158

Getting back down to 160 was pretty easy. It was mostly bloat/water. Now I am once again, working my way down the 150's. With my impatience, my net intakes in the past few days have been between 300-700. I've been eating a little over 1,000 kcals per day, but exercising. Trying desperately to keep my metabolism up. Husband was out of town yesterday and today so I walk/ran 10 miles with the dogs, went to bed early to avoid late night binges, which then helped me to get up early today and get a few miles in with doggies before helping out at a friend's store all day. Husband shouldn't be home until later this evening so I should be able to get a few more miles in with the dogs before he gets home.

Coffee & Water & Coffee & Water & Coffee & Water & Coffee & Water

A week of self-destruction

I hadn't binged in a really long time. Like, not even one binge meal. At least a sober one anyway. I guess there were a few times I stuffed my face while drunk at 2 am. I'd have to look back through posts but I think it was prior to 2017 since a premeditated, sober binge. And then last week I spent an entire week stuffing my face. In the wake of the few pound I had gained I went nuts. I lost my mind. I bought ice cream, cereal, peanut butter, chocolate (I don't even like chocolate), brownie mix.... On two occasions I mixed up the boxed brownie batter and ate almost the entire thing in one sitting without even baking it. Just the fucking batter. I, of course, had to wait until Husband wasn't home which was a little tricky but I don't work quite as many hours as he does so it wasn't that hard.

I didn't exercise. Not once. No walking the dogs. No solo runs. Just face stuffing for seven straight days.

I was tired, and felt awful. My skin looked horrific. I barely slept.

And I punished myself in the meantime. I would step on the scale, look at the giant number, go eat bread dipped in oil. Step on the scale, look at the now larger number eat a fast food hamburger. All week I would do this.

And oh my the alcohol. I think I averaged 6 drinks per night each week (how else would I get to sleep and live with the disgust?!)

And then I tipped. I got the number on the scale all the way up to 170 fucking pounds. I felt high just looking at it. It didn't feel real.

Over the course of one week I managed to gain 13 pounds! I could barely fit into the work clothes that were hanging off of me back in June.

But maybe I needed to swing the pendulum to regain some momentum. I had been so stuck. And I don't know if I've ever felt as disgusted with myself as I did Monday morning. Realizing just how awful I felt eating garbage and not exercising has definitely renewed my desire to restrict INCLUDING ALCOHOL. Last night was the first night in over a month that I only had one drink. The binge week was enough to scare me out of even alcohol calories.

After just one day of being more reasonable, I was back down to 165 this morning (can't believe I'm typing those words....) and I got a good 7 mile run in today. Funny thing about it was even though it's disgustingly humid out (usually kills my pace) my average pace was more than a minute faster than it had been in months and I didn't really feel like I was pushing myself. Crazy was some fuel and hydration will do.

So today I've had some frozen fruit, an egg, cauliflower, kale, and some water. But more importantly, I feel motivated. I can keep this up.

Alcohol

I've gained about 4 pounds.

I've been drinking a lot. Food has stayed about the same. Alcohol has increased.

And the most concerning thing has been that I'm more worried about how to eat less than drink less.

I've seen so many videos online about girls who "had" eating disorders. They talk about weighing themselves "EVERY DAY" as though that's such a scary, disordered thing. I roll my eyes every time.

Once per day seems pretty healthy at this point. I know my stepping on and off the scale multiple times over the day while calculating "am, I hydrated? how many hours since I last ate? how much salt/sugar have I had? what am I wearing?" is insane, but I can't stop.

I can't stop stepping on and off the scale.

I can't stop drinking.

I can't stop eating.

I can't stop starving.

I just can't stop.

Travels and races

Visited some friends in South Carolina over Memorial day. When we were getting ready to go to the beach, my friend was lamenting her weight gain since moving about a year ago. I mentioned that I had gained weight but recently lost some of it, and that I currently weigh about 155. She looked genuinely shocked that I told her that number and said she would have guessed I was 130. I usually think people are just being overly flattering when they say things like that, but she's a pretty honest friend and sounded legitimately surprised.

Wouldn't 130 be nice?!

I'll get there.

In other news, my sister-in-law convinced me to run a 10k with her when I visit her in New Hampshire in July. What she didn't say up front is that it's a race that has been named the "most competitive hill climb" by Runner's World magazine. The final kilometer of the race is apparently up a grassy slope that exceeds a 40% grade. Yikes. I live in the flat Midwest and am definitely not conditioned for that.

I guess it's motivation to find as many hills as I can and run up them.

153

I finally did it. After about a two month plateau. I think that's the longest plateau I've ever had without a discouraged binge.

153.0 this morning. I almost didn't believe it, I had to step on and off the scale a few times. Same reading each time.

