I don’t see them as choices.

I don’t know.

This is why I stopped writing here. Because a big bowlful of my head isn’t really helpful to anyone. And no one can help me help myself. I’ve tried. With friends. Loved ones. Employees. Programs. I’ve thrown thousands of dollars at this problem and I’m still wrestling with the same issues.

I guess if nothing else getting it out helps on some level.

Both of the above statements would indicate that I should be blogging about losing weight, right?

Let’s cut to the chase: I need to be losing weight.

I read this today and it hit me square between the eyes:

All the Weigh Blog – Things I’ve Learned

I want to be able to write this kind of post in a year.
I want to feel the way she feels.
I want to experience the joy she expresses.
I want to know in my bones that I am on the right path and won’t go “back” to my “old ways.”

I want this to be a weight LOSS blog, not a whine-about-not-losing-weight blog.

Every day I need to be moving toward a goal of a healthier life. Of losing weight. Of being whole. Every day I need to ask myself what I want and what I’m willing to do to get it.

A while back a former trainer of mine met Jillian Michaels and had her autograph the Master Your Metabolism book for me. The inscription read “What is it you REALLY want? Love, Jillian xoxo”

I framed that page and put it on my nightstand so it’s the first thing I see when I wake up, and the last thing I see when I wake up and the last thing I see when I go to bed.

What is it I REALLY want?

I want to be happy. And I KNOW that weight loss is not an elixir for happiness. But I do know that a lot of my unhappiness comes from dissatisfaction about my weight. It comes from the pain I experience everyday just hauling my carcass around. It comes from feeling so unbelievably *conspicuous* because of my size.

I want to live a long and healthy life with my beloved. I want to enjoy our life together in every way possible.

What I want is to have this be a successful weight loss blog. Not in terms of traffic, but in terms of content. I want this to be a blog about me successfully LOSING WEIGHT.

It is my birthday.
And, yes, I’ll stop the LOLcat speak.

Like every other birthday, I had grand plans and goals that by this day, I’d be X. I’d have done Y. And Z would be my next goal on the horizon. And yet here we are, and I’m not even past A. Sigh.

I did not go back to Weight Watches on June 5. Or on June 12. But I think that my butt will be in the seat on June 19. It was working for me until I stopped working it. And how and why I stopped working it befuddles me. I got into a car accident, and I didn’t blow it. And, yet, somehow, I just…stopped. Like a fire just goes out. Or, rather, my Inner Fat Girl throws herself on it and smothers it out. Bitch.

I’m tired of setting goals that are never achieved.
I’m tired of saying Now! Is! The! Time! only to mea culpa a day/week/month/year/decade later.
I’m tired of being fat and in pain, yet seemingly incapable of making the choices that could free me from that suffering.

This birthday has been eye-opening in a lot of ways. It occurs to me how much I’ve just given up. I didn’t make a big deal out of the day. I put absolutely no effort into planning or thinking or dreaming of how I might want to spend the one day out of the year that’s supposed to be all-about-me. Couldn’t even think about or suggest any wish-list items to my gift-challenged husband (bless his soul, I don’t give him much to go on and yet he tries). I completely abdicated this day like I’ve done my life.

I wanted to come here and trumpet that today is my birthday and I started! it! by! going! to! the! gym! Only to wake up at 4am this morning with the worst cramp in my hip (I can’t even explain what that means, just know that my hitch is not gettin’ along) and I could barely get out of bed, let alone go swimming or get on an elliptical. Which, to be honest, would not have been what I’d consider a fun thing to do on my birthday, but I wanted to be “that girl” – which, in this case, is the girl who goes to the gym on her birthday.

And therein is my problem, methinks. The “that girl” I want to be seems so freakin’ different from the me that I am, I don’t know how to reconcile the two. Do I *really* want to be “that girl?” Because, don’t you think if I *did*, “this girl” would try harder? Or do I really just want to be the “this girl” that I am, and just get permission (from God knows who) to just be that way?

Like, “that girl” really wants to get outside, and build raised garden beds and grow vegetables and enjoy the sunshine and outdoors. But “this girl” is paler than a vampire, can’t be on her knees, hates the heat, is not a fan of getting dirty, and is an all-you-can-eat buffet for skeeters. “This girl” hardly wants to go outside to get the mail half the time. See my dilemma? I don’t want to be “this girl.” I want to be “that girl.” But I wonder, if I ever got to be “that girl” – she would be me, and would I then want something different, too?

Getting too deep for 10:40 in the morning.

Last year, I did an every-day-in-May exercise challenge, and I was rocking it. I weighed about 15 pounds less (I’m guessing because – anyone? anyone? – yes, I’ve not been on a scale in a while).

Two years ago, my husband and I traipsed through Zion National Park. I weighed 345 pounds. t wasn’t a cake-walk, but I managed.

I go to Hawaii in just a few months. I am in serious danger of going there fatter than I was the last time. I’m not even confident I’ll be able to walk any length of time on a beach, on a trail, etc.

I’m 41 today. Why do I feel that the 4 should really be a 9?

I want a better life.
I want better health.
I deserve a better life.
I deserve better health.

I deserve to be a me that I can stand behind.

