Wow.

Weighing in at 172.2 today. For those of you keeping score, that is one pound less than yesterday. Why one pound? I didn't do anything different from the days before. But I'll take it!

Sugar, we're goin' down.

173.2 today, down from yesterday.

Very surprising, since I figured I'd stay the same given the Hamburger Bun Incident. I'm happy, though. I'll take it.

I wish my body would catch up to how much thinner I already feel, but it looks like it's going to torture me two tenths of a pound at a time.

I re-read Skinny Bitch last night, and remembered why I didn't like it the first time. The authors have a lot of good things to day, but they're so crass and rude that it just turns me off. It's as if they never considered that you can motivate people without calling your readers (your buyers) assholes and other names every few pages.

Also, some of the swear phrases they use are just ugly, which is odd coming from people urging you to clear up your outlook and clean out your body. Don't get me wrong, I swear as much as the next person, but its use in the book it was incongruous with what they were trying to do. Maybe they just wanted to be sensational to sell books, in which case, well done.

Update

It's Sunday night, three days into this journey. I did very well today. I began the day with a coffee au lait (non fat, unsweetened) and a banana. I had plain chicken breast and red pepper slices for lunch. I had strawberries for a snack, and later some more pepper slices.

Dinner didn't work out as well as I'd hoped. For some reason, our planning was off. My husband was supposed to grill some burgers, but that didn't happen until later, and I was hungry. While I was waiting, I ate a whole wheat hamburger bun with a little bit of Smart Balance "butter". Then I had a very small burger (size of my palm) with about a teaspoon of ketchup, about a 1/3 cup of corn, and about 10 steamed green beans.

Man, am I full.

I have no idea whether I blew it or not, but the bun felt like a mistake. If I were doing Weight Watchers, I'm pretty sure I'm still within my points allotment for the day, but my stomach feels so bloated and full right now that I'm afraid to get on the scale tomorrow.

I can't believe that I used to eat twice this much in a day, and crappy food at that.

On the bright side, I made healthy frozen waffles for my family this morning and managed not to eat one. I managed to make a cheese sandwich for my son and not eat a bite, or make one for myself. What's more is that I think I'm going to make it through this night without eating anything else, which is also new.

I'm dreading the subject of exercise, but I know I'm going to have to confront it sooner or later. Right now, eating less and eating healthier is about all the work I can manage. I think once I feel better I'll be more inclined to exercise.

Failing To Plan

Weighing in at 173.4 today.

The scale was disappointing today. I woke up feeling good, feeling lighter today, and I felt sure the scale would reflect it.

I guess losing .4 of a pound is nothing to sneeze at. That's almost a half a pound in one day. I guess I felt like I worked really hard for that .4 pounds almost all day yesterday, it was a struggle almost all day. I wanted to see that I'd lost a full pound, or maybe two.

Let's marry my expectations to what actually happened yesterday.

I ate very well, coffee and a banana in the morning. Salad for lunch, with water. A bunch of carrots as a snack in the late afternoon, along with a non fat, unsweetened iced latte. A small piece of chicken pesto pizza for dinner (at a kids birthday party), with water. Always water. Then, late at night after the kids went to bed, I drank two glasses of sugar-free ginger ale with lots of ice.

All told, I did excellently, except for the part after dinner where one of my kids handed me their unfinished birthday cake and I ate 3/4 of it. Dammit. Anyone who says food can not be an addiction doesn't understand. I just could not stop myself. After every bite I said, "This is the last bite". I said that until that cake was nearly gone.

It wasn't my best day for healthy eating. The pizza and the birthday cake were low points, and soda - even sugar-free -- isn't exactly the choice of champions either, but kids' birthday parties and parks and other kinds of kid-related events always get me. Cookies and unhealthy foods and snacks are everywhere that kids are, it seems.

On the bright side, usually when I fail like that, I just give up for the rest of the day, turning it into a binge-fest. I didn't do that yesterday. It's been a very long time - years maybe - since I've been able to stop after an initial "binge trigger" like that. Although I didn't stop myself from finishing the cake, I did stop myself from turning it into an all-night sweets-fest.

Isn't it funny how I expected the scale to reflect that I'd lost more weight, even after I ate a piece of chocolate cake? That's how I operate, it seems. My mind decides to ignore the truth. That's partly what this blog is for: for me to face my weight and related issues with rigorous honesty.

OA says: Those who fail to plan, plan to fail. Lesson: I need to plan better.

Eating & The Hours

This morning I had a cafe au lait and a banana. For lunch I had a small Caesar salad with chicken, and a low carb, whole wheat tortilla. I feel very full, almost over-full. I'm good at breakfast and lunch. It's everything after 3PM that gets me, and at the moment the clock is ticking away towards The Hours. The Hours are from 6-10:30PM. That's the time I eat the most.

I am so used to reaching for food and snacks that I don't know what else I should do with myself. One school of thought says "Replace the target food with fruits and vegetables", but another school of thought says "Overeating of food - any food - is a symptom of a different problem." Getting rid of reaching for food altogether seems like the right goal. I would like to find contentment in my life as it is. As it is, I have a great life filled with good family, love, health, a lovely home and a job many people would love.

