Christmas

Going out of town tomorrow morning so visit my family. It's always interesting. Often unfortunate.

Since I likely won't be on here while visiting them, I'll have to catch up with you all when I get back next week. Good luck at whatever Christmas celebrations you may be attending.

Mostly stuck to the plan

Well, last night I didn't go as overboard as I worried I might, but it wasn't exactly as I had planned; a fact made worse by the added facts that I ate a few bites of rice and beans yesterday afternoon, AND my run got cut short after 2 miles because for some reason I kept having to shit all day long. (Why, I don't know, I hardly had anything in me to evacuate, but my body seemed to think it was urgent)

So then when I got to dinner, I had two beers and a slice of pizza, but the table also ordered Italian Nachos and I got dished up a small plate. Luckily, the friends I was with love those, so no one was really in the mood to share so I was given only about two nachos, but with all the cheese, pepperoni, and sausage on them it was easily a couple hundred added calories -- ones I would much rather have consumed in another beer.

And then, when I got home, for some reason I decided to have three more bites of the leftover pizza (something I was hoping we wouldn't have gone home with).

Stupid.

ESPECIALLY because this morning I looked up the Calorie count of ONE SLICE of the pizza I had. I was seriously hoping it was no more than 450 (it was deep dish, but I was being optimistic). NOPE. 530 Calories in ONE SLICE. That easily puts my calorie count for dinner alone at over 1,000. This does not include the probably 150-200 calories of rice and beans I had this afternoon.

FML. So much more work to do before I leave for my parents' house on Tuesday for the holiday.

Results

Well, this morning was the weigh-in. I'm down 13 pounds in the past month. I would be more excited about this if I wasn't about to spend a week at my parents' house. And if those 13 pounds weren't just barely dropping me into the category of a normal BMI. Holy shit, I got so fat. Seriously, the most I have ever weighed in my life.

Anyway, I need to get a lot of activity today and eat nothing all day because a group of us are going out for beer and pizza tonight. I, of course, don't want to, but I'm putting on a happy face and saying "oh yay, pizza, I'm so excited." Fortunately, one of the couples with whom we are going out, are people that we have not seen in ages, so there will be lots of talking and laughing and it should be possible to get away with two beers and a piece of pizza. Really, I should be shooting for one beer, and that is theoretically doable, but you know how much I like my alcohol. It just means I need more activity today to burn it off.

Being polite

Like many of you who expend effort to abstain from sustenance, I try to make the rations I do consume, nutritious and low Calorie. (That, or make a public show of visually shouting "hey every one, look at me, I am eating, and the food is "normal" like all of yours, and I am definitely not starving myself ever")

And as I have mentioned before, I have been spending a good amount of time with a Somali family I know. And as also mentioned, it is polite to share food and drink. This would not be so bad, had she offered me a glass of water and some of the carrots she had in her fridge. Unfortunately, after I watched her children for a couple of hours, I decided to stay and visit with her. (I can't imagine how lonely she must be, she has only been in the States about a month and still doesn't speak English)

As is customary, she sat a plate of food and drink out for me. The Food: White bread and mayonnaise sandwich. The Drink: Black tea (which wouldn't have been so bad, except for: ) LOADED with milk and sugar. Seriously, she puts about a cup of sugar in a quart of tea. 

Trying not to be rude, I ate the sandwich (because fat scares me less than sugar) and then tried to sip the tea. My stomach was lurching from the rush of sugar. And it tasted terrible. Fortunately, she began telling me stories about her time in Somalia and Ethiopia, and because of the language barrier, it took a lot of concentration and focus to figure out what she was saying, and I managed to only drink about a third of the cup of tea. 

It was still certainly more refined sugar than I am used to, which hit me about an hour after I got home. I crashed hard on the couch and woke up only when Husband came home from work nearly an hour later. 

Fortunately, he had to be somewhere at 6 pm and I had to be somewhere at 6:30 so didn't have time to have dinner together. Unfortunately, when I got home, he had been making rice, beans, sausage, and cheese, which I did give in to and had a few bites of. 