Crockpot Chicken Tacos
3 frozen chicken breasts
1 package taco seasoning
1 container Trader Joes salsa*

Step 1: Cover bottom of crockpot with taco seasoning.
Step 2: Put frozen chicken breasts over taco seasoning. Stacking is okay.
Step 3: Pour salsa over chicken.

Heat on HIGH for 4 hours, then shred with two forks, turn to LOW and cook for 30 minutes. Perfection.
Servings vary, but I feed 3 people 2 meals with this recipe.

I serve with corn tortillas, guacamole, diced tomato, shredded cheddar and nonfat sour cream.

I’ve heard others top with black beans, corn, onion, etc. Serve in tortillas, over rice, over salad. So flexible.

—–

*I’ve heard many substitutions for this:
- can of Rotel
- container of fresh Pico de Gallo
- container of any kind of salsa

When I get into trouble – when things get hard – I disappear. And, well, I got into trouble and things got hard, and under my rock I climbed. It’s second-nature behavior for me. I’m good at recognizing it but haven’t yet succeeded in rethinking/reframing/rebehaving in a way that helps me through the challenges vs. just running away from them.

I’m reading a really great book by Geneen Roth called Women, Food and God. Because I’m a woman, obsessed with food, and utterly conflicted about God. So it’s a good fit, and a real eye opener.

When I read these “kinds” of books (and let’s face it, I’ve read a LOT of these kinds of books), I tend to underline passages that resonate with me. I’ve probably underlined 1/4th of it thus far and I’d *love* to post them but they’re so many I’m sure I’d get sued for copyright infringement.

What’s grabbing me the most, the thing that makes me tear up when I read it, is just how much I’ve used food as an escape. I have finally figured out that I’m not one of those people who says they “just love food.” I don’t love the food. Most of the time, I loathe the food (as I’m shoveling it down my gullet). What I love is what the food does for me. I love how the food makes me feel for the nanosecond I am eating it…before it’s gone.

There’s a line in the book where she writes (and I’m paraphrasing) that basically all the evils of the world would vanish when she’d eat a Hostess Sno-ball. In that moment, she became all that she didn’t believe she was at the moment. Until it was gone, of course.

When I eat, I am normal. And whole. And loved. When I eat, it’s a reward for putting in the extra hours (although, if I didn’t put in the extra hours, I wouldn’t be eating as poorly as I do). When I eat, it’s because I’m “treating” myself (even though 90% of time, the food is kinda crappy). When I eat, I am not the me I otherwise know myself to be (even if that “me” isn’t an accurate perception).

—-

So, yeah, there’s that.

I got into trouble not long after the “I think it’s gonna stick” post. Because, yeah, that was a smart idea – crowing to the universe about my newfound strength and resolve. Sigh. I found my eating habits getting a bit lax. I found my work life getting crazier. I found a seriously fantastic new way to distract myself from myself, and I fell off my wagon. HARD. And then I just abandoned everything I had been doing, and using every self-numbing tactic I knew. I found myself up 2 pounds on the home scale, and then skipped my Weight Watchers meeting. At the time I told myself it was okay. At the time I said that it was normal to have a gain after six great weeks. At the time I said no problem, I’ll shake it off and drop 4 pounds the next week.

And I haven’t been back since.
Nor have I gotten on any scale.
And I’m ashamed and embarrassed.

So here I am. Trying to grab hold and pull myself back from the brink. I’ve spent part of the day cleaning. Organizing my closet. Putting order to the chaos around me.

I’ve just thrown out my winter sweaters – my fall back clothes. They are so overworn (because nothing else fits and I hate shopping) that I couldn’t bear the sight of them anymore. Come next winter, I will have to buy new clothes, regardless of my size. I pray they will be smaller.

I’ve thrown out my folder of clippings. I’ve been clipping magazine articles about anything and everything for probably 10 years. Diet trends. Weight loss success stories. Exercise cards. “7 Ways to Feel Fearless!” kind of psychobabble. I’d look at my folder and always say to myself, “one day I’m going to work through that.” I would convince myself that my salvation would be found in the next story or sample menu. And, really, all I’ve ever done with it is schlep it from house to house, fiddle with it occasionally, and put it back wistfully because I wasn’t “ready” yet. Well, I’m never going to be ready. So it’s in the trash. I saved maybe 12 out of what is easily (no exaggeration) 200 pages. One page is a closet I covet (for my “next house”, of course). Another two pages are charts from when I was working with a trainer on free weights about, oh, 7 years ago? I’d like to get back to those numbers. I saved a group of pages from People’s “I Lost Half My Size” series because I look so much like their Before pictures – if they can do it, so can I. And I saved one article of a woman who started losing 150+ pounds after 40. Because 41 is ready to slap me upside the head in 2 weeks.

So, no, I don’t have any clue if *this* is going to stick. But I’d like it to be a tad sticky, at the very least. The fact that I’m posting today instead of deleting my entire blog (something I’ve done before), is a positive step in that direction – as is admitting how I’ve failed yet again.

I haven’t decided if I’ll be at my WW meeting on Saturday. As I think about it, I hear a friend’s voice in my ear asking me, “Why not just go?”

Perhaps.