Fat Girl Moves to LA...

Here I am, all 164lbs of me, sitting in my hotel room, pondering what the future may hold for me in about eleventy billion ways, not the least of which is my weight.

When Husband told me in March that he had been given this opportunity with his career, honestly the first thing I thought of was, "I can NOT go to Los Angeles and live among the beautiful people. I will shrivel up and die of shame!" I'm embarrassed that I thought this before anything else--before the idea of leaving friends, family and the familiarity of a routine that created home for us.

I sat down with Husband and we agreed that before moving, we were each going to attempt to lose 10 lbs. Oh, the intentions could have lit up a room with how much emotional energy I poured into them. And we did do well for awhile. Frozen "steam in the bag" vegetables and roasted chicken became our meal of choice. We cut down on going out to dinner. We cut back on Starbucks. I started walking more, every day. I even jogged a couple of times. And, as usual, I saw no change on the scale.

As time went on and I thought more about the upcoming transition, thankfully my stress and emotions focused around the latter and I became, well, a bit depressed about saying goodbye to my best friend and her newly adopted son, our play group, and all the other bits and pieces of our life in Arlington.

And what does Sarah do when she's "a bit depressed"? She eats. a LOT. No, it's not like I started driving through Taco Bell @ 2am or filling my grocery cart with pint upon pint of Ben & Jerry's (although my gait always slows at the ice cream case as I fight the call of the Siren, Phish Food...). I didn't suddenly start binging on tons of crap food that I normally don't eat.

I just ate more.

Then, sadly, my cousin's little girl passed away after almost a year of battling a brain tumor. And how did I deal with that? I ate. a LOT.

Then, we the packers came. That was two weeks ago tomorrow. Since then I've been living in a hotel. And that means that for two weeks, Husband, Ethan and I have been eating at restaurants. For every meal.

I have truly tried not to take comfort in food every time my emotions welled up on me. But I can't lie; I have definitely used food in the past couple of months to assuage the anxiety and sadness of this huge transition. Not even the mortification of possibly gaining weight and looking freakishly huge when walking down Ventura Blvd next to every Paris Hilton wannabe in the city could deter me.

Now that I'm here, though, I see opportunities to live a healthier lifestyle all around me. We live a few blocks from a farmer's market. I've been to the hotel gym five out of the past seven days. I am thinking of converting our garage into a small exercise room. There are no fewer than four yoga studios within walking distance of our house. The park I take Ethan to is at least a 3 mile walk, round-trip.

It's interesting that I'm finding embarrassment and shame does not motivate me. What motivates me is the potential and the possibility of a new environment. If I can make this change in where I live, in giving up all the security I had with the old routine, surely I can make the changes I need to to lose the weight. To ensure that the next time I carry a baby, I don't completely wreck my body and set myself up for another 2.5 years of struggling to lose the weight.

So we'll see. Here I am with yet another renewed vow to myself that it's time to change. Life is a bit of a blank slate right now, so perhaps I'll find this time I have the motivation to make it work.

When Sarah Met Salads...

Remember those scenes in When Harry Met Sally where we learn that Sally is a bit on the high maintenance (albeit orgasmic) side in terms of ordering her food? It made her endearing, right?

It makes me annoying. At least to myself. Perhaps no one else notices my constant "on the side"-ing these days, but as Harry says, "On the side is a very big thing for you." For Sally, it was sheerly a matter of "I just want things how I want things", a self-assured expression of her individual taste and persnickety personality. For me, it is more of a "I'm tired of being fat so just keep all the yummy stuff off of my plate, please."

This week, I had a spinach and strawberry salad, raspberry vinaigrette on the side, and a pear & gorgonzola salad, champagne vinaigrette on the side. Yes, I fully realize that the gorgonzola should have also come on the side, but dear lord people, baby steps!

Couch to 5k to bathful of epsom salt...

So, having finished Jen Lancaster's Such a Pretty Fat, and with our move to Los Angeles, the home of the oh-so-pretty-and-thin, looming ever nearer (30 days and counting), I have a renewed sense of "Ohmygod, Sarahyouaretoofat!" and have reminded myself once again that the only thing that helped me lose weight when I turned 30 was....sigh....running.

