How Come You Love Me When I'm Ugly?

Patience is my eleven-year-old daughter.  She is the coolest kid I know.  She is incredibly diverse.  Her favourite music is Lights, Michael Jackson, Guns N’ Roses, Jonas Brothers, Black Eyed Peas and Owl City.  She loves drumming, writing, singing, drama, and clothing design.  She lives up to her name.  She is patient.  She is also generous, loving, kind, optimistic, and forgiving.  I feel sorry for the poor girl, having to put up with a mom who for the past week has had her panties all up in a bunch.

I have been a very good girl, food-wise.  I have been drinking lots of water every day and eating lots of vegetables.  I haven’t brought anything into this house that I shouldn’t eat, and I haven’t craved them.  Yet.  I know that the beginning is easier when you’re determined and hopeful, but it gets tougher along the way when you see other people eating the things you used to eat.  Skinny people.  And you start to feel bitter and resentful.  And like you just want one bag of chips, dammit.  Just one trip to McDonald’s, for crying out loud.  Just one helping of tiramisu, for the love of God!  I’m not looking forward to that when the time comes, but gosh darnit, I’ll be ready to battle the craving monsters when they attack this time!  I’m getting ahead of myself.  The past week was good.  Food-wise.

I have been so cranky that I’ve wished that I could take a walk to get away from myself.  But everywhere I go, there I am!  I couldn’t figure out why I was so moody.  There’s nothing about my new eating habits that I’m really not enjoying so far.  Isn’t eating healthy supposed to make you feel good?  Where’s all this crazy coming from?

I was reading SkinnyHollie’s blog and a light bulb went on above my head.  I looked up and said, “What the heck is that?”  Oh!  Detox!  "When you cut anything out of your diet that isn’t good for you, your body will go through a detox,” her blog read.  My body has been freaking out at me for not giving it all the crap that it’s used to having.  Well, suck it up, body.  You’re just going to have to get used to it.

I stepped on the Wii Fit board this morning, nervously.  I didn’t know what to expect.  I know that I’ve been eating well and been more active, but haven’t noticed a difference in the way that I look or feel yet.  I pointed the Wiimote at the screen and clicked the ‘A’ button.  I stared at the screen.  I couldn’t believe what I was looking at.  “Holy cow,” I finally said.  Patience looked up and asked what I was holy cowing about.  “I lost six pounds since last week,” I told her.

Six pounds.  Six pounds where?  What does six pounds look like?  What does six pounds feel like?  I am not sure where this six pounds has come from, but I’ll take it.  Er… leave it?  I am sure that most of it is water weight, but six pounds is six pounds.  It doesn’t have to be fat loss, as long as I’ve lost six pounds of something that wasn’t supposed to be there.  I’ve been looking in the mirror and pressing on different parts of my body trying to figure out where I lost six pounds from.  As neat as it would be to lose six pounds from one place at once, I’m thinking it’s probably a little here and a little there.  I do feel less pressure just below my ribcage now that I’m paying attention.

So, Patience and I did a little celebration dance in the living room.  And for the first time in about seven days I didn’t feel like ripping anyone’s arm off and slapping them with the wet end.  This is a good start.

Fear and Loathing on the Wii Fit Board

Fear was a prominent emotion yesterday.  As I stepped on the Wii Fit board (I find it to be more consistent and more entertaining than my bathroom scale), I knew for sure that I’d weigh more than I did the last time I weighed myself a number of months ago, but I wasn’t sure exactly how much more I’d weigh.

I giggled as the Wii Mii looked down at it’s body and watched itself go from scary skinny (as it always begins, no matter what your weight or previous weight) to obese, as though it was saying, “Oh my God!  Where did that come from?”  Then I whimpered, realizing that I was actually scared to find out how much I weigh.  I bravely raised the Wiimote and pressed the A button.  Then I let out a gasp.

I had tried to tell myself not to be surprised or upset by the number.  After all, I am already very aware of the extra weight.  It’s difficult not to be aware when there’s resistance every time I bend over to tie my shoe.  Unfortunately I didn’t listen to myself.  After my initial reaction to the number on the screen, I tried to act cool.  “Well, I’ve lost weight before, I’ll do it again,” I said ever-so-positively.  But inside I was filled with dread.  I managed to pack on forty-two pounds in the past year.  Did I burn even a single calorie of anything I ate since last December?

