The Hunt for White October

So, clearly I'm an idiot when it comes to weight loss.

I weighed in Sunday morning at 165.0 pounds, down 86.0 pounds from my starting weight and about 1.50 pounds off last week.

You’ll note that I weighed in on Sunday. Saturday’s weight was 167.0 pounds, which was up from last week, and also up from my mid-week low of 165.25. I should have posted right then, while the rage seethed until I wasn’t speaking English so much as I was speaking F***.

I also should have gone to my meeting, because it’s important to remember that this is a long-term situation, and one bad weigh-in doesn’t matter. It matters even less when I know I’ve been good, and I know that I haven’t succumbed to the chocolate miniatures that chase after me in the hallways at work. Going to a meeting when I’ve had a ‘gain’ is a good time to remind myself that this is lifelong and not week-to-week. But I didn’t go, and Howard didn’t go either, in solidarity to me, and now I’m irritated with myself for making us both miss.

But as I noted above, I weighed in on Sunday at 165.0 and this morning, I weighed in at 164.0. On Thursday, I bought a Calvin Klein suit in a size 8. No stretch, just 8. It’s so obvious now that my body was doing rearranging and opted to shelve the weight loss for the reconstruction, as it were. If I’d only had the sense to see it on Saturday, I could have laughed my way through the meeting, rather than burning adrenaline over nothing. I don’t understand why I flip out when this happens. This is at least the second time in 2007 that I’ve had a ‘closed for renovation’ week, and I always wind up smaller and lighter when it’s over. I can be such a dork sometimes.

I did rally, and then Howard and I had a good day out dress-hunting. We found a silver/champagne jobbie in a size 10 at the first place. It’s lovely, but it’s strapless, naturally, (grrr!) and the back is cut very low, so I just don’t know. My back isn’t nice enough to expose, even through organza or lace, and so I’d have to have a jacket made, and that’s on top of the alterations charge and $900 price tag for the gown.

We found 4 more at stop #2. We forgot the digital camera and so had to take pics of the finalists on my phone. They were teeny and grainy and the octopus had a starring role in a couple of shots, so those dresses are out. The lone finalist from Trip #1 is out, too. I liked it because I looked better in a close-fitting dress than I thought I would, but I don’t like spaghetti straps, and it didn’t have enough action in the bodice to suit me.

This is getting easier, in that I know what I don’t want, which takes out most of a salon’s inventory. Nothing pouffy in the skirt, nothing slutty in the torso, and it has to be long with a train. I like the lace trains over the satin, and the satin over the taffeta, and anything non-white gets my vote before the Victorian costumes. On the advice of my friend Jean-ius, I am no longer listening to sales clerks who blather about how I can affix sleeves to strapless dresses, yank out layers of tulle to ‘slim down’ the silhouette, and/or carve up the train to make a ‘modesty wrap’--as if some rectangle of sheer fabric is going to ‘modest up’ a dress that stops 2 inches above my gravity-challenged décolleté. But there’s been nothing that leaped out at me and said, “Here Comes The Bride!” and that’s a little disturbing.

We’re going out again in 2 weeks, the next time DS spends the weekend with X. I hope I find The Dress on that trip, or at least decide that something I’ve seen already is close enough to be ‘it’. The next time I’d be able to shop after that is in April, because we’re heading back down to Florida for vacation at the end of March. The upside is that, by April, I’m likely to know what my true bottom-weight is, or at least be close enough to it that I could really shop in the size I’ll be wearing at the altar. The down side is, that’s only 6 months from the wedding. If I wind up buying a gown from some place that has to order it (rather than just handing me the dress from the inventory), then I’ll have to wait 16 weeks while little boys in Asia go blind sewing the appliqué and seed pearls to the bodice.

Frankly I think all that blather about taking 4 months to make a dress is just a load of crap. It just isn’t possible that a bridal gown displayed in every commercially-available magazine is so unique that each one must be made by hand. I think that the manufacturers deliberately wait months to process ordering, so that the bride feels better about shelling out hundreds (or thousands) of dollars for a dress she’ll wear for about 6 hours.

But even if it’s a fake wait, I have to factor that in. I could just go to places that sell off the floor and/or only buy things in current inventory. It’s a smart move, because the dresses are discontinued and so are much less expensive than those ordered ‘fresh’. It’s also a good risk, since I’m a size 10-12 now, and most of the try-on dresses are ordered in that size. I don’t have the need to have my dress custom-made or special-ordered. What I do have is a need to choose a dress. I’m holding up selection on attendant wear and flowers, both of which need My Dress as the standard-bearer before anything else can be done. Maybe we’ll all just wear tuxes.