So yesterday wasn't great, but Husband is gone during the day, and I will be gone when he gets home until later in the evening, so today should go more smoothly. And let's hope it does, because tomorrow is my weigh-in for one month since I began restricting hard again. 

Graying out

Had my first gray out in a while. I don't mean this in the drunk sense of the word, but rather the restricting sense. 

After having all of the food I consumed yesterday, I certainly wasn't going to eat this morning, but I know I had a couple of drinks yesterday too, so I figured that even though I drank quite a bit of water before bed last night, I would drink more than usual this morning in case I had some lingering dehydration. I went to the mall to look for a  couple of sweaters because the few things I own that fit me are a good 5-6 years old and I really hate wearing because the styles are very outdated. I'm certainly nowhere near what one would consider fashionable, but I also don't want to dress like it's 2004 and I'm in high school. 

Anyway, after I had been at the mall for about an hour or so, I was crouching down briefly to look at a sweater on a bottom shelf. As I stood up, my head started to spin, my vision started to blur. Dammit. I hate when this happens in public. At home, I can just lie down, but in the middle of a busy shopping mall, not so much. 

Fortunately, it was brief. I took a couple of small steps and moved my head a little so that I wasn't staring off into space so much and no one would notice. It passed. 

Unexpected loss and genius ways of getting out of eating sushi.

All right, so I lied (to myself, and to you).

I weighed myself this morning.

Yeah yeah, here's the justification: I know I ate too much yesterday. Too many carbs, too much sodium, everything that should bump up the scale. I figured then if I didn't have a loss (or worse, I had a gain) I could blame the party food.

Well fortunately, I was down a pound from whenever I last weighed myself (Friday? Saturday? I don't remember). Which is good news. The only problem I am going to have is if I see the same number this Friday. This should be a busy week though, so I shouldn't wind up with too many hang ups.

As far as the party: I managed to eat very little prior to the party. There was a going-away reception thing for a friend at church so I hung around and ate a few pieces of fruit, then when I got home from church I ate a handful of cherry tomatoes and about 1/4 of an avocado (that was leftover from Husband's sandwich), so I was already over what I had planned to eat prior to the party.

Once I got to the party, I initially got a bloody mary because the bar/brewery this party was at has great bloody marys that are on special on Sundays. I ordered it spicier than I prefer so it would take longer to drink.
When it came time for food I had a plate of it. I made sure to keep everything very separate on my plate, so it looked full without actually being totally full. This still ended up being the largest quantity of food I have consumed in quite some time and my stomach was killing me from all of the grease and sugar.

I did manage to stop at that plate though. I kept a beer in my hand so it appeared as though I was consuming, but did as much talking as I could so that I didn't have to drink it (even though it was a beer that my friend made, and it was delicious, so it was an added challenge to not drink it).

After the party: Somehow, Husband wanted to go out and get dinner. I was still full from the food in the afternoon! Luckily, he suggested sushi, and I'm pretty good as keeping things light at sushi. My go-to it the Naruto roll because it is just fish wrapped in cucumber (no rice, no other fillers) and it's about as low-cal as you're going to get. The best part, however, was that prior to sitting down, a friend of ours who we had invited, said she didn't like sushi because it reminds her of embalmed frogs. So here's what I did: while I had the sushi in my mouth, I thought hard about dissecting fogs and cats in undergrad (which is really unappetizing) and I literally started gagging, had to spit out my sushi, and told Husband that all I could think about was dissecting animals (thanks to our friend) and now my sushi was ruined. He laughed at me and said "That's fine, we can take the rest home for the dog".

So even though I definitely consumed more than I had hoped, it was also less than I had feared, and I'm patting myself on the back for getting out of finishing my already small quantity of sushi. Small wins.

Ganache and gauche

I'm waiting for Jameson Irish Whiskey Ganache to cool in my fridge so I can go to bed. It's 1 am. My stomach hurts because I haven't eaten since breakfast this morning (though I managed a lot of beer since this afternoon) and while making these Irish Car Bomb cupcakes for a party tomorrow I taste-tested enough of the process that all of the fat and sugar are making my stomach feel terrible. That was stupid.