I hate running. I remember when I first moved down to DC and joined a gym. I had two complimentary training session and the trainer (tall, skinny, blonde, nightmare) assured me the fastest way to lose weight was to run. In New Hampshire, losing weight slowly was fine; well, let's face it, not losing weight at all was apparently perfectly acceptable, because it's how I spent my 20's.

But in DC, there was a boy. A tall, cute, thin boy whose attention I wanted. And I didn't think I could do it at my then current weight (which is, sadly, 10lbs fewer than what I'm carting around right now). So as much as I'd always said I'd rather walk on my hands than run on my feet and as much as I told the trainer through my huffy-puffy breaths that I was going to die, drop dead right there on the treadmill and it would be on her shoulders, if I ran for 10 more seconds (she did not bite), I did it.

I started out with my own program of counting to 100. I'd count to 100 while running, then count to 100 while walking. Slowly, begrudgingly, I built up my pace. Eventually I was running to the count of 600 (almost a mile by the treadmill's count) and damn that perky little trainer if the weight didn't melt away. From 150lbs to 135lbs in two month's time. (Oh, and the boy? I left him in my skinny little cloud of dust.)

So here I sit, still at 162 and realize...it's time. I made noise about it a few months ago and promptly went back to sitting on my ass and wondering why I wasn't losing any weight. I mean, I *did* cut out the morning ritual of finishing my kid's waffle, so why wasn't the weight falling off of me??!! (cue: Sarah smacking her head into the wall).

Today while Ethan and Husband napped, I threw on my work out clothes (after I picked a bit of cat hair off of them--they've made a lovely little cat bed for Abby for the past few months), powered up my iPod, threw on my stop-watch and started my "Couch to 5k" program (http://www.coolrunning.com/engine/2/2_3/181.shtml). Basically, a 30 minute workout consisting of a 5 minute warm up, then jogging/walking in 60 and 90 second intervals.

Smuggy McSmuggerson (that would be me) thought "Piece of cake!" When I started jogging years ago, I began my training with counting to 100, which takes longer than the 60 seconds this circuit was going to require of me. No problem. Embarrassing to be starting with something so EASY....that's what I said to myself as I sauntered through my warm up. I even though, "maybe I'll jog 60 and walk 60, so it's totally even. These professional trainers at "couch to 5k" can't possibly know more than me! Oooh, I like this song..."

At the end of the 5 minute warm up, I looked at my stop-watch and picked up the pace to jogging. Oh, how I want to report that I was a vision of athletic prowess, gliding down the street with extraordinary poise and ease.

I *could* report that, but I would by lying out of my fat, uncoordinated ass. Nevermind that apparently my ear holes are abnormally small and my earpods kept falling out of my head (have you ever seen someone fish around to find and reposition the earpod of their iPod while running? Aside from looking funny, it really borders on a public safety hazard). On top of that, by the time I got to the count of 50, there was a burning in my calves, but there was a serious lack of air in my lungs.

I remembered all those biology classes when the teacher droned on and on about aerobic activity and oxygen and the production of lactic acid. I think it's safe to assume that I was a vertiable lactic acid factory during the 20 minutes I alternated between walking and running.

Sadly, as I zig-zagged my way through my neighborhood, there was a couple out for a leisurely walk, CONSTANTLY zigging while I was zagging, so every corner I came around, they were turning down the same street, coming right towards me. Ugh. I hate exercising in front of other people--when I can hear my own breathing OVER the music playing mere centimeters away from my eardrums, I really don't need to be in the company of strangers. Fortunately for me, neither of them were lithe and toned. I probably could have outrun either of them, even in my only-feet-from-needing-an-oxygen-tank state. On the 3rd or 4th encounter, the man and I decided to nod at each other, as if to acknowledge the fact that we were unwittingly stalking each other. The girl ignored me, in all my fat, sweaty glory. Sadly, I wanted her acknowledgment more than his (twisted all-girl school mentality NEVER goes away, I swear). Oh well.

By the time I finished my last interval of running, my body was SCREAMING and my lungs were fully threatening to shut the fuck down on me completely. But I did it.

And, damn it, I'll do it again--once I can catch my breath and stop soaking in a tub of epsom salt.