After we finished at salon #2, we decided to make an impromptu stop at one of those cattle-call ‘salons’ that send brides down conveyor belts and stuff them full of Bridal Fear on their way to the ceremony. Those places are designed for the younger, ‘blushing’ crowd, as it were, and seem to cater to a more manufactured, cookie-cutter wedding, but we were in the neighborhood, they have a dress that’s of interest to me, and we figured there was no harm in trying.

Wanna bet?

First of all, it was a reprise of the bridal expo: give me your information, go stand over there, you should have made an appointment, and are you the mother of the bride (that’s my favorite one). Second, it’s sort of a Sam’s Club of wedding paraphernalia, so there’s ‘booths’ of other vendors smashed into the lobby, with card tables overflowing with wedding kitch and registration forms. It’s a big, big place, but it’s stuffed full of dresses and women, and so the tux ‘booth’ is competing for space at the entrance with the videographer and the disc jockey, and everybody's blaring their ‘come buy my crap’ music, so the whole place sounds like a county carnival.

Most everyone there was a twenty-something bride, and there were tons of them. The places I’ve been so far are one-appointment-at-a-time salons that don’t open unless they're expecting someone. It’s very different at Bride’s Zoo. I saw no fewer than 6 women in wedding gowns, all of them standing at attention with a ‘don’t shoot my puppy!’ look on their face, nodding in time with the finger wagging, clipboard-toting "Zookeeper" who was hard-selling them into whatever gown the bride happened to be wearing. I’m trying now to figure out the dress designer so I can go somewhere else. It’s worth it to me to pay more, just so I don’t have to go back to that place. I half-expected to see someone walking around with one of those trash scoopers, just like at the Zoo.

I think what I really need here is some girl-help. Howard is awesome and I really need him there, but he’s not much of a critical eye. It’s great to hear him say, ‘honey, you look beautiful’, but it isn’t helping me decide on what dress is going to be The One, and which one should be laughed off my shoulders and talked about over cocktails once the Try-On March is over. Don’t even think that the bridal ‘consultants’ are much help. Those are the beasts suggesting I create my own dress out of their $900 fabric. They have their own sales code that I’ve already figured out, and that makes me want to slug them with my pearl-crusted evening bag. Whenever I put a dress into the ‘maybe’ pile, someone from the salon invariably says, “Oooh, that’s my favorite dress!” It’s the bridal equivalent to ‘our manager has that same bed at home.” I need someone estrogen-based who is not on commission and who can tell me if my shoulders look good framed with nothing but atmosphere, or if I should really consider something in an A-line.

No, no, no!

It’ll all come together. Like Howard said, the dress is a tough thing to nail down, because it requires old-fashioned attendance to do it. We did most of our venue shopping over the phone, most of our photographer screening on the internet, and all our musicians came by referral, so it was basically a one-call, ‘are you free/what’s the charge?’ conversation, and we’re finished. The dress requires hours in my underwear and drives between shops, and lots of frowning and fussing once all the crinoline is in place. It’s a huge help that I can actually get into the dresses I’m considering, and now that I have made my peace (kinda!) with the Naked Gown, it’s going better. But 2 trips a month is going to make this a long, long process. I’m super-glad now that we didn’t wait until May to start shopping, as we'd originally planned. I’d be standing in the dressing room at the Barn of Barrington, barking orders at my seamstress to get the pins out of my dress so I could walk down the aisle. So, it could be worse.

I mean, at least I’m still losing weight.

A the B(uild-A-Bride)

Girding My Loins

I weighed in at 166.50 pounds on Saturday morning, down about a pound from last week..

As of Friday night, I was down less than 0.50 pounds, and I was so irritated over having a light loss on the week of my period that I actually ran on the treadmill. It didn’t help, but I did get to demo the new phone/mpg3 player that Howard bought me for Valentine’s Day. Let me tell you, I am in dire need of a Playing With Phone tutorial. I couldn’t ever figure out how to get to my music, and doing that while jogging made the job even tougher. I kept logging myself on to the telephone network’s private internet account. I’m pretty sure I text messaged Fiji before the whole thing was over.

I declared a goal weight of 163.0 pounds at WW, which would equate roughly to 160.0 pounds at home. I think I can do better than this, but I am loathe to declare my actual goal, for fear I’ll never get there. My body might be okay to hold a lower weight, but my brain knows that I haven’t seen the lighter side of 160 pounds since Big Hair was in.