On the plus side, Husband commented this morning, before we went for our run, that he thought I looked skinny (which he said as he touched my stomach). I told him no, it's probably just because I just got up and my body is all stretched out, so I look longer. I'm not thinner.

Primarily because I'm not. I haven't lost anything in the past week. I decided I'm not going to weigh myself until December 18, because that will be one month since I really started restricting again. Even though I don't expect to see much of a drop between now and then, I have lost something since November 18th and I can call the total loss the amount for the month. It ought to be enough to keep me going.

I spent a lot of time around people today. I'm awkward, to say the least. I'm pretty sure I hold eye contact too long, because people tend to look at me like "what?" or "um, okay, go ahead". Does that make any sense? I would much rather be alone all day.

Christmas party tomorrow (hence, the cupcakes). It should be easy enough to avoid food until the party (it's in the afternoon) but parties are tricky. It's rude to not overeat, so it requires a lot of strategy which I haven't quite figured out, but I know it's going to involve keeping a drink in my hand. Look guys! I'm consuming something!

Grocery store observations

I went to the grocery store yesterday to get food for Husband. Most of the trips there are for him. I wish he would just go. But realistically, I'm still officially unemployed, so I have more time to go.

I got some more broth, lentil soup, and celery for myself. I then set about the store to pick up the things Husband likes: milk, eggs, meat.
While I was wandering through the store, I saw this very skinny woman. She was wearing athletic clothing - leggings and a form fitting top - and was basically all bones. I don't normally like to pass judgment on people being skinny (and just assume they don't eat) but I saw her staring a foods and manically picking things up, reading the labels, and putting them back down. I encountered her three times over the course of my shopping trip, twice in the aisles, once in the checkout line behind me. I watched her take her foods out of the cart and put them on the belt: Chicken broth. Pickles. Gum. Lots of gum. While waiting for me to finish checking out, she then frantically grabbed a bag of Doritos that were staring her in the face, and placed them on the belt. Then she turned around and started picking up candy bars and putting them down. She ended up picking up more gum, and putting that on the belt. I wanted to tell her to stop. That she'll hate herself for the Doritos (unless of course, those are a calculated "safe" food for her, which is entirely possible, but seems unlikely due to the look on her face) and that she should put them back. I wanted to hug her.

This is sort of a strange sense of compassion for me. Not that I think I'm entirely cold or particularly heartless toward people in general, but I spent so much time in my life around eating disorders (read: every one in my family) that I am usually very resentful of people with eating disorders. I tend to find them annoying (which is likely why I don't want any one to know about my issues, I literally brag about being "the only one in my family who can eat like a normal person".... I suck)

So, woman at the store in the yellow leggings, with the broth, pickles, and gum, if you're reading this, I hope you didn't eat the Doritos. I hope you stuck to your plan, or at least ate something that nourished you (like fruit, or vegetables). I hope you're okay.

My pride keeps me eating...

... because I refuse to look weak. 

I did two PiYo workouts yesterday, one at 5 am and one at 6:30 pm. In the middle I ran errands, watched those same kids as before (which involved a lot of running around) and worked at my friend's store. The worst part, is that I wasn't hungry at all, but I know when I don't eat anything I get weak, and I do not want to look weak. In part, this is because if I am going to be such an over-sized whale of a person, I had better be able to prove that at least SOME of this is muscle. Otherwise, I just look lazy and lazy is the worst thing a person can be. 

I don't want to do the "Easy" variations of any of the PiYo movements.

I want to be able to so ALL of the heavy lifting required at the store. 

This requires some fuel.

