121 lemon bars

Ahhhhh, basking in a new low weight.  Also basking in the thought of the upcoming "I can eat until I'm full--darn it! happy feelings.  Not that the core plan is easy.  Only 7 points a day to use on things like butter, cheese, sugar and most breads. Still....all fruits and veggies, meats (except bacon), and low and fat free dairy are allowed.  Tonight I'm saving all 7 points to use at dinner time--we're having fajitas---I can have all the beans and fajitas I want, but the chips, cheese and tortilla will be limited.  No problem--I like fajita salad with chips.  And I just had a brainwave---LEMON BARS--if I make them with splenda I can have a big piece for only 2 points this week (eggs are free).  That means lemon bars and milk for dessert!  For exercise I got up and helped Catherine with the paper route. I might do a little wii too. 

120 DOWN!!

WHOA!!!!  Prophetic words yesterday!!! My body IS trying to help me. 191 this morning!!! I didn't feel particularly light either.  Mostly I was hoping to see 193 again because we went out for a little late night ice-cream.  Our oven has been on the fritz for a long time.  About 6 months ago the little knob where you set the temperature broke off--so we've been having to fiddle with it manually.  Then every day it takes longer and longer and longer for the oven to heat up. These days it takes about an hour for the oven to get to 350.  It's a gas oven and I'm a little worried about carbon monoxide besides the inconvenience.  For some reason we have extra in checking so we went to Sears and bought  a brand new beautiful oven.  $600--ouch, but we really needed it. Delivery on Tuesday.  I can't wait!  Afterward, I had three points left for the day so we went to Farrs--where you choose which soft serve you want (cheesecake and brownie for me) and the toppings then pay for it by weight.  I had a very modest amount, but surely more than 3 points worth.  So I am extremely happy with this today!  It's Saturday--I plan to work on Catherine's room, make a visiting teaching visit or two and fix a nice dinner for Catherine (she's coming back from her road trip with Lisa). A happy, busy day ahead where I'll bounce around feeling as light as a feather.

119 the rebel

Friday and 193---again.  I was undone by the bear claw ice-cream.  I think I'm getting a little better though.  I don't feel so punished by the scale as I usually do when things like this happen. The feeling is often that I have to work and work and work to see the slightest downward movement, but should I slip up and have, God forbid, two bowls of ice-cream, then the scale zooms merrily upward.  Hard not to hate that.  But writing this blog is helping me to see that while this feeling is very real is simply isn't based on truth. It's hardly as if the ice-cream is the only "slip" I've had over the last 119 days.  In fact, I'm beginning to see that my body is working as hard as it possibly can to regain it's normal weight despite all that I do to sabotage it. 

A couple of other helpful thoughts. I don't feel repentant about the ice-cream. Hence, the rebel. I simply don't want to live a life where I can never indulge like that.  One of the reasons I'm trying to lose the weight is so I don't become diabetic and can't indulge for real. I never thought of it like that!  I'm losing weight so can I PRESERVE my indulgences!  I like that! What am I working toward?--Being fit and healthy and beautiful---and so much in control of food, that I can thoroughly enjoy it in exactly the right amounts for me most of the time, but am still FREE to go to the fair and have deep-fried butter (no kidding, that's a real food), or the occasional huge bowl of bear-claw ice-cream, or a major movie food orgy. 

Also, 193 is exactly where the insurance expects me to be at this point.  So it's sort of like a fresh start.  My guess is that they'll set another 7 pound target for me--186 by the end of September.  That is an exciting number!!!!  On the one hand it frustrates me that the process is so slow, but on the other hand I guess I don't really want it any other way--if I went any faster I couldn't have movie popcorn. Also---anything below 193 is new weight.  I haven't been 186 for so long that I can hardly even dream of it and yet it is well within reach.  EASY reach!! Just seven pounds.  Since last Monday was a holiday I didn't get together with Kayla for weight training. We're starting this coming Monday. Perfect.  If it causes me to put on a pound or two in the beginning that's okay because I'm at the beginning of the new goal. I have great hopes for the weight training--not so much weight loss, but I think I'll be looking and feeling a whole lot better.

Today and tomorrow I'm counting points, but come Sunday I am going back to the core plan for a little while so I can freely eat steak and potatoes and drink all the milk I want!

118 ice-cream

Oooops.  Co-worker brought bear-claw ice-cream to the potluck yesterday.  Normally, I'm not huge ice-cream eater--I'm more of a warm cookie sort of person.  But I've been craving chocolate like crazy lately and this sort of ice-cream is my favorite---with loads of chunky stuff thrown in.  I had two bowlfuls.  Ooops. It was really satisfying though---at least I wasn't just eating to be eating.  Also on the bright side--my stomach wasn't particularly happy shortly afterward.  THAT's a change! Normally, a mere two bowls of ice-cream would never cause even a blip on the body register--let alone an actual stomach ache. 