Part of the reason I have a good shot of dropping the Big Bar on the balance scale once more (first from 200 to 150, and then from 150 to 100), is that I haven’t exercised at all, apart from near-daily sex with my betrothed. I’m not thin so much as I’m squishy. Muscle weighs more than fat, and so since I have less muscle, I can support a lower body weight.

So a goal weight at WW below 160 is probably still very achievable, since even if I went down to 150, I could never put on 10 pounds of muscle. I get hard-body pretty nicely when I’m lifting weight, but I don’t ever get bigger. When I was in my 20s, I worked out 5 days a week, 2 hours per session, and even then, when I could bench press 150 pounds and squat nearly twice my body weight, my arms were still smaller than a man with no training.

My meso- to ectomorphic frame takes on muscle with great care, only after convening with my brain, my bones, and my central nervous system. They do a Project Scope, send consultants in from Omega-3 University and the Institute of ‘Please, Don’t Let Her Do That Man-Wannabe Thing Again!’, and then, 4 to 6 weeks after I have put my flesh to the metal, I might see a teeny muscle-weight gain. It always comes with that Strict Father threat—you know, the kind that crabby dads give to their children whenever a new present is handed over. “You take good care of that, or I’ll send it back to where it came from, and give you a whoopin’ besides.” I get firm almost right away, and all the curves get accentuated. I never, ever have issues with bulky shoulders or thunder thighs. Those things come when I’m not working out.

I know I must do it, and really, I want to. I love weightlifting. I love the feel of the bar in my hand, and the burn of my muscles as I take them to failure. I love wearing gym-ratty clothes and grunting as I squeeze one more rep out of my screaming thighs. And I love, love, love the feeling when it’s over. If I really push it, then when I’m leaving the gym, I feel like I’m levitating.

I owe this to myself, and to my heart, and to my happiness as a Lifetime Loser. Fitness is The Key to keeping weight off. Bodies adjust to lower calorie intakes and food sameness, and they get efficient at digesting; hoarding calories and taking less energy to metabolize, so eventually, the calories you ate to lose are now the calories you must cut in order to keep from gaining more.

Howard and I have talked about getting a weight bench and some hardware to put in the lower level. My only real concerns are that I’d have to do it when DS was sleeping (he’d want to join me) and the cats are constantly in the way. They jump on my chest when I’m lying on the bench, weave in and out of my legs when I’m trying to squat, and howl at me when I’m doing pretty much anything else. When I ran on the treadmill Friday, 2 of them stood on the little perch by the window and stared at me as if I’d gone mad. I get that: after all, what logic is there in running until your lungs bleed, to go exactly nowhere? That is crazy.

But there are reception dinners to buy and honeymoon plans to reserve, and now Howard and I are eyeing a new refrigerator, since the one that came with the house is total crap. I can justify this, sort of, since we are actually using the refrigerator now. Before WW, my refrigerator was strictly for stacking empty flower vases, storing rotten vegetables and holding take-out cartons between trips to the microwave.

But it’s a completely ridiculous purchase to make, since the current model is fine. Really, it’s the disposal begs to be upgraded, since it’s constantly coughing up its rejects into the other sink. Plus, our shower door is falling off its hinges, literally, and both our cars are edging toward 75,000 miles. I already have a family membership to the YMCA. All I really need to do is get up early and go, or leave work early and take a tiny detour. There is no reason for me to bulk up my already-filling household with equipment that I cannot commit to using.

Lest I forget the aerobics, let me say, ‘ooooooh’. Ooh, the feel of the elliptical bars in my hands as my legs threaten to spin off my hip joints and my breathing comes so heavy that I can’t hear Melissa Etheridge booming inside my ears.

Perhaps it’s a good thing that I had a light loss during a period week, so I can see that the last group of pounds, however many they may be, must come off the truly old-fashioned way, by diet and exercise.

In the mean time, my size 10 dress pants are starting to sag in the seat, and my size 12 blouses border on the Ridiculously Huge. Today I tried to anchor my Medium sweater into my skivvies, because it kept sneaking out of my pants and showing my low back to the company at large. I figured I might let my high-cut briefs do something other than give me panty lines. I tucked it inside my drawers, and then checked my reflection in the mirror. Guess what? Fully two inches of my underwear was sticking out above my waist band. I mean, it’s a good problem to have, but it’s still a problem.