I kept most of yesterday low. A banana, two kiwis, an egg, a small dish of spaghetti. But after the second PiYo class, I went out to a Mexican restaurant with my friends from the class. Here I had a margarita (somewhere between 12-16 ounces, ugh, they didn't have how many ounces the glass was on the menu, it just said "small") and LOTS of chips and salsa. I also came home and downed a bunch of those no-bake cookies sent from mommy dearest. The margarita was 100% junk, but I'm hoping my body picked up a little protein and refilled my glycogen stores from the solid food so I'm not just dropping water weight. I hate losing water weight, because it's so fast to jump back on. 

Life is a cruel joke.

Yesterday was a true test of my will. And I would say I passed. Not with flying colors, but I passed.

I got through the day having eaten only a banana and an egg, and having run around with some children I was watching in the afternoon. So I got some exercise and ate very little. Then, in the evening, Husband came home from work with a surprise for me: A Giant Kit-Kat Bar. Holy shit. He knows I love kit-kats, so it was intended to be a generous gift. While I was disappointed that it was candy, I had done well all day so I let myself have a bite.

Then, husband went to check the mail. When he came back in, it was a package from my mother: Fudge, no-bake cookies, and chocolate chip cookies.

Now, the chocolate chip, I can do without. That is not a temptation for me. But home made fudge and no-bake cookies are two of my favorite treats.

I was laughing to myself at the predicament. Are you testing me, God?!

I decided with my mind on carbs, I would make spaghetti for dinner. I didn't measure everything out well so I accidentally prepared WAY too much spaghetti. This, however, ended up working out to my advantage because Husband saw how much spaghetti I had on my plate, and I was able to eat less than half of it and pack the rest of it for him to eat for lunch today, so I ended up consuming LESS than what I usually make without raising eyebrows, because he knew I had too much on my plate to begin with.

It is generally my goal to stay under 1,000 Calories (I know even 800 or 900 sounds like a lot to many of you, but when I start eating below 500 my metabolism crashes to the ground and I can't lose anything, and then I binge, and then I gain. Under 1,000 seems to be my magic number) and I had stayed well under that (not a single cookie or piece of fudge!) so I rewarded myself with a good beer, a long soak in our hot tub, a nice hot shower, a Christmas movie and an early bedtime.

Finally!

A loss! And on a Monday, which is extra exciting. Usually Friday morning is when I see a loss because I have done well all week (and then fuck everything up over the weekend) but this weekend was busy so it was SUPER easy to not overeat. Saturday I had a latte (no added sugar or flavor or anything) in the morning, a beer with a friend in the afternoon, and then a beer, three chicken tacos and a few bites of rice and beans in the evening. Yesterday I had a latte in the morning, a small dish of rice, beans, and avocado with a fresh green juice (made of spinach, cilantro, spirulina, lemon, lime, apple, cucumber) in the afternoon, and in the evening a handful of chocolate covered pretzels and a few pieces of fruit. I also made sure to do yoga on Saturday and Sunday, and went for a run on Sunday. And I was rewarded! I'm finally below my pre-thanksgiving weight. 4 more pounds and my BMI will be back under 25. I can't believe I got so big. I'm on the right track though. I will rectify this.

The social anxiety is setting in.

I canceled plans last night because I was too fat. Shit.

I ate the last piece of pumpkin pie leftover from Thanksgiving yesterday morning. So I decided to run it off. I ran three miles (so like, probably not enough because I have no idea how many calories were in the pie) and then did some yoga. I felt a little better considering it was morning and I had the rest of the day to make up for it. Well, instead of making up for it, I ate zucchini noodles with cashew cream sauce, cucumbers dipped in Bleu cheese dressing, egg nog, half of a Reese's Fast Break bar, and banana "nice cream". SO much sugar. By the end of the day, my stomach was feeling full and bloated and I actually felt slightly nauseous. I was supposed to help with the youth group at church, but I felt so awful I couldn't bring myself to leave the house, so I played up my stomach ache like it was worse than it was and stayed home on the couch, covered in a blanket.
It didn't help that I had stepped on the scale in the mid-morning only to see I was only at my pre-thanksgiving weight, and not any lower like I had hoped.