Teensy Weensy Victories...

Yes, I got a grande skim chai this morning. But I did not get the blueberry scone that was, I swear, literally screaming at me (apparently I speak Starbucks Sconese) through the glass of the pastry case.

A week ago I would have rationalized my way into buying it and scarfing it down clandestinely on our way to play group. Today I was honest with myself (at least about the scone---baby steps, people), and just let it go.

The Starbucks thing is the hardest thing. I swear they pump vaporized crack through the ventilation system in there. I do love my chai, but I believe I could live without the drink. And their coffee, in my opinion, is so strong and burnt it may as well be a cup of battery acid. It's not the drinks--it is simply the space, the store itself. I must find myself in a Starbucks shop daily, even if I only get myself a cup of tea (like water and tea bag type tea, not chai). The goal, by the time we get to LA is to be on the water and tea bag type tea full time, with the exception of a tall skim chai once on the weekends.

But for now, I am elated that my stomach is not digesting the scone I left in the pastry case today. FatSarah 1, Starbucks 0-ish.

It is so on...

This weekend, Husband and I decided that, as we are about to embark upon a new adventure with this whole moving to Los Angeles thing, we should perhaps try to lighten up the load a bit and take off 10 lbs a piece before our big moving date, June 27th.

That meant that on Tuesday morning we both stepped on the scale. Sigh. What do you know? 162. The same weight I ALWAYS am, no matter what I eat. As this is not Husband's weight loss blog, I won't divulge his weight, but I will say that when I told him MY weight, his reaction was, get this---"That's what I weighed when I met you."

I realize that his comment was his own lament that he is now quite a few pounds above that. Let's just say Husband gained that pregnancy weight right along with me and I was the only one who gave birth and therefore lost 20lbs of it right away...

So, yes, I know that he was thinking back to a day when he felt he was lithe and svelte (and he was, as my memory serves), but still. What I heard was, "Damn, woman, you weigh as much as a MAN."

Lament of the Fat Chick...

I swear sometimes I think I must LIKE being fat. Because every time I work myself into a tizzy about how I'm going to lose weight and how egg whites are my friend, I almost immediately am overcome by a overwhelming neeeeeeeed for Target's brand trail mix. You know, the kind with the peanuts and raisins and chocolate chips and M&Ms. And every time, I am somehow able to find a way to rationalize it, or just block it out. "Well, each piece of the mix is so tiny, it can't possibly add up to much, right?" Even though I read the nutritional information and know full well that their 14 servings equal 3 of mine and that I'm fulfilling an entire day's worth of fat intake as I drive between Target and home, I am somehow unable to keep my hand from blindly reaching back into the bag, carefully feeling for the smooth, cool surface of M&M, because every bite MUST have the crunch of hard candy shell.

What the fuck is wrong with me??!!

This evening I dined at Cheesecake Factory with two of my friends. I should have been home eating a chicken breast, skinless and baked, accompanied by steamed broccoli, but I had a baby shower to plan with the other girls, so we opted to dine out, sans toddlers. So, I was faced with that menu--the bible of the Fattie. I no longer even allow myself to look at the dishes laden in butter and oil, dripping with cream sauces and fat. No, I go straight to the "Weight Management" section.

If you've ever dined at Cheesecake Factory, you know the menu is a short novella of choices. There are no fewer than six pages of options, the vast majority of which could easily feed a small village of orphans in Central America, and make several of them look at their profile in a mirror after eating and say, "Wow, I shouldn't have eaten all of my portion. I'm chunking up!" You've got two pages of "appetizers" (read: this will only feed 2 people, so don't rely on it for your entire meal...), followed by a page of sandwiches, a page of pastas, a page of specialties, a page of "salads" (read: a head of lettuce doused in a pool of enough dressing to drown a small child), and the list goes on. My memory is weak on this because it's been so long since I've allowed myself to peruse.

The great minds at the Cheesecake Factory decided to brainstorm and come up with tasty menu items that actually won't contribute to coronary artery disease and they came up with FOUR choices for those of us who don't want to kill ourselves slowly with food. FOUR. Four salads.