And now, since I have pudding-jiggly thighs and my triceps are now exposed enough to wave along with my hands when I’m short-sleeved, I may actually have to consider wearing knickers all the time and transfer permanently over to either a ‘support garment’, which is code for ‘thin, but too wobbly to support the clothes you fit in’, or (gasp!) a thong. My god, as if flossing my teeth weren’t enough. Now I have to push stuff into my hoo-ha region, just to get some coverage. Oh, the irony. But at least this way, if I have to double my drawers as shirt-anchor, people will see something other than “Hanes” across my backside.

Maybe it’s time to consider one of those Chinese character tattoos.

Or, maybe it’s time to realize that I’ve been dang lucky to lose nearly 85 pounds while doing nothing but food-deprivation, and if I’m to stand someday in front of a gaggle of suburban wives and declare my Years of Maintenance, I’d better get my Disappearing Hiney into an exercise program. It’s all in the starting. Howard is on Week 3 of pounding it out on the treadmill every morning. The weather is warming up…sort of. I mean, yeah, it was barely above freezing today, but compared to last week, when the “high” was a ten degrees below zero, 31 degrees and sunny is practically windbreaker weather.

Get me to a swimmery. Or a runner. Or someplace I can burn calories doing something other than ‘at rest’. Even DS is bowling now, and taking swimming lessons. I owe it to him to give a good example. Thin isn’t enough. Skinny isn’t sexy the way that trim is. Lithe is lovely; sticks are just, well, sticks. Besides, even in a size 6 jean, the octopus lounges across my lap, happy for the lycra and oozing over the places my thong would be (dear god, am I seriously considering this?). If for no other reason, I have to get this nasty invertebrate off of my abdomen. I don’t mind the stretch marks; in fact, I rather like them. But the wrinkle-puss look has got to go.

And so do I. See you out there. Don’t worry if I look like I’m about to collapse. If I fall off the treadmill and start to bleed, I can always use my thong as a tourniquet.

A the G(oing to Firm it Up)

Eat the Stress

There is no cruelty greater than PMSing on Valentine’s Day.

I’ll skip all the obvious Hallmark derision surrounding this ‘holiday’. I’m not a greeting card person, and so red cardstock does nothing for me. Besides, the last time I checked, Shoebox Greetings didn’t make anything edible.

But I had a beast of a PMS this month. I can’t really explain the why of it. Wedding plans are progressing nicely. My family is even cooperating at a predictable level, initiating a scuffle with my mother that allows me to ignore everyone from her side. My budget hadn’t really allowed for extended family anyway, but now I’m thinking I will have to invite the whole of my father’s side, just to have some guests on my side of the aisle. Right now, my ‘half’ of the list falls distinctly into the Under-Represented category. I’m not even sure that my father will be coming.

Right now, my list of ‘really want them to come’ and ‘they’ll really want to be there’ totals right around 25. Considering that my list includes both my bridal attendants AND my parents, who will be standing with me, and not seated in the crowd (or my mom and brother if Dad doesn’t come), my side of the aisle is going to hold roughly the same human population as Antarctica. We may have to eliminate the bride’s side/groom’s side tradition, since if we don’t, the whole room may tip over from Howard’s guests, and then all my guests will be in their laps, and no one is going to watch the processional.

The search for my dress can’t be to blame, either, since Howard and I had good luck last weekend on our first expedition. I remained adamant about not baring my whole upper body during the ceremony, even though all the designers in the world are conspiring against me. I’m sorry, but I just cannot see standing up formal ceremony with my neck, arms, shoulders, and, let’s face it, boobs, hanging out. I guess in that vein, I’m glad that my family won’t be attending. They’re all very conservative, very Christian folk who think that a woman should sew up the walking slits in her skirts. Nobody smokes, drinks, or dances, and I think they might faint if they see me marching half-naked up the aisle.

As it turns out, you can find gowns with sleeves, and if they don’t come that way, you can chop off train and/or skirt to make some. What’s more, all strapless gowns comes with shawls or wraps or both (some even come with little handbags, though what a bride needs to carry in a PURSE when she’s walking down the aisle escapes me), and there’s all kinds of interesting ways to fashion said covering so that the dress looks modest and appropriate for the service, and then festive and sprightly for the reception.

Maybe it’s the fact that Howard and I are embarking on a 12-week intensive-study program with DS to determine where he falls on the Autism spectrum, and what we need to do to prepare him for mainstream kindergarten in the fall. The school district wants to send him to early childhood kindergarten, which is designed for learning disabled children (which he is not), and does not address social or behavioral challenges (which he has), and so we are engaging with experts to determine just where he is and exactly what he needs. It’s 5 full 3-hour sessions over the next 2 or 3 months with PhDs and social workers and teachers and testers, answering and asking questions, and then waiting 4 to 6 weeks to see what they say/recommend/offer. By the time the report comes out, school’s regular session could be over, and while DS does attend the summer session, we’re dancing on the edges of not being able to fit him in a mainstream classroom, just on deadline issues. So yeah, that’s pretty stressful.