Fresh start today. So far I've just had my morning coffee and some cucumbers with vinegar. I painted my nails to kill a little time. I have errands I need to run but I'm waiting for stores to be open. It sucks sometimes to be an early riser. I get up between 5 and 5:30 every day so when I want to go out and do things, I always have to wait for things to open, so I try to read or exercise or do something that doesn't involve eating, but it can be hard.

Best of luck to all of you! Don't let this holiday season ruin your goals!

Survived Thanksgiving...

... with pretty minimal gain. I expected to be a lot heavier this morning than I was. I gained a total of two pounds and I'm hoping at least one of those is bloat.

My in-laws visited, which was nice because they are good people, but as I know I have mentioned before, my mother-in-law is overweight and has been trying to lose weight her entire life. The problem is, she has legitimate hypoglycemia, so she has to eat often to keep her blood sugar up, (she has passed out on occasions) but she way over does it and that's hard to explain to her. She eats a lot of protein, fiber, and fats to help slow the absorption of the sugar, which is good but she goes overboard. And then she just can't figure out why she can't lose weight. And she tries to exercise, but her exercise is walking strolling just under a mile, once or twice a day. I did a mental tally and she EASILY consumed 1,200 Calories in breakfast alone (lots of bacon, egg, cheese, bread). Then we went for a two mile walk (I stretched it out, cause walking for 3/4 mile hardly felt worth putting my shoes on), but by the time we got home she said her sugar felt low, so she ate an apple with about 1/4 cup of peanut butter on it. A few minutes later, she was digging into some hummus, and then on to some trail mix. This was all before lunch. Quite frankly, I'm surprised she doesn't weigh more than what she does. And she always wants me to solve her weight woes, but as much as I tried to tell her that it really comes down to calories in/calories out, she has convinced herself that there is no way around her eating so many calories in a day. Yes, having some fat and protein will help stabilize your sugar, No, you don't have to have 5 pieces of bacon and 5 ounces of cheddar cheese.

Anyway, the good thing was, they didn't get into town until Thanksgiving evening, and that meant I didn't have to eat all day. Husband and I were both busy getting the house ready, so he didn't even notice I hadn't eaten. I also managed to only have one helping of each dish I consumed, so overall, better than I was anticipating.

Really for the 4 days my in-laws were here, I kept my intake pretty low until yesterday. I ate and drank way too much yesterday so that was the primary reason I was expecting a larger gain this morning.

Also, welcome back to those of you who can't resist this place around the holidays! It always seems to work that way. Like, the force-feeding and strolls down memory lane remind us of how thin we promised ourselves we'd be by this time this year, and how hard we broke those promises. I knew when I logged in today there would be a few familiar blogs from whom I hadn't heard in a while. I was right. Hello!

Selfish asshole

Today started out fantastic. I have a friend that teaches a 5 am PiYo class, and I slept well enough last night that I got up and started my day with that. It's a tough workout so I had half of a banana prior to that. I then came home, had the second half of the banana and my amino acid supplement, and took the dog for a treacherously icy walk. He was misbehaving something awful so I only walked just over 2 miles, but it was better than nothing. I then ate two small bites of roast beef, and then got in the shower.

My friend then picked me up and she and I and her two kids went to visit a refugee family that we know and help out. They are a lovely family and have only been in the States for about 4 days so they don't know any English. We worked with them on number and letters and songs, but mostly we just visited and tried to communicate. It was a great time, but before we left, (as is common), the mother wanted to give us a drink. Most African refugees do this as a sign of saying Thank You and You are welcome in my home. She poured us tall (about 12 ounces) of apple juice. And the worst part was, I was so upset! I didn't show it, I didn't want to be rude. And I felt HORRIBLE. This entire family is malnourished and here I am lamenting the fact that I "have to" drink a glass of apple juice.

I am the worst person who has ever lived.

So I feel pretty lousy for two reasons, a) I just downed about 200 Calories of straight sugar, and b) that I'm actually upset about that.

Kill me now.

