Vacation post #2

I ran again today, which is good but it wasn't enough to make up for the cookies and beer I consumed last night. I ran 5 miles in the sweltering heat. I then went to the beach to swim but my legs were so worn out from the run and the waves were so strong it wasn't even fun.

In other news, I love my mother-in-law, she's kind and generous and makes my life better in so many ways. That being said, she's so out of touch when it comes to food/dieting. She's constantly "dieting", so she claims. Says she has been her whole life. But if this is her idea of dieting, she has no clue. I knew she ate frequently because she always talks about her hypoglycemia and how she has to eat every two hours so she doesn't pass out. She says that is mostly to blame for why she is so overweight. I almost felt sorry for her, until I actually have paid attention to what she consumes. If she's really concerned about her blood sugar, she's doing it all wrong. She needs to learn portions.
Take today for example.

She woke up, had a large bowl of cereal with milk and also coffee with cream and sugar. An hour later, she was getting ready to go to the beach (which is right across the road and she only goes for an hour or two). So she packed some almonds (with sugar coating) and then made herself a sandwich. A full-blown meat and cheese sandwich. And ate that on the way to to beach. Then about an hour later, she started snacking on the sugary almonds. Then, an hour later (after I have had only a banana and have run 5 miles and swam for 30 minutes), we all head back to the house to have lunch. She gets out the Triscuits, puts 6 of them on a plate, globs about 2 tbsp of cream cheese on each one, and puts smoked salmon on top of each glob of cream cheese. As soon as she finishes that, she scoops about two and half cups of leftover jambalaya onto a plate, heats it up, and eats it. As she's doing this, I make for myself a bed of lettuce, and put a small piece of raw salmon on top of it, and drizzle on some soy sauce and sushi vinegar. My mother-in-law looks at it and says "Oh, you're eating a salad? I'll have to keep up with your salad habits". So, she polishes off her jambalaya, and dishes herself out some lettuce, puts a chickpea salad that she's made (doused in oil) on top of the lettuce, pours more oil on top, and eats that.
Ten minutes after she finishes her salad, she devours a brownie with ice cream.

And it's only 2 in the afternoon! We're still going out for dinner tonight! I think she thinks that she eats "diet food" and so she should be skinny, but I can't even begin to think of how many calories she consumes on a daily basis. With no exercise! She's been eating like this every day. Eating a salad doesn't "cancel out" other calories consumed. It only adds more.

And I remember one time when she made a passing remark when I was eating a cookie, that she wishes she had my "young metabolism" so she could "eat like me". What?! She eats soooo much more than I do. And doesn't exercise nearly as much.

Vacation post!

So, as it turns out, Husband loves this laptop he got me so he decided to bring it along on vacation. That means I can read blogs and post! I can't keep updated daily because people are generally everywhere so it's hard to be discrete, but I slept really late today and every one is already at the beach (except for one person who is taking a mid-morning nap so I don't have to worry about him) so I have a little alone time to blog!

I'm happy to report that up until last night, I have done VERY well avoiding food. It's surprisingly easy to do because there are quite a few people here in vacation and every one just kind of does their own thing. Plus, I tend to forget that no one in Husband's family has an eating disorder so no one is watching any one else's food intake like a hawk. It's great.

So travelling went as planned. I had some carrots on the way to the airport, nothing at the airport and then spent most of the ten hour ride from the airport to the beach sleeping so that rid me of any unnecessary snacking. I had a close run-in with some combos (those cheese pretzel things) and because at one point my father-in-law needed to sleep (they drive overnight) so Husband drove and it was my job to keep him awake. I sat down next to the combos and very soon after dug my hand in to eat a couple (I have a weakness for anything salty) and they were almost gone. So Husband and I polished them off but I only ended up eating 6 of them. Nothing I can't recover from.

First thing we did when we got down here was have breakfast. I had a biscuit and two eggs with cheese. Pretty fattening stuff but I am giving myself a little more leeway because I am so active down here.
So we hit the beach from there. I went for a walk, then swam for an hour in the ocean (lots of work!) then napped in the sun. Lunch time came around and people sporadically went back to the car to make sandwiches for lunch. I was getting hungry but it's easy to say no to food when you are currently on the beach in a bikini. So when they asked me if I wanted a sandwich, I politely declined. And praise the Lord! No one here has an ED so no one thought it suspicious when I said "no thanks, I'm not hungry".

