Leaping from the Goldfish Bowl

I discovered last week that I am still the same old fat girl.

Howard is traveling still, this being Week #8 that he’s been out of town full time. Yeah, he comes home on Thursday night, but it isn’t until after 9pm, and we both work on Fridays, so to my mind, he’s gone all week. Plus, Sundays are filled with limo reservations, boarding pass printings and packing, so to me, it feels like he’s only here on Saturdays. It’s not enough, and it’s wearing on all of us.

Howard and I are now to a point where we’ve agreed to have a fight on Friday night, whether we need it or not, which we will. We’re both so wired from being apart that we get cranked up over small things. We spend all week ignoring them, because we have so little time, and that's late at night on the phone, so it's a weak connection at best. We don’t address anything real while he’s on the road, and then the adjustment of him returning home wipes us out so badly that inevitably we blow up at each other. Then we spend hours feeling guilty about fighting on our lone day together, which exhausts us even further.

So, starting this week, instead of doing that, we are now going to catalog the week’s offenses, battle them out on Friday night, cry, make up, have sex, and then spend the rest of our weekend being normal. We’re going to do it anyway, and so we might as well get it done, so we can get on with being our usual happy-family selves.

Howard has been an angel through it all, shouldering the blame, as if there were any, for being out of town. He spends his whole weekend doing things for DS and I to “make up” for his time away, and he manages, somehow, to do some wedding planning while he’s working 10-hour days and having dinner with his power-mongering boss. Plus, as you know, he cooks all day long on Sunday for me, packaging up single-serving meals and making sure there’s enough produce in the house to let me eat WW-friendly all week long. He even makes a few jello cups for me, so I can have a little something sweet and topped with some fat-free Reddi-Whip for dessert. I can eat all week as if he were here, and continue sliding down the scales, as if he’d never left.

Would that it were so. I’m so down by his absence that I can’t bring myself to eat, and at the same time, my emotions beg me to comfort them with all those No Longer On The List foods.

I made it through the first couple of weeks all right. I missed Howard, but it was sort of a romantic longing. Oh, look: at last a lover that I’m sorry to see leave the house. We can do a whole Sara McLachlan thing, where we’re sad, but it’s glorious. That wore out quickly, though, and then the loneliness and the quiet of the house prodded me to comfort myself with the old standbys.

It started small, as it always does with a bad habit. The first bad week, I ate ham instead of Canadian bacon at breakfast, since I didn’t have to cook that, and I doubled up on the yogurt when I discovered it was too much trouble to scramble egg whites. The next week, I had a handful of goldfish crackers before dinner. I skipped my carbs that night, but still, the grease of those evil little crackers laid in my stomach all night, and I know that the nutrition content (read: fat) was no match for the bulgur/brown rice combo that Howard had made for me over the weekend.

Next, I ate a Pop Tart after dinner. That stormed my intestines and had me cramped up for the better part of the evening. I couldn’t believe that I once considered those rectangular demons a Choice Pig Out Selection. They are nasty, and that is super-true when they are stale and when I’m out of practice eating them. By my calculation, they are 4 POINTS apiece-roughly the amount I eat for a light-yet-filling dinner, which would include 4 ounces of chicken breast, 2 salad-plate-sized wraps and a fat free yogurt of my choosing. I knew it, and yet, I ate it anyway.

That next week, I fell through the floor. I only ate a real dinner one night, and I downed a full can of Reddi-Whip each evening. I didn’t even put it on top of anything. I couldn’t do that—I was already eating too many empty calories! It was like too-sweet ice cream, that went down easy and buzzed me just enough that I didn’t miss the regular dinners. That is, until I finished the cup and my stomach demanded something real. No, honey, I can’t do that. But how about a little more fake sweetener to take the edge off? I actually ran an extra day, just to try to keep the pounds off of the scale.

What happened to me? It’s as if all these weeks of training my brain and teaching myself to crave healthy things vanished along with my Food Chaperon. I’m worried now that my success is based on Howard’s proximity, or his eyes on my plate, rather than anything I’ve done on my own. It’s unsettling to think that if he went somewhere overseas and I didn’t see him for 3 or 4 weeks straight that I’d be in bigger clothes and lying around the house like in the old days. I fear that as soon as my just-a-little-bit-snug jeans gets Just A Little Too Tight, that I’ll panic and it’ll all be over. Down the drain (read: stomach) goes all that hard work.

I got it back together last week, and then ran 27 miles. In a stroke of luck I don't dare expect again, I weighed in last Sunday morning and logged an amazing 153.0. I’m still struggling with those last 2 pounds, but at least now it’s a fair fight, rather than me bludgeoning myself with crap and guilt and self-destructive thoughts.

I’m PMSing this week, so the octopus is a little puffier than usual. Somehow though, I’m okay with it. It sort of reminds me that I’m just a chink away from my old self. The Fat Lady lives on. I might have retooled myself, but the re-engineering is going to take a while.

Last Saturday, Maria the Spectacular commented in our meeting that she gives herself a small goal every week. I’m going to start doing it, too. For this week, my goal is to make a real breakfast for myself every morning, including eggs, cooked ham or bacon, and ONE yogurt with flax meal. I’m also going to make a sit-down dinner for both DS and I. Lynda the Nanny-Goddess tends to feed DS when he gets off the school bus, and that makes him harder to commit to dinner, but summer school is in the morning now, and if we do some of our studying or playing for an hour or so beforehand, and I make myself a sensible snack when I get home, we can wait until 7 or 7:30 to eat.

I haven’t figured out how not to miss Howard, but I am committed to caring for myself in his absence. It’s enough that we’re all suffering because of each other-there’s no sense in me stretching that out to myself. Besides, I’ve got a figure-hugging wedding dress to slither into in less than 4 months. That’s an awesome motivator, believe me. I cannot afford to buy another, bigger dress. Just ask my cranky, cheap-o accountant. Oh, wait: that’s me.

Off with the crap. Back to the races. Those last 2 pounds are coming off, and then all the rest of them are staying off. I look good, I feel great, I'm eating right, and I believe I'm becoming thing for life.

A the B(ack on Track)

PS-I wrote this last Monday. This morning, I weighed in at a new low of 151.50. All hail the Panic Attack. More (of course) later.