Running again

My food intake over the weekend was worse than I had hoped, but better than I had feared. Saturday night I ended up eating about 3 ounces of the roast, and husband had also decided to make mashed potatoes and garlic bread. Butter-soaked carbohydrates. So I also ended up consuming waaaayyyy more than what I should have. Then yesterday I avoided breakfast but Husband decided he wanted to grab pizza after church so that was unpleasant. Fortunately, it was thin crust that was on special so I had two pieces of 12" thin crust pizza and a beer for lunch (curse you beer!). Then for dinner I had two more pieces (because they were leftover), two bites of home made banana bread, and about 15 small pretzels. WAY more than I had hoped. 

In a fortunate turn of events, a friend of mine from church invited me to go running with her this morning. It was beautiful and chilly and sunny and I was glad spend more time with this friend. How nice to have a friend who wants to hang out while running and not eating! I'm out of shape, and she is pretty fit, so my insecurities about my physical fitness drove me to eat a banana before our run, even though I probably had plenty of energy stores from the weekend. We only ran a few miles, but it should have been enough to burn off the banana. Since then I have had black coffee, an amino acid supplement (trying to hold onto my muscles if I can, they are metabolism boosters!) and three Roma tomatoes in balsamic vinegar. I also did some cleaning, took a shower, and painted my nails. Anything to avoid eating! 

I haven't been at this very long, so I'm trying to be patient. But I've been working hard and have only lost three pounds. Curse getting older! If I had put in this effort even 5 years ago, I would have lost probably at least 6. It's no wonder women in their thirties don't eat anything. I'm getting close to thirty and I have already noticed my metabolism fall significantly. It just means I need to bump up my exercise. 

Weekend struggle

It's always hard on the weekends. We got a big snow storm last night so this morning, husband wanted to have bacon and pancakes for breakfast. 

Of course, I didn't, but I had no good reason not to. I wanted to stop at two pancakes (they were pretty small) and one piece of duck bacon, but I ended up eating TWO pieces of bacon (shoot me now, but duck bacon is so damn tasty!) and three pancakes. The last pancake I didn't want but Husband was starting to make a fuss and I don't want to look suspicious so I ate the last one. Also, Husband made the pancakes and he added butter to ALL of them, as he was stacking them. The worst. 

So the least I can do is try to keep moving. Breakfast was 6 hours ago and since then I have shoveled the wet heavy snow for about an hour, caught up on all of the laundry, and cleaned the bedroom. It can't be enough to have burned off three buttered pancakes and two pieces of bacon, but hopefully it's something. 

And of course I want to not eat anything for the rest of the day, but Husband has decided to make a roast for dinner. My plan is to piggy back off of yesterday's dental work and say my teeth are still sore so I can't possibly eat meat. We'll see how well it goes over. 

Incoherent

The first few days are the easiest. After that, the real hunger sets in. Not the, "I feel like eating right now because it's what I'm used to" hunger. The scarier hunger. The kind that starts to take over. I can't say if things would be easier if I hadn't been eating anything. I haven't ever done that long term. I do know that if I go a day or two without eating, I'm not hungry by the end the first day because my metabolism has already started to slow down, and a slow metabolism is the last thing I want. So I take bites. Throughout the day. This keeps me hungry and requires more self control than I typically possess. It's hard to eat only a little. But the hunger tells me it's working.

I haven't eaten yet today though, so I should have something. I just can't figure out what. Zucchini, maybe? I can spiralize it to make is feel like pasta. Kind of.

I would have eaten today, as I try to have a bit of something in the morning to wake up my metabolism from the night. But I had a dentist appointment at 8 am and I haven't been sleeping very much at all lately, so the fact that I was still asleep at 7 am made me want to keep sleeping. Get as much as I can because who knows if sleep will return the next night. Anyway, I made it to the dentist just after 8 (8:05, maybe?) to have a filling done and my face is still numb so I really can't eat just yet, even though I want to.
Probably for the best.

Minimally scathed.

Tonight could have been a disaster.