I have also managed to run twice. My Sunday run was the best because I was able to run as far as I wanted and I burned a good 517 Calories. Yesterday my friend wanted to come with me and I felt bad saying no, even though she is not a very good runner so I knew I couldn't go as far with her, but it ended up working out okay because I made the mistake of having salad for lunch, which was not fully settled before my run and it made my stomach hurt something fierce. So we went about two and half miles and burned about two hundred-something Calories. Better than nothing.

Also, I am estimating using my run-keeper app. I just downloaded it and so far I love it! I think the Calorie count is more accurate than plugging the miles into Daily Mile. That thing WAY over-estimates. Run keeper takes into account elevation and changes in speed, etc. and it seems a lot more accurate.

So as I mentioned before, my eating was great until last night when I had been drinking a little. Then I got an upsetting text from my brother (I won't bore you with the details, every one is fine, my family is just VERY inconsiderate) and I was a little drunk and furious which totally sent me into a small binge. It was about a 600 Calorie binge. Normally, this would seem huge, but I have spent the past three days steadily restricting and constantly moving (running, swimming, playing frisbee, kayaking) so I know I had racked up a huge deficit so it hasn't set me back completely. I'm a little disappointed I don't have a scale here because I can feel my clothes are looser, which is an AWESOME feeling, but I will have to wait until July to see if I have lost. I am going to my parent's next week but my mom's scale SUCKS. It is literally older than I am, it's not digital and it reads about 15 pounds lighter than I actually am. My mother gets mad whenever she uses mine because she says "It lies and says she weighs too much" (Like, yeah, my newer digital scale is the one lying) but I have compared my scale to the ones at my school (like, professional/doctor grade with the slidey bar things) and my scale is pretty spot on. Sorry mom, you weigh more than you think you do.

I want to run right now, while my stomach is empty and I don't have to worry about it hurting later, but I didn't bring enough running shorts. I knew there was a washer a dryer here so I only brought two pairs of running shorts, but I haven't had enough clothes for a full load and no one else has put clothes out to be washed so I haven't been able to wash my sweaty running clothes to go for another run. I'll have to go do some serious swimming I guess.

Cookie death

Miranda and Kitty, you are both right. My mother is going to be obnoxious about the whole thing, but she is just going to have to deal.

And Kitty, that's part of the problem. My mother's weight fluctuates a lot because she is so fucked up about food too and she HATES it when people are thinner than she is. Really, whenever I visit, I always hope she is thin because if she is, she is less likely to force-feed every one else. But when other people are thinner than her it makes her determined to fatten every one up. Yes, I'm sure part of it is associating food with love and she is trying to show "love" to our family by feeding us, but mostly it's a skinny thing because when she is thinner, she doesn't do it. She just wants every one else to be fatter than she is. 

Yesterday went well. I started off my morning reading through some of Ana Regzig's blog. Always so motivating. So, with no food in my stomach, I went outside and ran 13 miles. It's crazy how a little motivation can spur an incredible run. For the rest of the day all I had was a "refuel" protein shake (180), coffee (0), almond milk (30), salad with mustard/vinegar and feta cheese (150) and a very small portion of chicken and sugar snap peas (300? Not totally sure). Oh and lots and lots of water. And it paid off. I woke up this morning at a fantastic weight! Lower than I was expecting and I didn't even feel dehydrated. 

Today started off well. I did wake up hungry but made myself a large "iced latte" of unsweetened almond milk and strong iced coffee for about 50 calories. Since we are leaving on vacation today, I figured I would also eat up the last of most of the vegetables before we left since a) they will spoil while we are gone, and b) I want to get plenty of fiber because my bowels tend to slow a lot when I travel and I don't want to be all bloated and backed up while on vacation. So my intake was mostly almond milk and vegetables, and I figured I would leave it at about that because I pretty much never eat anything when I travel anymore. But then I went to my neighbor's to give him a key to our place while we're gone. He asked me if I would like any cookies that his wife just made. I lied and said I had already been eating cookies today and that I shouldn't. He said okay and left it at that. A few minutes later, his 4 year old daughter came up to me with a tray full of warm cookies and offered me one. I tried to turn them down, but she was persistent so I had one. Ugh. I tried to nibble it slowly so as to be able to bring it inside my house and throw it away, but the neighbors were chatty and I felt like an ass just standing there holding a slightly nibbled on cookie. So I ended up finishing it. Which totally sucks, because I haven't gotten any significant exercise today, nor will I before I am on the beach in a bathing suit TOMORROW. Hopefully I won't have any more run-ins with food between now and then. 

Either way, now that I have these "incognito windows" on this computer, this is the only place from which I will blog and I am not taking this laptop with me. I will be gone for two weeks so you won't hear from me until sometime after July 4th. So good luck with the holiday to my American friends! We all know it's not a party without booze and fattening food, so let's do our best to make excuses and not feel obligated to partake. Sound good? Okay.

