Quit Yer Complainin'

It's time for me to fess up. I have been complaining and obsessing over my weight for the last 6 months. But, I wasn't doing anything about it. I still weigh myself every day and watch my weight fluctuate as much as 5 pounds a day, terrified that I will regain all that weight back.

I was very disciplined with my eating habits until just after Christmas. That's when my life spun out of control (more so than it had already been). I allowed myself anything and everything my big a$$ desired. I told myself that it was ok to comfort myself with food because of what I was going through, never giving much thought to what I was doing to myself. When I did become aware of the fact that I was much like an alcoholic in regards to my addiction, things became worse. I found myself doing things that were unhealthy and just down right idiotic. If I tried even slightly not to cave, the craving became worse until I finally gave in.

Strangely, in the past, I had found that I was not a stress eater. Before weight loss surgery, I would stop eating all together during stressful times. For some reason, this all changed and I'm not entirely sure that it was because of the surgery. This has been and is the most chaotic and unpredictable time in my life and I believe that has more to do with why I am eating.

About a week ago, I realized that I was not feeling physically well and my mental state was in the proverbial crapper. I felt exactly the same way I had when I weighed 384 pounds. I was the fat girl all over again, searching high and low for her next fix. Believe me when I say that nothing I was putting into my body was healthy. I was running on pure sugar and feeling like a meth addict, living life in a cloud. Recognizing the behavior made me feel out of control and hopeless. My scale told me that my weight was almost 20 pounds above my lowest weight (I was only there for about 4 hours) and 17 above my most stable weight.

I can hear some of you nodding your heads thinking that you knew I was going to gain the weight back. Trust me when I say that I will NEVER go back to that place in my head. I don't like it and I don't like me when I'm there. I worked way too hard to lose over 200 pounds to ever go back to those old habits. There's a fat girl in my head and I'm trying to kill her, but she just won't die!

Something changed in my mentality. I don't know if it was that I was feeling so emotional about myself and only seeing the ugliness, but I decided finally to do something about myself. I reloaded my daily food intake program and set about journaling what my recent day's intake of food looked like. I had stopped journaling in October when my computer crashed.

Let me tell you, the first day was eye opening. I ate over 4000 calories! 2500 of those were homemade chocolate chip cookies (I make the best according to the girls). I nearly threw up when I realized what I had been doing to myself. In order for me to continue to lose weight, I need to keep my calories at 1500 if I don't walk and 1700 if I do. I could see now how I had regained the weight.

The next day, I buckled down and kept exact track of what I ate and kept my calories at about 1200. Low and behold, when I jumped on the scale the next morning, I was down 3 pounds from the day before. I did great all week and this even continued on through the weekend. As of today, 5 days into it, I'm down 9 pounds.

So, I have new, old goals of continuing to lose weight at 2.5 years after weight loss surgery. I continue to work out 5 days a week and have been walking 2 days.

No more complaining without taking action first. I plan on keeping my head above water and enjoying the swim.