I am not going on a diet.  I’m changing my lifestyle.  Incredibly cliché and hokey, I know.  I’m sticking with my five pound loss per month goal.  It’s going to be a major exercise of patience on my part.  If I lose five pounds each month, I won’t reach my happy weight until June 2011.  That’s okay (I keep telling myself), because any loss is better than no loss, and definitely better than continuing to gain.  It will take a long, long time, but in the end it will be so very worth it (I must keep telling myself).

I will take as many people with me on this journey as want to join me.  I have plenty of room!  So far, I’m traveling all by myself.  Cruising down the cyber highway, talking out loud to myself.  I realized yesterday that the blog thing scares me, too.  What if I spend the time writing my blog entries and no one ever, ever reads them?  I’m always complaining about how days are about twenty-four hours too short.  Why would I gamble with my time like that?  My time could be better spent on things more definite.  I am the least gamblesome (I think I just invented a word!) person I’ve ever met.  I hate to gamble with anything.  I hate to take chances.  But I need to remind myself that sometimes the gamble is better than the definite.  The gamble:  I could lose time because no one ever, ever reads my blog, or I could take some people on this journey with me and it’ll be fun.  The definite:  If I don’t write, no one will read.

So, I’ve decided to wad my fear up into a ball and swallow it.  Gulp.  It doesn’t taste too good, but luckily it doesn’t have any fat or calories.

Today Is the First Day of the Rest of My Life

I wrote 50,000 words of the first draft of a novel in 30 days.  I can do anything.  Okay, maybe not anything, but fifty thousand words in thirty days is a pretty darn good start.  At the beginning of November I set out to reach a goal, and by the end of November I reached that goal.  I kind of amazed myself.

I started off slow, which meant in the middle of the month there were some incredibly insane days/nights (they all just sort of melted together there for a while) as I tried to catch up.  For a good portion of the month I was living off of caffeine and fast food.

I’d like to be able to say that that’s the sole reason for the need for my next goal.  But it’s not.  Oh no, it was a slow, lengthy progression, this one.  Do you know when you’re watching a movie, and the bad guy is after the good (but just really stupid) person?  And the bad guy is really far away, and the good person has so much time to either get away or really wind up and give the bad guy a good beating?  But he or she just stands there and stares at the bad guy and lets them catch up, all the while you’re screaming at the TV screen, “Don’t just stand there!!”  Yeah.  That was me with my weight gain.  I really could have kicked it’s butt at any time in the past five years.  But I didn’t.

In 2004 I was at a happy weight.  By 2005 my favourite pants were getting kind of tight.  By 2006 my favourite pair of pants looked real nice hanging in the closet.  Still do.  I have talked a lot in the past five years about losing the weight.  I have even attempted it a few times.  I did pretty well for a little while, but then I lost momentum.  I did not plateau, though.  Nope.  I am a lovely little (or not-so-little) yo-yo.  I am currently at the heaviest weight I’ve ever been in my life, including just over eleven years ago when I was nine months pregnant with my daughter.

Other than not looking so great, it doesn’t feel so great, either.  I can feel where my body is supposed to end.  It feels like I am continually floating in a great big bowl of Jell-o.  And it’s not even green Jell-o.  It’s ucky skin-coloured Jell-o.  Who wants to float around in that?  Sometimes my butt or my belly will bump into a counter or a door frame, and I’ll just cringe knowing that my butt or belly shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

So I’m starting this blog.  Really, it’s about reaching goals in general.  Another one of my current goals is to complete the previously mentioned novel, edit it and send it off to publishers.  But that’s not what this blog entry is about.  This blog entry is about getting myself out of the great big bowl of Jell-o.

I figure that maybe if I do something really scary by telling the world that I’m fat, maybe it’ll give me the ambition to really change that fact.  I had thought about starting a blog before, but there was always something stopping me.  I didn’t have a good title.  I didn’t have a good template.  The colours were all wrong.  Gosh.  How can I start a blog if it doesn’t look just right?  And how can I start a weight loss regime (or work toward other goals) without a blog?  Heh.

I’m going to try to be realistic with the weight loss goal.  As much as I want to lose loads of weight in ten seconds flat, heh, I’m going for five pounds per month.  That would bring me down 60 pounds in one year.  Tomorrow I’ll weigh and measure myself and determine exactly how much I need to lose to get back to my happy weight, and how long it will take at five pounds per month.

I’m going to be just as realistic with myself on this blog venture.  I’m not going to promise to write every day.  That would just be setting myself up for failure.  Once a week, that I can promise.  I’ll likely pop in a little more often than that, though.

Until next time … (I haven’t come up with any clever sign-off line yet, but I’m not going to let that stop me).