I work with the youth group at our church and tonight, instead of the regular meeting, we participated in something called "HogFest". This is basically a large scale food scavenger hunt for the kids, but leaders are encouraged to participate as well. Despite my own moral objection to the practice in a church setting (gluttony, anyone?) it is fun for the kids, which is what it is intended to be. And the kids do have fun.

Many of the items on the scavenger hunt included donuts, sandwiches, candy, ice cream, quesadillas, bread sticks, and lots of other junk foods. Before we began, I bargained to try to not have the leaders participate, but I lost and we were supposed to help. Fortunately, we didn't really have enough time to visit many of the places, so we were a bit limited. Long story short, I ended up eating one glazed donut and three bites of Wendy's chili. Probably about 200 Calories, which I can live with because all I have had the rest of the day was a small zucchini with 2 tbsp of roasted red pepper cashew cream, 12 oz fresh green juice (in which I put spinach, lemon, lime, ginger, cucumber, apple) and 1/2 cup of vanilla soymilk. I'm sure my Calorie intake for the day was under 1,000 so I can live with it. I also had a lot of water and hot tea so I am hydrated.

I also think I confirmed an eating disorder in one of the youth group students. I have known her for a while through church and she is stick skinny and in high school, but I also know she is very active and I haven't (until recently) spent enough time with her to know her other habits and personality to determine if she did have an eating disorder. But tonight, she was on my team and looked for every excuse to not have to eat. She ended up (reluctantly) eating a donut, but primarily got excited when one of the items on the list was a gallon of water. (Note: no one student had to consume all of one thing, so the gallon was divided up among the team) She chugged and chugged the water, and on our following stops, continuously told me how filling the water was, and how she just couldn't possibly eat any more food because her stomach was so full.

I'm not one to placate nor instigate any type of hostility or eating behavior. I've been around enough of that in my life to let ANY comments roll of my shoulders. There really isn't a safe thing to say to a person with an eating disorder. Besides, there were enough people in the group excited to eat a lot of food, so I simply told the girl That's okay, yeah, Water is filling. Just do what you can and don't worry about it.

So overall, I escaped relatively unscathed. I certainly feared worse.

Back at it. Hopefully.

My binge eating has gotten completely out of control. Where do I begin?

I quit my job in September. It's the first time I've ever quit a job in my life. It wasn't as scary as I thought it would be. I think mostly because I knew I was in the right. I was being very taken advantage of and I basically told my boss that she needed to rectify it or I was leaving. So I left. So now I am searching for a job.

I think it may have been the stress of the job throughout the year, but I gained SO much weight. Seriously. I gained about 30 pounds! In a year! GROSS! Which wouldn't even be so bad if last year I had been legitimately skinny, but I wasn't. Fit, yes, but skinny, no.

So I feel disgusting. I'm officially medically considered "overweight". I have a BMI of 26.6! I had to go out and buy new jeans because all of my clothes are too small. I can't do this. I need to be smaller.

I'm at the point where I don't want to be seen in public. Even if I cover up my body (thank you fall weather!) my face has even gotten fat. I have canceled so many plans because I just can't bring myself to be seen by any one.

And I'm visiting my family again this Christmas. For any one who has been reading this for a long time, you know how horrible that is when it comes to weight and food. So I need to be thinner. They haven't seen me since last February and I was a good 20-25 lbs lighter then. I can't show up there looking like this.

I haven't made some "plan" cause of course I don't stick to them. Just to stop eating so damn much and get my ass off the couch. That's been one of the biggest problems. I almost never ran this past year. I was sick for pretty much the first three months of the year, and later in the year I wound up with stress fracture in my foot. (How the hell that happened, I don't know but it kept me from running) If I'm not running and doing yoga at least 5 times a week, I get fat. That's just what happens. And it did happen.

So this morning I have had a cup of tea. I fed the dog breakfast so I'm waiting for his food to settle and then I'm going to take him out for a run.

"Yeah but you're not fat.... she's fat."

I have been doing some horrible, horrible binge eating lately. It's honestly all I want to do. All I dream about is sitting on the couch, watching Netflix and stuffing my face. And I have been doing a lot of it too.

