Well, despite the cinnamon roll as big as my head, I had a good week this week.  I lost 3.8 lbs which is great and I'm thrilled with it.  I think the best part about it is that I am slowly learning that I can eat things like cinnamon rolls as big as my head - just not every day.  My goals for this week are going to be the same as last week, because I don't feel like I've fully incorporated them in to my world yet.  I want to eat 3 servings of fruits/vegetables a day (I know that isn't enough!  You have to start somewhere!) and drink 3 glasses of strictly water a day.  I know WW says you can count any liquid as a "water" nowadays, but I think 3 of just plain water would be good.  So those are my goals.

Like I said, I'm really trying to set lifestyle goals and not just number goals.  Because I think that is how I can actually learn!

Yay, me!

So I just ate a cinnamon roll that was almost as big as my head.  I have had this intense cinnamon roll craving thing going on lately and just walked into the coffee shop and got one.  Damn, it was good.  I feel guilty and like I should hide the evidence before my wife comes to pick me up.  But god, it was good. 

And why can't I live like that?  Why can't I have a cinnamon roll and then exercise extra today and eat really well?  Because I just can't and I know I can't. 

I imagine a "good" person would have cut the cinnamon roll in half.  Or not had it at all.  I suppose a "good" person would have had just water and not a mocha with the cinnamon roll. 

I am tired of feeling bad about myself all the time, yet it keeps coming up again and again because the truth is I keep doing bad things.

I would love to be the kind of person that just DOES it.  Just eat veggies and exercise and eat in moderation and not go nuts with portions and just live my life as a healthy person.

I almost want to stop obsessing about numbers and set new, different goals.  Like, this week I will (come hell or high water) eat at least 3 veggies or fruits each day.  I really want to set that kind of goal and not just a number goal.

Sometimes I feel so mad at myself that I just get mucked down with bad feelings and have trouble looking ahead or being motivated to lose weight at all.

It is interesting because right now I've been reading "The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl" at the same time that I am reading "Fat?So!" which is a fat-positive book all about accepting yourself.  I think I can see a happy middle here.  Like, if I really eat right and exercise my body will get to a certain weight.  And even if that weight isn't what I prefer it to be exactly, even if it is still considered "fat" in our society, I can be happy and accepting of myself anyway.  So a marriage of the two books, in a way.

I'm rambling.

So I think sometimes that I am in denial about how much damage I've really done to myself.  Just about 18 months ago I was 180 lbs.  Now I am right back up to almost 250.  That is 70 lbs for god's sake.  70 lbs!  I think I keep thinking to myself, "oh it isn't any big deal I know how to lose weight, as soon as I get back to it, it will just melt off."  Okay, but that is crazy.  70 lbs is a lot.  Maybe too much.  Maybe that 70 lbs will never go away again.  I mean, Icertainly never, ever, ever thought I'd let myself even get to 200 again.  Let alone above 200.  Let alone so far above 200 that I would be absolutely thrilled with 200. 

I don't know how you keep the complete and utter self-hatred and blaming at bay.  How could I have done this to myself?  How could I have done this to my wife?  My career?  My bank account?

Dear god, how did this happen?  And is it impossible to fix?

I'm sad and overwhelmed. 

And I have to admit when I see other people's blogs and note how successful they are I feel jealous and bitter.  I am not a nice person.  blah.

I just wrote a wonderful, amazing, cathartic and funny post.  And it's gone.  I seriously am about to go crazy.  Why am I even bothering to do this??

The upshot of the post is that I am a complete and utter failure because my weight stayed exactly the same this week.  And while I say that my goal is to lose the weight slowly this time and actually learn the skills to keep it off, it is still embarassing.  There is so much pressure at WW hell.  The woman in front of me lost 5 lbs, the woman behind me lost 3 lbs and the woman sitting next to me had the same overall total but has only been there for 4 weeks to my 10. 

Sometimes I want to smugly stand up and say, "listen up you fat ladies!  If you aren't as perfect and wonderful as me losing my weight all slow-like - it will come back!  I can tell you from experience that you shouldn't be happy about your freakish 7 lbs loss this week because it will bite you in the ass someday!

The thing is, I did this already.  A few years ago I lost about 60 lbs and it was almost easy.  In some ways I felt like the weight was just coming right off.  But I didn't really learn anything about healthy eating and living.  So the second I stopped trying it all came back.  And then some.  So this time around I'm trying to go slow and actually learn how to take care of myself, but try explaining that to the smug ladies at WW. 

I want to be happy for myself, that I survived two parties and a trip to a pumpkin patch/corn maze/hot cocoa experience and didn't gain an ounce.  But I'm not.  I'm mad at myself.  And then I'm mad at myself for being mad at myself.  Isn't that just damn helpful???? 

So I weighed in tonight.  I lost 1.8 lbs which is great.  I really expected to gain since I had a crazy amount of awesome chocolate from the UK this week.  But I also started walking a little bit, so maybe it all balances out. 

In other news, I have decided that I will always walk to my WW meetings.  The result is that I am in a great mood when I get there so maybe the scale number won't matter quite as much.  Perhaps it will also help me when the weight watchers lady behind the scale chastises me for gaining .2 pounds.  I mean...really? 

Just one day at a time go and go and go and I can do it.  I can.

The British suck.  How is it possible to make such amazing chocolate?  I don't know.  American chocolate doesn't taste like British chocolate at all. 

Several years ago while visiting the UK I fell in love with British chocolate, especially the wonderful little things known as Minstrels.  I ate my way through bags of them while I was there, mis-pronouncing them as "menstruals" in appreciation for the wonderful way they could cheer one up during that "time of the month".

