Down 2 more lbs - time to up my calories ;)

According to this week's weigh in, I'm down 2.2 more lbs which puts me at 207. This is good news, of course and it kind of makes me think I should keep doing what I've been doing. Yet, I'm starting to worry that I'm going to put my body into starvation mode and stop losing within the next few weeks. I went on the daily plate and it said should eat 1585 calories per day in order to lose 2 lbs. per week. This kind of doesn't make sense to me since my understanding was that you need to subtract 500 calories (daily) for every pound you want to lose in a week - that formula would put me at under 1200 calories, but I'm going to give the higher amount a shot. I suppose the worst that can happen is that I'll gain a couple of pounds in the next week (actually I don't think that's possible at 1600 - just that I won't lose as much), and then I'll have to readjust. We'll see how it goes :).

I’m a neurotic mess . . .

For every good thing, or every “accomplishment” I seem to anticipate something negative. I started using a new face wash, and it’s wonderful! My face has cleared to the point that I no longer feel the need to wear foundation. Yet, I’ve begun to wonder what I’m going to do when (not if, but when) it stops working. It’s only been about 3 weeks since I started using it, and I’m already concerning myself with needing to find a new product :-/. This strange way of thinking that I have has been known to cause me problems with weight loss in the past, and it’s starting to cause me some problems this time around. I’m consistently losing weight so far, and I feel great about it! I’m actually starting to believe that this time will be different, and I will meet my goal at some point. Yet, I don’t see that as completely positive :(. Instead of being excited by the idea of being thin, I’m worried that if I do get there I’ll end up with a “lollipop head” and a flat chest! Oy, I’m such a pessimist! I really need to learn to retrain my brain and stop looking for the negatives, or potential negatives in every situation. The problem for me where weight is concerned is that being thin is unknown territory. I don’t do well with unfamiliar situations. I like to know what I’m getting myself into, so that I can prepare myself. I’ve never been thin, so I don’t know what I will look like. I honestly feel like I have no way of knowing if my concerns are completely off the wall (as logically I hope/imagine they are), or if they are actually valid and something I should be worrying about :-/! Wow, this sounds incredibly vain :(. Sometimes I wonder if it would just be easier to keep the “ugly” I know, than to give it up for an unfamiliar which could wind up being equally as ugly, just in a different way :-/

The evil talking scale was kind today :)

Yes, that evil talking scale complete with moving pictures, better known as the wii fit board, wasn't so evil today. I hate getting on that thing every week for fear that I haven't lost a single pound, or worst yet - that I've gained. Yet some how I feel better about a happy high-pitched voice telling me that I'm fat in medical terms than I do about the voice inside my head telling me that I'm a fat-ass as I look down at that bright red number which gets burned into my brain. So, I've found the fit board to be a better alternative to a scale for me. Anywho, good news for me -I'm down 4 lbs this week, which puts me at 209.2. Half way to my first goal! I really need to start adding exercise ~ hmm, perhaps it would be a good idea to start using the fit board for more than just my weekly weigh in!

Little fat girl . . . BIG fat girl!

I’m not sure where to start with this so I’ll go back as far as I can recall. I started gaining noticeable amounts of weight when I was about eight years old, which I believe has something to do with a profound loss, which I still feel every day, that I experienced around that time – but that’s a story for another day. At ten years old I weighed 113 lbs, while all of my class mates were closer to 65 to 75 lbs. For the rest of my life, I will always remember my weight at ten years old because that was the first time I remember being embarrassed and ashamed of my weight. I was hesitant to step on the scale because I knew the nurse would announce my weight aloud as she’d done for those before me, and it would be loud enough for everyone else waiting to hear. When she said “113 pounds”, it might as well have been 1,000; I wanted to die. I knew that at the very least the boy who was directly behind me had heard and I prayed he’d keep his mouth shut. Of course, he didn’t! 16 years later, I still clearly remember the boy who was standing behind me, the way he wouldn’t make eye contact with me as I stepped off of the scale, and the way I felt when I overheard him repeat my weight to anyone who would listen. Ten years old, just a little girl . . . that was the first time I distinctly remember feeling ashamed and judged for the way I looked. In many ways, since that day my life has been a series of events which my weight was either responsible for, or which I found a way to blame my weight for. I’m sick of my weight holding me back from my dreams, and more importantly I’m sick of having it as an excuse not to do the things I dream of doing.

200lbs . . . that’s goal #1, get below 200 lbs. Since I was 15 I’ve rarely been below 200. At eighteen I spent a couple of weeks at about 185 after starting a new active job and Slimfast, at 23 I got all the way down to 163 from 204 after 9 weeks of the “Six week body makeover” (which in my opinion does work, if you can refrain from eating “real” food for the rest of your life :p), but I quickly gained all of that weight back and then some. In the last 10 years I’ve been on many different diets, some much more ridiculous that others, from liquid diets, to weight watchers. I will say that of all of them, weight watchers was the most helpful to me, but I got sick of all the adding – much like I do with calorie counting! Dieting is difficult, because I hate math, I’m much fonder of words as I’m sure you can tell from my babbling. My highest recorded weight was 222 lbs. , although I’m quite certain my highest actual weight was higher. I am 5’4 and as of last Friday, 5/29/09, my weight was 213 lbs after a 5 lb., 2 week weight loss.

I hesitated to start this blog, for the same reason I often hesitate to lose weight. I do not want to give people a reason to look at me. In the last year, I’ve somehow become aware of a dieting pattern I have; as soon as someone tells me I look good, I begin to backtrack and gain the weight back. Since I was very young, I never wanted anyone to look at me – though I’ve never figured out exactly why. I’m perhaps too comfortable with my invisibility. If I lose the weight, I may start to expect people to see me and be disappointed if they don’t, but if I stay fat I can stay invisible and have no expectations to be disappointed in. Likewise, if I put myself out there in this blog and discover that no one cares, I may only end up disappointing myself. But oh well, nothing ventured nothing gained, right? If no one else cares at least I’ll have something in writing to keep me accountable. If by some miracle someone is actually reading this, and more importantly if you’ve actually stayed to read this entire thing (or even skim it), I want to say, “Thank you.” So, now I just need to answer one question for myself: Who am I (when I’m thin)? That’s just it; I don’t know, I’ve never been “thin”. I’ve never met myself as a “thin” person, I don’t know who she is so, for now I’ll call her . . . “The ‘other’ white me”.