A Plan

Still lacking in focus, but it was a strange weekend… with things being closed on Friday, I felt strangely untethered. I, apparently, am better off with boundaries.

I have decided to create a Plan. I’ve always read about them, and people who’ve been successful in losing weight extol their virtue, claiming that they never would have succeeded without. And yet I’ve always flouted the idea; I am after all too spontaneous, too dynamic to be hemmed in by a Plan. But this weekend has shown me that I am meant to have boundaries.

So a Plan. First, the meal Plan. When I get a break at work, I will write up a meal Plan (I will first steal a little journal from the stationary room) for the week. I will also write down my exercise intentions. I’ll then see how well I can follow it, and whether it will help me. I fully expect it to be tedious, but I think I need to create some structure.

I’m also going to establish some goal prezzies for myself as I hit each five pound increment. This is another nugget of wisdom that’s dragged out again and again. However, perhaps the reason that it’s dragged out again and again is because IT WORKS (ya think?). I think I could use some sign of accomplishment and am actually thinking a little silver ring that I admired in a shop up the street would be ideal; I can look at it and remind myself of what I’ve achieved and that I’m still working towards a final goal.

Another oldie but goodie that I’m going to pull out is to not eat anything after 7:00pm. I’ve always rolled my eyes when pseudo-nutritionists start telling ghost stories about how you never burn the calories at night (whooOOOooo). I still think it’s bunk, BUT I do tend to snack and pick and nosh and EAT through the whole evening. And it’s not because I’m hungry, rather I just want some sweet while I cruise the interweb, or some popcorn while I watch the telly, or ‘cause Nick gets to and I just wanna. So, maybe I should just put a stop to all that right now by putting that into my Plan.

Floundering

* Those are flounders... geddit???

I’m eating in a very disordered way, and the more I try and turn my attention to it, the more I fall down. Every day starts out so well, and then there’s a slip. And then another. And then, before you know it, I’ve eaten the world and it’s only 2:30 in the afternoon.

Aside from the fact that my weight has been slowly but surely rising, I’m also starting to feel the other side-effects of my poor eating habits. I’m currently suffering from a major sugar crash and want nothing more than to crawl under my desk and sleep. My skin has lost its glow and my eyes are puffy in the morning.

I’m not sure how to deal with the lethargy that threatens to overwhelm me. I’m going to see a personal trainer on Saturday, and will be joining a running group starting this Tuesday coming. I’m not sure if either of these will address my poor eating habits.

Reasons why I want to lose 15 to 20 lbs:

1. Football season starts up in 3.5 weeks
2. Dance recital (in teeny-tiny outfits) in about 5 weeks
3. Weekend away with several other couples in about 8 weeks
4. Wedding, which will also be attended by Nick’s ex in about 9 weeks
5. Wedding in which I’m a bridesmaid in about 14 weeks

Positive things:

• I’ve been hitting the weights 2-3x/week for the past few months, and I’m definitely noticing improvements in strength
• I’m still getting to gym 3-4x/week
• I was doing really well with everything until I came back from Trinidad 2 ½ weeks ago
• I have entered everything I’ve eaten into the Daily Plate for the past three days (today being the third)
  

Negative things:

• My eating has been bad bad bad
  

Specifically, every day I’ve been having crazy sugar cravings. I know it’s due to general boredom, job dissatisfaction, concerns about my life with Nick, and the feeling that I’m adrift, and by recognizing the origin of the urge I should be bale to control it. However, such has not been the case. I’ve also noticed that I’ve been steadily gnawing on my nails, another sign of general malcontent.

I’m going to once again try and get back on the blogging wagon, as that seems to give me some focus. I'm going to watch myself for the next few days and try and look at some triggers and/or root causes rather than jumping in with undirected solutions.

Re-learning

One would think that I would have learned something by this time about how my body works and about how my brain is connected/disconnected to my body. And yet.

Firstly, I am back (obviously). I was horribly busy, and then our router broke at home so I have to use Nick’s computer, which I don’t like at all, and I just felt like I was spinning my wheels with this whole losing endeavor.

Trinidad was lovely. The ocean was warm and turquoise and I literally floated for hours in it. I wore a bikini the whole time, and felt comfortable in it. I exercised regularly, and ate what I wished to. Lovely.

However, since then I have seen pictures of myself in said bikini . I have returned to lukewarm affections and dreary weather. And in protest I ate unpleasant amounts of foods that I didn’t really want but which were there, and exercised very little. I fell back on several bad habits, and dropped several good ones that I had acquired. I tried to pretend that there was no problem, but in doing so, the problem has magnified itself, and now I am uncomfortably full and feeling sick.

So.

The first thing I did was sign up for this week-loss competition at the gym, which was set to run during the period I was away. I should have seen the warning signs of disordered behavior right then and there. Thinking it started on Monday, Feb. 4th, I ate my face off that Sunday and Monday, trying to cram in all those things that would soon be forbidden. However, the date had been bumped, due instead to start on Mon, Feb. 11th. My eating was sketchy all week, and then I repeated the same behavior on Sunday and Monday (flag number 2). I was better off being at my highest, right? And it would all be water weight, right?

So I weighed in, and my weight was quite high for me. I spent the week eating austere meals, punctuated with a couple of splurges with sugar. I exercised every day and dropped a very acceptable amount of weight. I felt so smug. Especially because I thought the woman running the whole thing was a loon and maybe even kinda dumb. I also realized at this time that everyone there was very low on nutritional-learning curve, and that while they were eating up everything that the woman was saying, I was struggling to bite my tongue because she wasn’t just inane, she was often wrong wrong wrong.

Then I went to Trinidad, and missed my weigh-in. It would be okay, I thought, I’ll come back and will have lost scads of weight and everyone will be shocked and inspired. As I said, I felt fairly peaceful with my body while away, but then on the Sunday as I was returning I started to feel panic about my next-day weigh-in. I restricted my food drastically that day, and on Monday as well. So not only was I exhausted from a red-eye flight home, but I was run-down and STARVING hungry. And I still felt fat. I also wasn’t looking forward to the class, so when Nick started pressuring me to stay, I caved, with the thought in my head that I would just be extra-super skinny for the next weigh-in.

This past week has been a full-fledged return to my old disordered way of eating. I would restrict drastically for a day, but then the evening or the next day I would binge. Meanwhile, I was missing work-outs because I was either tired and hungry, or nauseated and over-full.

All day yesterday in getting ready for my weigh-in I ate almost nothing. I skipped going to the gym at lunch because my head was swimming. And as I got ready for my weigh-in, I realized what I had been doing. I decided to drop out of this competition (although there were only another couple of weeks left anyway), and get my head back in order.

That’s obviously going to take a few tries. Last night, when I ate for the first time that day, I was famished. I ate some homemade baked beans, toast, pasta that Nick made and then scads of Easter treats and dried fruit. I ate until my stomach hurt and I wanted to throw-up. And then today, without really thinking about it, to compensate I brought very little lunch and skipped breakfast. But then when Nick was curt with me, the empty stomach combined with my feelings of rejection opened me up to a mini-binge.

So, I start again. I sit here with a stabbing pain in my belly, and I acknowledge that I have a far way to go to fix my head and my body and all the paths that connect the two.