In any case, the PMS Beast hit me hard, and just when the office exploded with colored-sugar infestations. As if that weren’t enough the WW meeting last weekend was entitled, “Chocolate: is it good for your heart?” Our wondrous leader pointed out early and often that this was not a carte blanch to eat chocolate and pretend you’re still on program, but still, every time she mentioned the words ‘cocoa’, ‘sweet’, or ‘sugar’, my pancreas spasmed.

By the time yesterday rolled around, I had somehow forgotten that I’m 8 months into a weight loss program and am down 84 pounds already, because after I stopped at Walgreen’s to buy tampons, I found myself walking up the candy aisle and actually looking for dark chocolate (WW meeting said to eat dark chocolate, since it’s ‘better’ for you). I dug my nails into my palms to keep my hands from reaching out to my old friends, and I high-tailed it to the cash register. By the time I hit my car, I was nearly panting, and let me tell you, the 94% fat free popcorn that I had 2 hours later did NOTHING to help me along.

And oh yeah, the Demons at Reese’s pulled out those dang peanut butter eggs for Valentine’s Day. Oh sure, they molded them into hearts, but I knew what they were. Bastards.

I’m certainly not about to cave in to chocolate at this stage, but I am truly weary of battling this. I can see (again) why the quick-fix diet programs get so much publicity and get popular so fast. How much better and easier this would be if I could just have an injection that cured me of my need for sweets, or that made me indifferent to the trays of goodies lining the hallways at work. I’ve eaten so many pickles this week that I’m starting to smell like vinegar. I’m drinking so much coffee at work that it’s still hot when I get to the bottom of my 16 oz cup. I could certainly drink more water, but I’m already up every hour to grace the ladies room. If I had anything more to drink, I’d have to set up my laptop in the handicapped stall. At least then I’d have a door…

Today I spread out my meals, hoping that eating more frequently would help quell the firestorm in my tummy. Guess what? Eating more frequently boosts the metabolism which makes you hungry sooner. I really can be a dork about this sometimes.

It worries me that since I still have these bouts where I’m hungry all the time, that I’m not eating right, even now, after all these months of tracking and monitoring. I live in fear that Howard will get an assignment out of town and will be traveling, leaving me to fend for myself at dinnertime. I’m a pretty good cook, but I hate doing it, so my ‘dinners’ alone have historically consisted of (1) Diet soda or (2) takeout trash food. I think I can do better than that, but something tells me that, until I got a big shocker at the scale on Saturday mornings, I might be tempted to serve myself turkey jerky and goldfish crackers with DS.

I got my period yesterday, and the Fat Lady has quieted some. But next month is St. Patrick’s Day, and then Easter is right after that, and in between is my birthday and Howard’s mother’s birthday party, which will no doubt overflow with lovelies for the palate. Here’s hoping I’m not PMSing then. Since I’ll be a guest in their house, I’ll have to confine myself to eating my swimsuit and coughing all week to cover up my growling stomach. That should prove interesting.

This sucks, but it’s way better than being fat. I’m sitting at work in my size 6 jeans, and while my feet hurt because I still can’t figure out how to wear heels, I’m comfy in my wee-stretch pants and my size small sweater. Maybe this is just how this is going to go. Maybe I’ll always be just a little bit hungry during my PMS, and maybe that’s just the cost of being thin and healthy. If I can remember that my hunger and my cravings are temporary and not really real, I can get through this. Maybe.

Practice, practice, practice. And steer clear of Walgreen’s during Hell Week. Or, at least send Howard to get my tampons. That’s the trick! After all, we’ll soon be married. Good husbands are cheerful about leaving their warm houses at night and driving through fog to buy tampons for their wives. Better still if they can wrap his coat around him so as not to alert the clerks that they are, in fact, still in their jammies. Of course, Howard sleeps au natural, so that proves trickier, but still, all the more points awarded for effort and originality of trench coat wrapping.

So clearly, the key to PMS chocolate attacks is marriage. Lucky me.

A the H(appy to Suffer-apparently)

Running on Empty

I hate Fridays.

