It is surface of the sun hot here. Normally, I keep a window open in the bedroom because I enjoy lovely breezes but when I got home from work last night, the humidity of the bedroom had reached deep sea levels. Also, I had my yearly physical on Monday and had a mole removed, therefore cannot go swimming until at very least Thursday, which is like the gods are laughing at me, since swimming is the only thing this horrible muggy nasty weather is good for.
In other news, when Dr. Perky came in with my chart at my physical, she announced that I was ‘absolutely melting away’. As though I’m a lump of ice cream or something. (She also said that my breasts ‘looked really good’, which I took as a strange compliment until I realized that she meant that I just didn’t have cancer.) It was pleasant news, however, that I have lost 14 pounds since my last visit (for the Throat of Death that would not go away in the beginning of March). I’m definitely noticing a difference in strange places, like all of my bras are too loose and roomy. But I also realized that last year at this time, I had made an unreasonable goal of losing 100 pounds in a year. I didn’t write about it here, but in my little over-achiever mentality, I figured that I could do that, no problem. I also gave myself an escape clause of losing 52 pounds, which would be a pound a week. Minimum. And I expected to do this with the least amount of effort possible and without eschewing little fun things in life like Godiva chocolates and pancakes with real maple syrup.
You already know what’s coming.
The total compared to last June 11: 41 pounds lost. Of course, I’m disappointed in myself, although I don’t know what I expected, having not exercised seriously in the last seven months or so. Of course, it has been frigid and ridiculously cold for five of those months, but still. I feel like suddenly a year has snuck up on me and I’m running around with a scale yelling, ‘I’m late! I’m late!’
So I’ve reevaluated. Essentially, my entire ability to have lost what I have is based upon one simple theory: do the things I didn’t do. For instance, eating fruits and vegetables, drinking water, exercising, subsist on something other than bread, cereal and pasta, blahety blah blah blah. And it worked to an extent. I think it’s a sound scientific theory, since doing what I used to do made me gain weight, therefore not doing it should cause the reverse effect.
Thus, a counterstrike on Operation Hottie.
The new plan: same as previous, but also restricting sugar and flour-based products. The theory there is that I don’t think we’re meant to live on Wonder bread and I have a sugar love that is unmatched by any other. It’s like Half-Assed Atkins, I suppose, except that I have a problem with any eating plan that does not allow me to eat fruit, so that stays. Lots of fruit. And no more Diet Coke. When I don’t drink Diet Coke, I have a much better time of dropping the assapalooza.
I made the declaration to begin on Tuesday. Unfortunately, I forgot to actually pack anything for lunch or snacking, and my lovely Luna bars are packed with sugar, so I had a handful of dry all-bran, a small orange juice, and a big iced tea for breakfast. By ten, I was starving and thus coerced Penny and Carissa into going to the Olive Garden for lunch, figuring that I could inhale salad and soup and stay on track. The salad had croutons, the soup had pasta. Of course, I’m not actually doing Atkins, where one tiny carb can destroy something like days worth of abstinence but I picked around the croutons and pretended not to notice the few stray pasta rounds in my Fagioli.
By 2 pm I was starving again. It had to be prednisone related, as I noticed on Saturday I was perpetually famished as well. I chugged water and ate a handful of pistachios, the only nut that I can tolerate. Immediately after work, I went to the snooty grocery store by my house and loaded up on the safe foods. Lots of lettuce and baby spinach, snap peas, pre-cut fruit, bananas and plums, some hi fiber, low carb bread, cheese, brown rice, chicken broth, some stir-fry veggies, and a giant salad made at their yuppie bar, which is a habit of mine when I want to have a lazy dinner. Already I was hearing the siren call of sugar. I was mesmerized by some attractively packaged circus peanuts and had a brief fantasy of opening a pack of sugar Kool-Aid and wondered what the glycemic factor was if sugar was snorted it through the nose. I went home and inhaled the salad while watching Sex In The City DVDs. It helps to stare at impossibly thin people while eating, I think. It aids in the feelings of inadequacy essential to any serious life change.
The salad was not enough. I took a salmon fillet out of the freezer and put it in cold water. Then I ate some lo-carb bread with peanut butter. Then I made the brown rice with the broth and broiled the salmon, and inhaled that. I kept thinking about the one Oreo pudding cup that is in the back of my refrigerator, probably bearing an expiration date from December. And we have ice cream in the house. Ice cream! Fat and sugar and coldness all in one convenient Mouth-To-Ass container.
I’m probably going a little overboard. That is unfortunately one of my traits. Or as Esteban says, I am completely reactionary. The sad thing is that I’ve got a number in my mind. It’s a stupid number, certainly not thin or even standard issue weight for most people. But right now, it’s one that I’m liking. 67 pounds ago, the number was a pipe dream, just a general spot on the horizon to watch so that I didn’t get motion sick. But now I’m closer, much closer, and that number, it’s not as fuzzy. The details are getting sharper. The vision of walking into the Gap and not having the little perfect people sneer at me’ that’s very tantalizing. The ability to buy’ for myself’ a FCUK shirt. It’s almost too much to hope for, honestly, but ah well. So down with flour and pass the damn cottage cheese.
The circus peanuts still sound really good right now.