Last fall I was nearly 20 lbs lighter than I am right now, I had clear skin, and could run a marathon. Today I am at my highest weight in 4 years, my skin looks like shit and running 4 miles takes a lot out of me.

The thing about being tall is that a lot of weight can creep up on you (I say "creep up" as though it just came upon me without my consent... I did this) without it being too noticeable to the general public.  Even though my clothes that were big on me last year are almost too small, I haven't yet needed to buy new clothes. And two days ago, I was wearing a shirt that sort of clung to my figure and my office manager commented that she thought my waist looked small. Realistically, it's probably just because my ass has gotten so large, but the way it was worded made me feel a little better.

Also, last week I was volunteering with my church and working with some kids and I got into a conversation with a 2nd grader about cheese. She was saying how much her sister loves to eat cheese and I told her that I like cheese too. She said her sister could eat a lot of cheese and I said I could eat a lot of cheese too. Then she said to me about her sister "Yeah, but you're not fat.... She's fat."

Knowing the general 2nd grader's propensity toward blatant honesty, I'm going to say that maybe she thinks I'm actually not fat. And by medical standards, I am still in the "normal" BMI range, though I am literally the the very highest I can be. If I gain even half of a pound, I will officially be medically "overweight". FML if I reach that weight. I could honestly wake up tomorrow legitimately (not just psychologically) overweight. Scary.

And next weekend, Husband and I are supposed to be going to a music festival with another couple that we know, the wife half of which is super skinny, even after having a baby a few months ago. So I imagine her husband will spend a good deal of the weekend feeling sorry for my Husband that he is stuck with such a gross fat slob. And if you think men don't sit around comparing wives, you're wrong. I've spent enough time as "one of the guys" (my love of beer, greasy food, and dirty humor plugs me right in with them) to know that they do, in fact, sit around comparing wives. So if you weren't insecure before, hopefully you are now.

Time to go run.

Vodka doesn't smell. And you're drunker than I am.

Well, I've found a job; as Dr. Aye Ell (not my real name, obviously), at a small private practice. My boss hired me cause I'm skinny.

Unfortunately, I'm not skinny. For real. And I almost feel like I deceived her in a way. I was about ten pounds skinnier when she hired me three months ago. She's a kind person, but shallow to boot. She has passed up other doctors likely more qualified than myself, because they are too fat. Her reasoning is that we preach health, and we can't teach tell other people to be healthy when we are - and I'm paraphrasing here - fat slobs. I didn't realize the extent of her obsession with skinny until I had worked there for a few weeks.

When I interviewed for the job, I didn't even know if I wanted it. I found out through a friend that this woman was hiring and I figured I would go talk to her; see how she practices, what she is like, etc. We visited for about an hour, and I left with a job offer. A week later, I accepted it.

What I didn't know going into the position, was her obsession with being skinny. She's tall (even taller than I am, which is rare) and slim, but apparently used to be even thinner. She is constantly either dieting, or talking about dieting. She walks around the office saying "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels!"

What have I gotten myself into?

Her boyfriend is dying of cancer, and do you know what she is most upset about? He used to outweigh her by 60 pounds, and now he weighs just less than she does. She was so upset about this! Not that he is dying, but that she weighs more than he does. She can't deal with it.

So now we are on a diet. Well, not yet, but we will be. She ordered us some diet pills with the justification of "We will take these, and if we lose weight, we will sell them in our office."

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little excited that some one bought me diet pills and is making me take them, but I realized going into this that I don't like dieting with other people. I don't join the group fasts that go around on these blogs, and I don't like talking about dieting with people I know. I think it reminds me too much of growing up around food obsessions and how annoying I found it all. It just feels like sadness.

Anyway, we haven't started it yet. Haven't decided when to start it. My family is coming out to visit me (for the first time ever) next week so I kind of don't want to be "dieting" when they come out.  My hypocritical mother would not be happy with me if I was trying to lose weight (even though she is the same size as I am and is constantly trying to lose weight. Hypocrite).