I think the only thing keeping me going was the fact that I was actually getting smaller. My waist is down to just below 26 inches and one of my size 4 pairs of shorts is getting to be too big (the others that were snug fit fine) so even though my weight wasn't budging, at least something seemed to be changing. Really I could fit into size 2 (which is the dress size I wear) if it wasn't for my giant thighs and ass.

A likely help has been that I've been avoiding sugar. Turns out the reason I was feeling so high all the time is that I have what's called "post-prandial reactive hypoglycemia". It took me a while to figure it out because even though I had been checking my blood sugar (one of my first thoughts when I started feeling odd as my father, brother, and maternal grandmother all have/had Type I diabetes) when I was fasting it was 70 (which is as low as it can be and still be considered normal) and about an hour and a half to two hours after I ate, it would be between 90 and 108, which is still fine. What I hadn't done was check it every 10 minutes after eating. It would initially go up (to only about 118) and then plummet down into the 50's before stabilizing about an hour after I ate.

So I've been dealing with trying to steady my blood sugar, which is a very good thing. It's nice to have a "medical condition" as an excuse to get out of eating garbage. And it's easier for me to resist binges because I know I'll feel like shit if I do it (and not just mentally).

I can't help thinking this whole "condition" is slightly my fault. Too many years of binge/starve/gain/lose. Probably fucked up an already iffy pancreas. Oh well. It's not full-blown diabetes and I can live with it. Probably a blessing in disguise.

A little yo-yo action

Discouraged with my stagnant weight, I decided to give myself two weeks of eating whatever, whenever. When I have done this in the past, I usually only give myself a week, but I have been wanting to get past my "weekend psychology" as I refer to it, where I restrict so hard during the week and then go nuts on the weekend. Even though I hadn't been doing that with food calories, I was consuming obscene amounts of alcohol every weekend. So two weeks, eating AND drinking whatever I felt like. This whole two weeks concluded with a weekend in Chicago with Husband. I figured it would be a good last hurrah as the place we were staying was only a 10 minute walk from my favorite craft beer bar, and countless amazing restaurants.

I was surprised to find I didn't binge like crazy at any point during those two weeks. Maybe it was a long enough duration that I didn't feel the need. I knew the food would still be there the next day.

I was also surprised to find I only went up to 160 lbs (I knew there would be a gain, I was prepared for worse).

Whether fortunately, or unfortunately, about 10 days into those two weeks, I started feeling inexplicably high all the time (which sounds cool, but going to work every day has been too stressful. I need to be able to focus). The first day it hit me, I thought it was just some kind of stoneover (Husband and I had been smoking in the days prior), but when it didn't go away after two days, I knew something else was up. I thought maybe allergies, but antihistamines didn't help, and long story short, I ended up getting blood work done. They did every blood panel imaginable, CBC, comprehensive metabolic panel, vitamin D status, serum hCG, et cetera. Everything came back normal.

So, as per Husband's suggestion, I decided to do a cleanse. His idea was juicing, but I'm not a big fan of straight juicing for health reasons as the fiber, fat, and protein in solid foods are beneficial for helping you utilize the nutrients in the fruits and veggies, as well as feeding good intestinal flora.

What I decided to do was a variation. I would make two fruit/veggie juices each day, and be allowed to eat as many fruits and vegetables as I want, as well as half of an avocado and 2 oz of some sort of nut or legume (usually almonds or cashews), and drink 2 quarts of lemon water, and 6 oz black coffee each day.

After 4 days of this, I am feeling less high (I wake up each morning feeling normal but by mid morning I'm feeling a little high again) and I am back down to 154. Hoping a few more days of this will get me to 153, but after the past month I'd be surprised. Although I haven't been consuming any alcohol, which was likely the culprit of why I couldn't get below 154, so that gives me a bit of hope.

Even more than not wanting to feel constantly high, I don't want to be fat all summer.

One whole month

I keep cutting back and cutting back. The past two days, my net calorie intake has been in the negatives. Prior to that, the low to mid hundreds.

And I'm still 154.

And I keep thinking, "maybe it's not negative enough".

-100

-300

-800

How can I exercise away more calories than I eat, (not including everyday living calories) for over a week, and STILL not lose anything.

Meanwhile a close friend of mine, who it already thin, is going through a breakup and documenting how much weight she's lost. A couple of weeks ago, so was 113 (she's probably around 5'3" or something, if I had to guess) and then this morning she was 109.

WTF

Why am I still so fat. I can understand a week, or even two, with serious restriction and not losing, but a fucking month? Kill me now.

Discouraged.