The other oops was the bread---somebody brought a bag of little sourdough baguette slices.  Have I ever ranted about bread on this blog? How is American bread so popular???  Ick! Blech! It's basically bags of sliced glue. If you hold up a slice it flops over, and when you eat it it squashes and gums up.  The texture is all wrong.  This is an area where you definitley get what you pay for--cheap American bread is horrible.  Expensive American sliced bread is still horrible, but much less so.  How can Americans travel the world--go to places like FRANCE--see real bakeries and come back to wonder bread blech? 
Anyway--the little sourdough slices were little bits of heaven--I love real bread.  I ate.....I don't know...at least 12--maybe more like 20.  Happily, every one else seemed to be going for the standard cheapo white American hamburger bun.  That was easy to pass up.  But sourdough?  No way.  The ice-cream was something of an abberation for me.  But the bread---at least nobody brought cheese or sausage.  If they had, I would have been completely undone.

But, back on the wagon right away.  I walked home.  Had a very modest dinner (wasn't hungry), worked on painting Catherine's room and planned out today. 

117 Still down with a potluck

A new day, I feel a little better.  It helped to have an RS meeting last night to take me out of myself a little bit.  A good and funny mystery also helps and Dave is being sweet too.  Still--difficult emotions are all the more difficult when not buried in food. I think RS will help a lot with my family.  The problems of all the people in the ward FAR exceed my ability to solve or even to help much, and yet I'm called to do what I can.  Ok.  Same prinicple with my family.  I was thinking a little bit about why I would rather have my teeth drilled than spend time with them.  Easy answer--pain, guilt, guilt and guilt.

It's painful to see the situation.  Then doing anything at all only underscores how very little whatever I've done is---it's a drop of water in the Sahara, it also illustrates clearly how very much I've failed in the past, in addition should I make an inevitable mistake--say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing, then I've compounded the difficulties. To further deter me is the very real feeling that anything I do genuinely doesn't matter anyway--no one notices. But the worst is that I can't be honest--my reactions of anger and grief are first of all way out of porportion to whatever trivial event triggers them and second I would never want to express these feelings anyway because Mom has already beat me to it shredding any possible hope of recovery with an endless barrage of criticism. The last thing that anyone needs is verification from me of how badly they have let me down too.  It's impossible to be fair or even honest anyway--I'm far too enmeshed to see things clearly and even if I was a wise outsider, I don't believe anyone short of God himself could untangle the bad from the good.  I feel like the best I can possibly do is to hang on to any good thing I can find (an increasingly shrinking margin).  And I should do a whole lot more by way of making friends with Riley, and spending time with my sisters and helping Mom around the house.

Enough.  This is far more personal than probably should be on a public blog anyway. But I'm sure this sort of thing is where the roots of my weight problem lie (some variant of --family failed me so somehow I am entitled to have anything else I want), and no one but me reads this blog.

Food-wise--pot luck at work!  My plan is to call it 15 points and enjoy it.

116 feeling slim and sorry for myself

Weight-wise I feel great.  The mind is a funny thing--i did NOT get on the scale today--I didn't want to ruin my beautiful 192 by having retained water or anything, and as I got dressed today I felt longer and sleeker.  It's a great feeling. Other feelings are not so great---techincally nothing to do with food, but part of the emotional climate.  Mom starts chemo today.  Worried about her and hoping against hope that she'll tolerate it well. I wish I could confine my worries to this though. I can't help but think how refreshing this problem with cancer is.  It's nobody's fault, it's relatively easy to know what to do (go through the treatment).  Unlike my father and sister who choose to live in their own personally created sewer and raise my poor nephew in that environment. What to do or think there I have no idea. That is the problem that weighs on my mind and makes Mom's cancer seem like nothing.  And I resent that. I want to be free to have something as horrible as cancer BE the main worry of my life. So I feel guilty that in a very real way I'm not at all worried about Mom (that is that I have faith that whaever happens will be okay), and even more guilty that I'm not doing anything for Dad or Christine or Riley.  So the answer is to do something right?  Right. I can think of a few things and if I did them no doubt more ideas would suggest themselves. I do NOT want to do them.

I have an unhappy feeling that whether or not I do them will have a direct impact on my weight loss success. 

115 DOWN

YES!!!!   192!!  Yes, hooray!!  FINALLY!!!   This is a major breakthrough!!  I haven't weighed this little since Catherine was born 18 years ago.  Every pound from here on out is "new" weight lost.  YES! YES! YES!!!!!  I don't know if it's because I'm in a good mood or what, but today when I planned out my food, I seemed to have plenty of points for a change.  We all have the day off for the 24th of July weekend.  Dave got me up a little earlier than I had wanted to ask if I wanted to walk a 5K with him.  Not really---but I went anyway because it was going to be much hotter later.  Then he fixed me french toast with fat french bread that Catherine brought back from camp.  I topped it with bananas and raspberrries and it looked quite fabulous--we ate it while watching the 24th of July parade on TV.   Now, I'm going to tape Catherine's room so we can paint it.