That was 7 years ago and I hadn't had any Galaxy chocolate since.  Fast forward to last night.  My beautiful wife returns home from a business trip with a present - Minstrels.  Apparently she found a British store in Utah - who knew?  And thinking she was doing me an amazing favor, she bought me SEVERAL packages.  Of course I've already eaten 3 packages.  Nice.  Really nice.

I can't do this.  Simply, I just can't.  I have been thinking about sugar non-stop for the last three days.  I want sweet.  I want cheerios so think with sugar that they are crunchy and so sweet they hurt your teeth.  I want reese's cups.  I want chips a hoy cookies.  The whole fucking package.  I want those sour gummy lifesaver things, the way the sweet and the sour happen together is beautiful.  I want a donut.  What the hell, I actually want 3 donuts.  I want fancy coffee and liquid hot fudge on my tongue.  I want sweet.  And nothing, not even the fact that my dear wife is coming home after being gone for a week, can distract me from this want.  And the thing is, giving in doesn't help.  Giving in makes it worse.  Much, much worse.  And I know that.  And yet I'm sitting here and I already know that when I get done typing I'm headed to the kitchen.  To get the cheerios.  And the milk.  And the whole freaking bag of sugar. 

Why???????  What do I think it will do for me?  (Well, the fat girl says - it won't do anything for me, I just want it).  Sometimes I feel like the fat girl inside me is like a petulant child.  "I don't care that you want me to stop," she says, "I want to eat ALL the cookies."  And she wins.  She always fucking wins.  Why is that???  Where am I?  Where is the adult person who wants to have control of her life more than she wants the sugar?  Where is the fucking grown up that I'm supposed to be that says there are so many things in life that feel good and are food and make you happy, you don't need the sugar.  And, the adult voice is supposed to tell me that the sugar won't make me happy.  But the adult voice is always completely drowned out by the petulant child.  I'm 32 years old and that fat petulant girl always, always beats me.  I need help.  But the only one who can help me is me.  And I'm not helping myself.  I'm hurting myself.  

I feel so alone.  I wish I actually had regular blog readers.  But why?  Who the fuck would care about what I have to say?  I'm just a fat petulant girl masquerading as a grown up.  Fuck. 

I'm having a rough week.  Actually having trouble even getting near a computer which makes blogging for support a difficult endeavor.  It seems like it has just been one thing after another this week.  Tonight my feet hurt so bad I can't focus on anything.  I'm waiting for my orthotics from my fat podiatrist but they are going to take a while to come in.  In the meantime, it just freaking hurts.  Soon I hope to get out of this mood and start blogging again.  I need the venting space, but I guess right now it is just going to be stuck in my brain.  All the crap. 

Finally back from my conference and feeling very cranky about the world.  Of course, despite my best intentions, I fucked up in Seattle.  I ate and ate like there was no tomorrow.  Every morning not just mocha - but mocha, and a pastry, and some yogurt and granola and then lunches and dinners and snacks and lots and lots of fancy coffee.  So now that I'm back to my "normal" life and I'm supposed to be eating "good" food again, I am in a foul mood.  I don't want to eat good food.  I want chocolate.  Morning, noon, and night.  And I can't have it.  And that makes me want to literally rip someone's head off.  My poor wife.

And of course the trip was fine, but there were lots of shameful weight-related moments in every venue from the airplane seats to my inability to walk as fast or as far as everyone else.

And now I'm home and what happens?  My mother comes to visit.  Now, don't get me wrong -we get along probably a lot better than most mothers and daughters.  However, what we do together is eat.  It is hard for me to imagine what we will do all weekend that could possibly be fun if it doesn't involve food.  Of course she is a lifetime Weight Watchers member and seems to have no issue keeping the weight from coming back.  That just makes me cranky too.  And of course the fact that my entire body hurts all the fucking time from carrying around LOTS of additional weight completely baffles her.  She doesn't understand why we can't go to all the museums and gardens and stores that she wants to go to.  But I just can't.

I love my mom, I really do.  But all I want to do after coming home from my conference is ease my self back in to eating healthy good foods and rest my back and knee and legs.  I want to find my way back to that extremely tentative place that I felt like I was starting to glimpse before I left town.  The place where I want to and am learning how to take care of myself.

But instead I have my mother.  And extreme crankiness.  God help us all.

So I am getting ready to travel for work.  I leave tomorrow morning.  In the past, I have viewed travel as times when I'm just not going to count my WW points.  This secretly means, "I plan on eating every single thing that I don't normally let myself eat and in large quantities because I'm not counting points anyway." 

This time, I'm trying to be different.  I'm trying to look toward the future so I really can learn this weight-loss, healthy me thing right.  I am asking myself what my life will look like when I'm at my goal weight.  If I were at goal weight, what would that look like?  How would I behave on this trip?  So that is what I'm going to try and do - pretend like I'm already there.  This may not result in a loss, but hopefully will not result in a gain and will definitely be good practice for the days when I am in maintenance (I believe it exists, I really do!)

Along with the anxiety of all of this pretending like I know what I'm doing crap, I feel anxious about lots of other things.  Like the airplane ride and not being able to fit in my seat.  God, I hate that.  And seeing people that I haven't seen since last year's conference...and wow I do look different.  What if they don't even know who I am? 

I am trying really hard here.  I can not refuse to live my life because I am fat.  Fat people live their lives all the time.  Fat people feel happy and fulfilled and accomplish life goals.  I don't have to stop living just because I'm fat.

I'm excited for the trip but I'll kind of be glad when it is over, too.  eek.