Views and Foods

So my viewership has shot up lately, which kind of worries me because I don't have any additional followers. I'm always paranoid some one will find this. Not that I have been terribly secretive about the content. Any one would know who it was if they found it.
Anyway.

My main reason for posting is to express my nervousness about what happens AFTER North Carolina. After NC I am spending a week in New England with my family. My mother already warned me "bring some larger clothes cause I'm making lots of food!"

Ugh. She loves to fatten people up. And whenever you turn down food she just gets mad. She goes right from cleaning up from breakfast to making lunch and then into making dinner. There's never a break. She then gets mad at every one because she doesn't have any "down time" to spend with us because she is so busy cooking and cleaning. Here's a thought... No one here is hungry. Stop force-feeding us!

It's going to take a lot of sneaking and arguing to get out of gaining weight. But I'm determined to do it. I WILL do it.

Starting now. Exercising as much as possible so as to keep my metabolism up because I KNOW I will be eating more when I am there than I do here. If I can at least stave off a gain, that will be accomplishment enough.

Difficult

It's hard not to be discouraged lately. I know I haven't been exercising as much lately because I had finals and then I hurt my ankle, but I cut back my calories to hopefully make up for it but it doesn't seem to be helping. I have a journal where I have been tracking my weight loss and I knew it had been probably a month since I have been able to mark off the next loss so I opened it up yesterday only to find it has been almost TWO MONTHS since I lost anything. Well, maybe not anything, but only about two pounds. The increments in the book are 3 pounds so I really only need to lose another pound. But it has to be "legitimate". Sure, just to see if it would spur my motivation, I have dehydrated myself from running in the heat and not eating enough and I could get the number on the scale down about 5 pounds, but I haven't just woken up in the morning after a normal day and been down any.

The really frustrating part is that on Friday, Husband and I are leaving for NC to the beach for a week. And I am a cow. I was doing so well for a while there and I had hope that I would be smaller than I am now. But I'm not. On the plus side, I am about 15 pounds lighter than when I went two years ago. Which on my 5'10" frame is hardly anything.

I need some motivation. I might have some soon though. I don't want to get my hopes up too soon because she has posted temporarily like this before, but Ana Regzig started posting again. I remember when I first found her blog a couple of years ago, reading it spawned a period of restricting and exercising in my life that I need to get back.




And Penny Nicole, thanks for your comment. I did read your  most recent blog post and I am glad my comment was able to help you feel better. I was afraid it might come off as arrogant but it really was my intention to help, so I'm glad it did.

Positive reinforcement

So I finally did something I haven't done in literally years.
Binged. Purged.

I really thought I was past it. I hadn't done it in years. But I was studying for an exam and mindlessly downed  probably close to 1,000 calories in trail mix.
And I didn't want to purge. I hate everything about it. I hate the way it smells, the way it looks, the way it leaves my throat and mouth aching.
I think part of the problem, was that typically when I binge, I just run off the Calories, however many miles it takes. But yesterday I had a very important exam to study for and as I mentioned previously, I hurt my ankle the other day and it is still hurting. So I went upstairs to the bathroom.
I paced for some time, going into and out of the bathroom. To the bedroom. To the bathroom. To the bedroom. Back again. I also am not a very quiet purger. I tend to start out quiet, but if I go until there is nothing left, it gets noisy at the end, and I live in a fourplex right now where the only place in the building where you can really hear into the other residencies is in the bathroom because they are all adjacent and the sound travels so well through the walls there. I know my neighbors and I didn't want them to hear.

But I ended up doing it anyway. I just couldn't bear it. And it was vile and horrible. And today I am constantly reminded of it by the aching in the muscles of the floor of my mouth.

Let this be a reminder to have some self-control.
No more purging. No more bingeing.

I also decided to step on the scale today. I had my last final and I now have three and half weeks off. My goal is to lose 5 pounds in that time. I have the time to exercise so I have no excuse and I wanted to figure out what my "starting point" would be.
And I'm sure there is an aspect of dehydration from yesterday (although I tried to re-hydrate last night) but my weight was down a bit today. Unfortunately that almost seemed to reward the behavior...

Last night's dinner

I made chicken and broccoli for dinner last night. The broccoli was frozen stuff with cheesy sauce. I had 1/3 of the package (which was a serving, 45 Cal) and split a chicken breast with Husband.

I used to eat a whole chicken breast. But they are 8 oz, which is more than two servings of meat. So I told Husband we could split it and I would take 1/3 of it and he could have the other 2/3. He was fine with that.