I weigh in at WW on Saturday mornings, and so consequently, I starve all day long on Fridays. Even though I have given up my Starvin’ for the Cause mentality and eat pretty much the way I do the rest of the week, my brain knows that I want to make a good impression on the WW scale, and so it taunts me with faux-hunger pangs all the live-long day. Sometimes I’m hungry from breakfast before I even leave the house for work.

I am a co-conspirator in the Pinched Stomach department, since I usually skip my evening popcorn snack and wait to have my breakfast on Saturday until I return from my meeting. I take a big coffee mug with me, and I chug that down as soon as my weight is recorded. Coffee is an appetite suppressant extraordinaire, and scalding my esophagus and stomach lining with a caffeine-heavy drink is a superb way to trudge out the last hour before I can have my first meal of the weekend.

I could eat breakfast before I weigh in, of course. After I did it that first week, my losses would be recorded at actual, since I’d do it consistently every Saturday. Howard and I call this ‘taking the hit’. We did it last fall, when we had to switch to wearing jeans to the weigh-in, instead of shorts. I didn’t really want to do it, since jeans weigh more than shorts, and so my loss for the week could be erased (or worse!) if suddenly my clothes weighed more. But I figured that if I didn’t do it in September, I’d be freezing my flat @ss off in January, and so better to record a smaller-than-actual gain that week, and then pick it up the week after. So I waited until a post-period week, when I’d lost nearly 5 pounds, wore jeans that week, ‘taking the hit’ on my recorded loss. After that, my losses resumed their normal drops, and now I wear jeans without worry. In fact, I’m thinking about wearing jeans every week, even into maintenance, so I’m never recorded as artificially light and have to do something stupid before a weigh-in, like skip breakfast.

I could do the same thing with breakfast. I’m PMSing right now, so next week I’ll have my period, and then as early as next Saturday, I could eat something, ‘take the hit’ on my loss, and then sit satisfied in my meetings from them on. I could do it, but the Tragically Competitive Fat Girl simply will not allow me.

And so exacerbates my hatred of Fridays. Not only do I know that Friday is no time to decide suddenly that the cake in the break room is “Mine, All Mine!”, but also, I “know” that I’m skipping my 10pm popcorn snack AND I won’t be having breakfast until about 10am on Saturday, and therefore won’t eat for a large number of hours. So, right after an unsatisfyingly skimpy dinner on Friday (this is not true—it only feels like it to me, since I know I’m weighing in), my brain keeps forcing my eyes to the clock, and then announcing how many more hours I have to be empty-stomached until I can eat again. Fourteen more hours to go. Thirteen hours and fifty-six minutes. Thirteen hours and…you get the idea. I can’t even go to bed early on Friday night, because, guess what? If I did, then I’d be up early on Saturday, jonesing for food and depriving myself so I have a good weigh-in.

Sometimes I really doubt my true long-term commitment to this cause. What does it matter if I eat breakfast and show a small loss, or even a small gain? I’m not doing wrong things, I’m not sneaking chocolate truffles in between my Canadian bacon slices, and so the weight will come off. Like I said, I’m PMSing this week, so I should be up, and I’m not. I weighed in this morning at 167.25 pounds, down about 1.25 pounds from last week, and I still have today and tomorrow to get through, where I’ll probably lose even more before my meeting.

Here’s something else that points to my utter stupidity when it comes to this. Not only do I lose every week, but all my losses come at the end of the week. I thought at first this was due to my No Food Is Good Food program earlier on, but as I adjusted my intake to a normal amount, I discovered that my weight runs in a very predictable cycle. I weigh in on Saturday, and then on Sunday and Monday, I’m up about 1.5 pounds. I have done nothing different at all, though I think maybe since I skip the evening popcorn and eat my breakfast “late”, that my body slows its metabolism, so when I eat regularly on Saturday, my ‘weight’ goes up. Then I’m flat on Tuesday and Wednesday, or I creep down a bit. Thursday, I’m suddenly down about half a pound from the previous Saturday, Friday I’m down even more, and then Saturday, I drop off to my weeklong low.

I really should stop depriving myself of breakfast. I have weighed in at WW twenty-eight separate times since July of 2006, and I have had only 2 weeks where I was disappointed with the results. Even then, I knew what was coming, and was prepared when the scale announced my light-loss (or in one case a 0.20 pound gain). As you know, I’ve lost an average of 3.08 pounds per week since I started with WW, and even though things are slowing a bit now, I’m still logging consistently around 2 pounds per week.