According to my Calorie count app, I should have lost 4 pounds in the past two weeks.
Instead I have lost none. And I have no energy. The caffeine I need to get through my day is making me jittery and if I restrict any more I'm certain to binge. Net Calories have been right around 900 each day (some days a little more, some days a little less) I know if I consistently consume under 700 for too many days I binge so I'm trying to avoid that, but honestly, how the fuck am I supposed to lose any more weight like this? I'm not skinny. There's no reason this should be so difficult. Aren't you supposed to shed pounds easier if you're fatter? I'm getting so frustrated.

Lisboa!

Husband and I were invited to spend a week with two of our friends in Portugal in September. We booked our tickets yesterday and I REFUSE to be the fat American tourist, so I have bumped up my running even more and am learning Portuguese on DuoLingo.com.

LoseIt still says I should be losing at least two pounds per week, but I'm not. I guess I killed my metabolism long ago. On the plus side, I have been keeping my alcohol intake down (read: 2 drinks per night instead of 4, go me) and I wasn't even going to drink at all last night but some one asked me to sample a couple of beers so I had about 6 ounces of beer. That's still a lot less than usual. And I guess I was rewarded because this morning I was 154.0

It feels good to at least be losing something again.

Application warnings

I started using the Lose It! app again. Mostly to hold myself more accountable on weekends, but since I started logging last weekend, I figured I'd use it throughout the week. I set the "weight loss goal" at 2 pounds per week because I know that's the most it will allow you to select. It claims at my height and weight I need to net about 1,200 Calories a day to lose weight at that rate. It's probably not a far cry, but I know I do better around 900-1,000 (but this still generally doesn't result in a 2 lb per week loss, so I don't know what they want). Seeing the numbers has made me more restrictive, which is great but I was surprised when the first two days that I logged a net Calorie intake of under 800, it congratulated me on my self-control. The third and fourth days with my net Calories being 920 and 593, respectively, it didn't say anything. Then yesterday when my net Calories for the day were 640 it popped up with a warning that I apparently should be eating at least 1,200 Calories per day just to function and survive. I could get on board with 1,000, but 1,200? Nope. No way. And really, I'm consuming over 1,000 Calories per day, I'm just running off between 400 and 700, so I'm eating quite a bit, but getting ride of it, because I am still fat and I have to.

Weekend okay

155.0

Even with some heavy drinking and moderate eating on Saturday night, I managed to start Monday at the same weight as Friday which hasn't happened in months. 

Maybe I can get somewhere. 

I got mad at an orange.

When I spend the afternoon working at my friend's store, I usually peel an orange, separate the pieces and put it in the container to take with me, so if I feel genuinely hungry I can take out one piece at a time, eat it, wait a bit and then see if it was enough to satiate my hunger. Yesterday when I was getting ready to leave, I peeled the orange, but the slices didn't want to separate. It was making a juicy mess all over the counter, and I knew if it was juicy and messy in the container, I couldn't easily eat one piece at a time in the afternoon, so what did I do? I stuck the damn slices that wouldn't separate in my mouth and started to eat them. 

As soon as I bit down and all of the sweet juices flooded my mouth, I felt immediate regret and anger. Before I could forfeit all self-control by swallowing it, I spit it out into the garbage. I considered trying to separate the remaining pieces, but instead decided the damn orange had a plot against me and needed to be disposed of entirely. I threw the remaining orange into the garbage with the peel and half-chewed slices and left for work with just a bottle full of water and my coffee cup in case I needed the afternoon jolt. 

I'm about to head into my office (my real job) this morning, but I don't have many patients scheduled so I plan to spend a good portion of the rest of my day on the treadmill, or if it warms enough outside to melt the ice and snow on the sidewalks then I'll spend the afternoon outside with the dogs. 

Insanity

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

I decided recently I would start weighing myself on Mondays and Fridays. I've been sitting right around 156 for way too long. I keep working all week to get my weight down, and then gorging myself with beer and junk food on Friday and Saturday night. I see it on the scale every week. It's lunacy. I'm up a few pounds every Monday morning. I work all week to get rid of them, then I see them again on Monday. Within about half a pound, I see the same two numbers every Monday and Friday.

I need to avoid the social drinking. It always leads to late night social eating. I need to avoid people. I'm better off. I save money and calories by not being around people. This was so much easier before I was married. I was good at losing weight because I was good at avoiding people. But if I am really in control, I should be able to socialize and not be so fat.

Get your shit together.

Empty is subjective

Is it sad to be turning off the lights in your house to make sure your neighbors can't see you taking shots of whiskey alone at night in your house? Wishing we had our blinds back up in our kitchen.

And by night, I mean 6:20 in the evening. I want to go to bed, I was supposed to have plans but my friend was sick and had to cancel.

I feel like I've eaten a monstrous amount today.