So what's the problem?

Even though it's a job that many people would love, I'm not sure it's the right job for me. As a kid, I was always very creative. I loved art, music, poetry and I especially enjoyed writing. I should have been a writer, as evidenced by the various poems and stories I wrote as a kid. I don't really know why I didn't follow that path, except for the perhaps vulgar reason that I saw the kind of lifestyle that other paths could afford me, and the notion of relative financial freedom was more appealing than nurturing my creative side. The arts, I figured, could be a hobby I'd explore in my free time. This logic assumed that I'd have free time.

What I didn't understand was the impact that having kids has on one's available personal time. My day starts with caring for kids and helping them off to school, then it's filled with fast-paced, challenging work in an industry I'm not too passionate about anymore (but in a job I'm good at), then it ends with picking up the kids and making them a healthy dinner. And then I stare into The Hours, a three-hour abyss of caring for the kids (two kids under age four) until it's time for bed. And then, it's time for my end-of-the-day reward. I eat until I can't eat any more. A pint of ice cream, or a sleeve of Chips Ahoy equals one serving for me.

Before you imagine that I'm some kind of awful mother for referring to spending time with one's own children as "the abyss", know that I care very well for my children. I do a lot of activities with them, and I fill their lives with love and fun and diverse experiences. I'd walk through fire for them; my love for them is complete. I read parenting books and I try to incorporate what I've learned. But damn. They're irrational and emotional and caring for them in a loving way all the time is 85% just plain hard work. I want to do everything right. I want to give them a healthy foundation. You can see that we're back to the perfectionist theme again.

It seems like no one else feels this way. It seems that all the mothers I know are contented (at least more content than me), and no one complains about how hard it is to stare into The Hours with two kids under four, knowing that their future and happiness depends on a solid foundation that you might be too tired from a day's work to provide.

Food

Weighing in at 173.8 today.

Last night, even after I typed that blog post, I ate 2 small "lunch box"-sized bags of Goldfish. That was 280 calories, almost a third of what a person should consume in an entire day. Was I hungry? No. I was bored. I had all this time in front of me before bedtime with my kids, and I just didn't know what to do with myself.

I justified it by saying "Well, compared to what I usually eat at night, that was actually great." As if the scale cares about relativity.

I know when the overeating started. It started after I got married about 8 years ago. I weighed 152 when I got married, and I looked good. I ate well and exercised a lot. I was a runner. After I got married, I would come home after a stressful day at work and, since my husband worked late, think "now what?". It got to the point where I would stop for candy or cookies on the way home, and I'd look forward to the evening time all afternoon. In the evening, the house was quiet and I could just sit and relax.

Then we had children, and any hope of straightening that all out just went out the window. The kids are older now, they're past the midnight wake-ups and constant colds and irregular schedules. I kept thinking that by the time the kids were this age, I'd get my act together and tackle the weight thing. That was about twenty pounds ago.

The weight thing is, I suspect, somehow connected to my inability to speak up in uncomfortable situations. I'm a pretty outgoing person by nature, and no one who knows me would imagine that I don't always speak my mind with confidence, but the secret is that I don't like conflict. I don't deal well when I have to say something -- anything -- that might make the other person uncomfortable, or not think well of me. I'm afraid that I'll be friendless.

I've taken some steps to remedy some things about my life. About four months ago, I started seeing a therapist to figure out why I, a woman who has so much good in her life, was so unhappy. As a result, I started nurturing my creative side, which is something I'd stopped making time to do mainly because in the hierarchy of daily priorities, such personal pleasures always fall to last. I've even had some success and positive response in that arena. I've started attending Overeaters Anonymous conference calls, which fit terrifically into my schedule. A combination of therapy and OA has granted me insight about how my feelings about conflict don't just disappear into the ether. I eat to suppress them.

This blog is my way of opening my mouth, not to eat, but instead, to speak.

First Post: I'm a compuslive overeater

I am a forty year-old compulsive overeater. I am 5'6 and I weigh 174.5 pounds. By my estimation, I am 24 pounds overweight. I have never weighed this much in my life.

I am a working mother in a highly demanding job. I overeat at night, mostly sugary sweets and ice cream. I sometimes hide food. I sometimes make special trips just for sugary food. I look forward to the time when I can just eat. Eating is, I feel, the only thing in my life that is for me. It is my reward for getting through another stressful day successfully.

I arrived here because I tried to diet (again), and for the first time in my life, I realized that I just couldn't do it. In my life, I am an overachiever, a classic perfectionist. I know a lot about healthy eating. Intellectually, I know how to do it. But I don't know that I can do it. It's a big deal for me when I am unable to do something. There are not many things that I can't apply myself to and get done, but I am not sure I will be able to stop eating at night.

It's taken me twenty years to make the connection between my weight, my overeating, and how I hide my emotions. I think I'm going to have to dig into what's driving me to overeat in order to stop it. I'm not looking forward to this journey because I'm afraid to make the fundamental changes that appear to be required.