So, maybe I’ll have my standard eggs & (Canadian) bacon for breakfast tomorrow. It’ll be a good week to do it, since I’m PMSing, which means that next week, I’ll log a big loss, just on principle. I should do it this week, to show myself that, even though the reported weight is less of a loss than actual, I can do WW as a normal human being, and that I’ll be happier because of it. I know Howard wouldn’t mind eating breakfast before we go, and I also know that he skips it precisely because I do. I could go the whole-altruism route here, and claim that I’ll be indulging in breakfast fare for the sake of my fiancé, but it’s not true, and anyway, I think we all know that I’m more self-centered than that. Lucky for me, the center is sounder, and smaller than it used to be.

Ooh, I’m getting the jitters already. Maybe I should wait until next week, and shave a pound or so off the Big Loss. Yeah, that’s better. Makes more sense, too. After all, X is taking DS for the weekend and is arriving at my house at 7:30am to pick him up, so Howard and I can go to our meeting together. I can have a leisurely breakfast with Howard, after the meeting, and before we go out on our first voyage to find me a wedding gown.

Oh, the wedding gown. Hmmm. Do I really want to shop for that tomorrow morning, when I’m PMSing AND I’ve just eaten? I think I need to think it out again….After all, I would really prefer it if the Octopus didn’t make a guest appearance in the ivory silk, come October.

Come to think of it, I hate Saturdays too.

A the D(own with Weigh-Ins!)

Peanut (on the) Brain

My name is Amy, and I am a fat person.

I’d rather say that I’m a recovering fat person. I suppose that’s true as far as it goes, since I am 82.50 pounds ‘recovered’ from my peak fat-person weight. But the Fat Lady lives on, and she bellows with indignation at every peanut buster parfait I have denied her since June.

After 7 months of weekly WW meetings and all this weight gone, I fight harder and with greater skill than in the early days. After all, before WW, I didn’t fight. I just gave in. I saw something I wanted, and I took it. Or, I waited until everyone had left the room, and then I stole away with it. I ate like a hummingbird in front of others and then raced to Burger King afterwards, ordering double everything, to make up for the meal I’d missed in attending “lunch” (if, in fact that’s what you could call the skimpy fare they served a MEAL), and the delay I would suffer before I could legitimately eat the next time.

It isn’t like that now, and in fact, I leave the table satisfied at almost every meal. There are occasions when I eat less than I’d like; but it’s rare, and for those situations, I have a single serving 94% fat free popcorn at the ready. It’s not these instances that cause my alter-ego, The Fat Lady, to emerge. It’s the every day “opportunities” that beat at my resolve like the wind on a flagpole chain

For example, there is a file cabinet at work that is always stocked with sugar-coated delights. I know this, because I walk by it all day long, and there is almost always someone standing there, plucking through the loot and filling their pockets. I have pretty much decided that I can’t indulge, as (a) I am not in that department, and (b) there is nothing from M&M/Mars that is on the program.

However, despite this, and despite the fact that the filing cabinet is “guarded” by 2 men who seem never to leave their desks, and so I can’t sneak any of that diabetic coma-induced evil, it is still a fight each time I walk by that drawer. I know what’s inside, and I want it. It doesn’t matter whether I’m hungry, or that I got fat by rummaging in drawers just like that. It doesn’t even matter that I’m down more than eighty pounds precisely because I don’t go foraging any more. I want candy, and when the emotions hit me, no amount of logic will help. I resist only by fighting against myself and repeating, often without satisfaction, that I don’t eat those foods any more.

There is no relief now that I’ve passed the Christmas gauntlet. Since the Chicago Bears won the division championship and headed south to Miami for the Super Bowl, I have seen a whole parade of orange-and-blue colored foods that are, luckily, unappetizing, merely by their alarming similarity to pigskin. Still, this reformed gal can only see so many bite-sized cupcakes before the Fat Lady knocks me in the salivary glands and demands an explanation. I’ve spent a lot of time at my desk the last few weeks, grinding my seat into my chair and my teeth into my cheeks, chanting and moaning to myself, and hoping that all this brightly colored iniquity is gone before I start this month’s PMS.

Moreover, as February 14 approaches, I am now pummeled with all things pink and heart-shaped. There is Valentine’s day paraphernalia everywhere. I mean, this is a pretty good place to work, but it’s an office. How much love could really exist between cube-mates? And how much do I want to see of it? I’m going on record right now: if those petit fours come back, I’m cracking skulls.