Looking back at the reality I had:

A bite of leftover chicken and rice
A handful of peanuts
An orange
Chips

The problem with the chips is that I haven't been portioning them out. The bag claims to have 5 servings (of 130 kcals each) and I have been slowly snacking on them throughout the past 3 days. I haven't made it halfway through the bag, yet every time I mentally calculate the calorie consumption, I call it 500.

I also keep counting the smoothie I made this morning that I didn't drink.

I intended to, but I never drink it right away. I have to prove to myself that I can control my food intake, and a smoothie never tastes as good when it has been sitting out for a while, so by letting it sit I am less likely to drink it quickly, and more likely to make it last throughout the day. So every day when I make a smoothie for Husband and myself, I put mine in the fridge and make sure I don't drink it for at least 3 hours. Today, I put it in the freezer to keep cold and left the house forgetting it was there.

So anyway, in my head I have had roughly 3,000 Calories today but looking at the itemized list, I can be sure it's less. Since I am too exhausted to run tonight, I want to just sleep. but my brain is too alert so I turned to my trusty friend ethanol. Two shots of whiskey and a 12 oz beer later (empty calories is subjective... are they empty if they are the only way I'll get to sleep???) and I'm only just starting to feel a bit more calm. Maybe one more shot (each one being AT LEAST 100 kcals... FML) and I'll be able to get some shut-eye.

Drunkorexia with friends

I just keep cutting back my food intake so I can increase ethanol consumption.

I've also noticed man-friend seems to do the same thing. Does he have an eating disorder?? Am I projecting? He talks a lot about his obsessive self-control. He's really thin. And I see him almost every day now, he hardly eats, except for when he hasn't eaten all day and then pulls all of the food from his fridge and ravenously stuffs his face. He downs coffee like it's his job. When we hang out at night he eats little to none at all, and then drinks like a fish. As the drinks get stronger, he drinks faster. Even last night we ordered a pizza, thin crust, divided into probably around 30 slices (so, thin slices) and he probably ate two, which is the equivalent of less than one regular slice.

I also need to stop bringing up any things I'm working on or struggling with around him, because it inevitably leads to him bragging about how great his superhero wife is (the one I'm stalker-ishly jealous of). The day I mentioned the burden of my student loans, he mentioned how quickly she paid hers off. The day I discussed the struggles of the business aspect of being a doctor, he went on to explain what an incredible businesswoman she is. Last night I mentioned how I had been struggling to fit the exercise I need into my busy schedule but have been trying to ditch that as an excuse and so I went for two 2 mile runs yesterday because it was the best I could possibly do, and I definitely didn't have enough time to run more than that at one shot. He then proceeded to explain how even though his wife works 60 hours a week, she always manages to work out every day (which of course explains why she looks so damn good) and that he is always willing to watch the kids to allow her to do so because, as he stated, "Every guy wants their lady to look good."

Fucking fact. And it's not anything I didn't already know, and have actually addressed before in the context of wanting to look good around Husband's co-workers because I know how it bodes well for a man in society to have an attractive wife. It just would have been nicer to hear it in a context that didn't feel like "Hey in case you forgot, you are an inferior human being!"

Excuses on excuses.

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: I can't lose weight without exercising. Do I sound like a broken record?? I've been cutting back and cutting back and eating almost entirely fruits and vegetables with a few healthy fats and proteins thrown in, I haven't binged and I've even cut my alcohol intake in half and I haven't lost an ounce. Why? Hardly exercising at all.

It doesn't make logical sense, I should be losing if I was maintaining at one caloric intake and then decreased it. But not if you have a metabolism that crashes to the ground without regular cardio!

I need to run. But the only chances I get are at night, which is fine in better weather, but in the bitter cold is a guaranteed way to slip and fall on some unforeseen ice. I've been doing a little yoga, but not enough to actually amount to the calorie burn of a 10 mile run. I have a treadmill in my basement, but rarely use it because it's janky as hell (I got it for free) and the incline doesn't work at all AND WHAT IS RUNNING IF IT ISN'T UPHILL????

So mostly I'm full of shit excuses but I appreciate if you've read this far.

I think I did it.

After a hefty meal on one of the last days of 2016 (I no longer remember exactly which one), I wanted very badly to spill it all out in the bathroom. But then it occurred to me: I think 2016 was the first calendar year in many that I have not purged. 

I plan to read through my posts from last year to make sure I am telling the truth, but I think I actually did it. Maybe I can be done with that for good. 

There is another side of me that is thinking "Hey, I accomplished the goal, so I know I am capable, so what difference would it make if I went back to my old habits?? They obviously don't control me."

But for today I am going to choose to be optimistic and think that maybe I can keep my fingers out of my throat for good.