I served dinner on our patio. It was nice night.

But after his first few bites, Husband looked over at me

Are you a little kid?
What?
You look like you're cutting your food up for a baby.

I tried to laugh it off.

No I'm not. Haha. I'm just cutting it like normal and it's pulling apart into pieces.

He started picking at it, mocking the small bites I was cutting up, but laughing along with me. At least he was laughing about it, right?
He then suggested we go for a bike ride after dinner.

Of course! That sounds fun!
Okay, I was thinking we could ride our bikes to go get some ice cream!

Ugh. Okay. Only a few miles, so not a far enough bike ride to make up for the scoop of ice cream I had, but I had at least run earlier in the day.
The run didn't go so great because I hurt my ankle while I was out so I headed home after only 2.5 miles (so 5 total) and it's still sore today but I'm hoping if I rest it a little, it will improve and I can get back out there. Finals are over tomorrow and I will have more time to work out pretty soon here. I can't be hurt during my break.

Memories

I started reading "The Best Little Girl in the World"

So far I think I like it. I'm not very far into it though.

Just opening the book brought back bad memories though. Memories from childhood.

Before the start of the book, there is a little rhyme:

Fat and Skinny had a race
All round the pillow case
Fat fell down and broke her face
Skinny said "Ha-ha! I won the race!"

I felt so mad when I read it.
My sister has always been very very skinny. She (like most members of my family) has an eating disorder. I don't know how long she has had it. I know since we were young but I don't know exactly what age. I know for a time she had been ordered by doctors that she wasn't allowed to eat anything that didn't have calories. That was when we were probably about eight or ten years old.
But for about three or four years (around the end of 3rd grade til maybe about 6th), I was pretty fat. I don't think I was obese (by BMI standards) but I might have been. And whenever my sister and I would walk into a room together, my grandmother would sing that rhyme:

Fat and Skinny had a race, Fat fell down and broke her face.

I just remember feeling so much shame. It wasn't enough that I had previously seen my mother cry about the fact that I was overweight. She hates fat people.
But for my grandmother to hate me for it too?

In my family, there is nothing worse than being stupid, and being fat is the same as being stupid. Being fat is a visible sign that you are lazy and stupid.

So I got skinny. And I stayed skinny up until I was about 22 and left the ballet company I was dancing in. I put on 50 pounds in two years, taking me from being just into the underweight BMI to just into the overweight BMI. It was such and awful feeling.
So I started losing again.
I'm no longer overweight, but I'm also not skinny. And I hate that. But I'm getting there. Slowly. But I'm getting there.

ChromeOS FTW!

Just found out this morning that my Chromebook has "Incognito Windows" where I can be logged into this account in this window while logged into my normal account in another window. And as soon as I close this window, all memory of what I did in this window is erased. My blogging life just got a thousand times more awesome.

Now to actually take the time to update.

But I have finals this week. By next week I should be posting more.

Posting

Posting is going to be difficult for a little bit. My laptop has pretty much crapped the bed so I have been in the market for a new one. We have a desktop computer and I have a tablet so I really don't even NEED a laptop, but Husband bought me a Chromebook because he is often on the desktop computer while I am doing homework on mine. The problem with this, is it automatically keeps everything logged in under my actual Google account, which is not the same as the one I use to blog. I don't even know if I can log it out, nor do I want to because it syncs everything and that's not a risk I'm willing to take.

So I'll post as I can.

My weight has been pretty stagnant which I need to do something about. I don't think it has moved in over a month. I know if I cut back my intake a little and up my exercise a bit I can lose. But time has been my biggest issue. I've done some good restricting but, as long-time readers will know, I am incapable of losing weight without exercise. I have been running at least 15 miles a week for a while but not last week. I had a sinus infection and didn't run for 10 days. But I ran five today. Just so hard to find the time.

I was out of town this past weekend for a wedding which is always stressful because visiting old friends always means a lot of eating, but the trip actually ended up okay. We left Thursday and I had a fruit smoothie (Frozen fruit, OJ and unsweetened almond milk) and about a cup of trail mix so that wasn't too bad. Friday I didn't eat at all until dinner, which was sushi, but it was followed by beer. Saturday I had two eggs with cream cheese and asparagus. Didn't do too badly at the wedding (some chicken and veggies... successfully avoided the cake!) but SUNDAY sucked. I had half a bagel with cream cheese for breakfast, two hot dogs with chips for lunch, a wrap at the airport on the way home and a venti iced latte on the drive home from the airport. Sucks.

This is why I am fat.