I’ve seen sweetheart smarties in dishes, alcohol-laced balls on trays and donut holes rolled in rainbow-colored sprinkles until they looked like porcupine eggs. Well, porcupine eggs if said ova sprouted pink, white and red quills. Sometimes even the whiff of butter cream assails me as I’m sprinting by, my heels clacking as if I were being chased by Death itself. Even when I don’t want whatever treat is chasing me down the hall, their very presence sends me into spasms. Just one of those little porcu-baubles could set me back a whole week; more if I allowed myself the hiccup to slide over into the peppermint kisses.

And speaking of stupid, I put myself directly in the path of the tornado last weekend, when I offered to bring my favorite homemade dessert to an office get-together. Peanut butter pie. No bake, no fuss, no chance of getting out of it alive. This is my comfort food, my You’ll Love This, And Me, Forevermore dessert, the thing that sets me apart from the real cooks in the crowd. I could forever give up nuts and fried chicken and all things frozen on sticks if I could still eat peanut butter, and I might be willing to give up sex for a while if I could have peanut butter pie. I’ll send the recipe to anyone who wants it. I was going to write it here, but even just recounting my own asinine notion is causing me to drool. Oh, Peanut Butter Mistress. Wrap me in your oily fatness and stick my tongue to my mouth.

I figured at the time that it wouldn’t bother me. I’m a new woman. I don’t need this. I don’t eat these things anymore. I’m immune. If I falter (which I won’t), I have Howard. I am strong!

I am stupid.

I realized my error when I started loading my cart with the ingredients (cream cheese, powdered sugar, graham cracker crusts, and the Great One herself, Jif peanut butter). All I wanted to do was rip the peanut butter jar open and stuff my face inside of it. By the time I got home, I was shaking so badly that Howard had to assemble the things. We made them just in time to load them up and drive out to my friend’s house. We arrived and I opened the back door to retrieve them. The pies had shifted during the drive and were sort of smashed over to one side. They were fine: a bit less pretty than usual, but undamaged and still very edible. I arranged them back on the sheet, and a dollop of one pie landed on my finger. Without thinking, I stuck my finger in my mouth to clean it off. And then I blacked out.

No, I didn’t, though I wish I had. I handed the pies over as planned, I made it all the way through dinner and dessert without a wrinkle, and I enjoyed everyone’s enjoyment of the pie without ever feeling deprived. When we left, I did as I always do, which is to leave the leftovers behind. They’re made in disposable pie tins, so there’s nothing that needs washed or returned. It really is a perfect food.

Since they served lasagna and chicken marsala , Howard and I had only salad and so starved all the way home, dreaming of 94% fat free kettle corn. We indulged, I had a bit of Turkey Jerky to stave off the dizziness I felt (pretty sure it was not blood sugar-related, but why risk it?), and we went to bed, me dreaming of dancing legumes, but otherwise unscarred.

Still, though, it’s been nearly 2 weeks and I can still see them, all whipped up and beautiful in their shells, the guests sliding the spoons into their mouths and then rolling their eyes in pleasure. I sigh and I nod to myself. Yes, it hurts. Yes, I want it. Yes, if I were a true WW, I would figure out how to do have one, just one, and still lose weight. But I’m not a true WW, and I can’t do it. Peanut Butter Pie is a red light food for me, and nothing short of binge would satisfy me. I have to stay away completely-leave the country, change my name, and hope that the Fat Lady never finds out.

I weighed in on Saturday at 168.50 pounds. I’m close to setting a goal weight, and when I do, I will post it here. I still have a ways to go. I’m writing this in my Size 6 stretch jeans, and while they fit comfortably, I can see my problem areas waving at me from under the denim. Plus, I discovered today that they’re 2% Lycra. So let’s see. Size 10 in no-stretch, Size 8 with 1% Lycra, size 6 in 2%. I figure if I could find something in 5% Lycra, I could be a Size 0. Ridiculous, but perhaps no more so than the fact that I still fight the Fat Lady at every turn, even though she’s but a whisper of who she used to be.

I’m eager to see how she reacts when I’m down to goal, my true fighting weight. Perhaps then it just won’t matter to me that I want these fat-making foods. I can face the want, and know that I’m making a conscious decision to resist, because that’s what I really want. Even peanut butter pie doesn’t taste as good as this success does. A year from now, I won’t remember this struggle. And next year, I’ll offer to bring fresh fruit or something that is better for everyone and safer for me.

I embrace my Fat Lady. It is she who reminds me of how I came to be here. I look this way because I choose to, and because I’ve fought for it. If I must wage battle every day, then so be it. Just please, don’t anyone remind me that Reese’s makes a peanut butter egg for Easter.

A the F(at Lady, Reformed)