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.