And no matter what you do, no matter how subtle you try to be about the fact that you're ordering from the fat lady's section, the waiter ALWAYS has to make a point of saying, out loud, "You want the weight management salad?" Um. Yes. That's why I asked for the Spicy Chicken Salad (which is NOWHERE else on the menu) AND why I pointed to it on the menu while ordering. But PLEASE, by all means, highlight for everyone else at my table that I am going to eat a head of lettuce w/ my lo-cal dressing on the side, while they enjoy Thai (tub o' peanut butter) and Cajun (pint o' cream) pastas. Is there a spot under the table where I can enjoy my shameful fat-girl meal in peace? Thanks.

Tonight I experimented with being very open about my fatty-fat-fatness and got all self depricating about my attempts at weight loss (what with the move to LA, the land of the beautiful skinny folk). I learned quickly that people don't know what to do with you when you make jokes about how chubby you are. Nervous laughter and another glass of wine pretty much sums it up. Oh how I love being the source of social awkwardness.

Talk about awkward, when the waiter came knocking to see if we wanted to get dessert (um, YESSSSSSS, PLEASE!!!! I love no dessert more than Cheesecake Factory cheesecake), my skinniest friend, who happened to be sitting to my right, said, almost Pavlovianly, "Banana-cream cheesecake, please," and sigh....

I had to sit next to her while she ate it. Injustice, thy name is cheesecake!!! This girl is so thin, her triceps are easily the size of my pointer finger. She has the metabolism of a hummingbird and a heart of gold. I love her, but sometimes I secretly loathe how easily she seems to be/stay skinny.

Thankfully there was nothing remotely chocolatey about her dessert or I don't know that I'd be able to report, as I can now, that I did not eat even tiny one bite (even though, out of the goodness of her misguided heart, she offered me a bite every. other. second--I think she might have offered because of all the drooling and staring I was doing?). It's actually not surprising that I was able to abstain, considering I was still feeling nauseaus from the M&M trail mix that was churning in my stomach, now mixed with lo-cal vinaigrette. Delish.

At the end of the meal, I marched out of the restaurant with my "to go" bag of salad (I even went so far as to ask for the box before my salad came so I could take 1/2 of it out of the plate before starting to eat), feeling pretty good about myself. I did have a glass of Pinot Grigio, but NONE of the tasty bread they put on your table and only half of my WEIGHT-FUCKING-MANAGEMENT salad (which is 590 calories if you eat the whole thing). I felt light and only half-full, as opposed to some of the people I saw at their tables, leaning back and sweating a bit as they tried to get through their heaping bowl of creamy pastas (you know when you have to take a deep breath and blow out through puffed cheeks that maybe it's time to stop, right?).

Of course, an hour later, I am madly trying to convince myself that since I was so good at dinner, I definitely can afford to have that vanilla slim-a-bear ice cream sandwich in the freezer that is currently SCREAMING at me. This is why I stay the same 162 pounds forever and ever. Every time I do something that MIGHT lead to me losing and ounce or two, I reward myself with a food-related treat.

Dumb, dumb chubby girl....

Still Fat....

...that is all.

Note to Self...

You're trying to lose weight, remember.

Oh, yeah.

Well, the scale is still doing it's 159-163 yo-yo. Shocking. I swear, I realize I sound like a complete and utter lying loser. "I don't know WHY I can't lose weight!" blah.

I do know why, I just have such a hard time changing things. It's shameful how we become creatures of habit and I cannot tell you how often I find my hand making it's way from a bag of goldfish to my mouth before I even know what is happening. But there are two, no three, new developments:

1.) Alli. I started taking it 2 weeks ago and although the scale is obviously not showing much of a difference (well, it is on the low end of the yo yo for several days now), the complete and utter fear of the treatment effects associated with it are enough to keep me from eating crap. It is not something I plan on taking long-term; I know that my body fights the initial weight-loss more than the shedding of the majority of pounds. I just need something to help get it started, as all of the food journaling and daily walks have as of yet done nothing. Also, when and if I ever get knocked up, I won't be taking a weight-loss supplement, so this is just to maybe help get rid of a few pounds (I only want to lose 15, for cripe's sake!) before I give my body over to embryofetusbaby for two years.

2.) FitTV on Demand. Yay for this little thing and how have I not known about it for the past two years? I could have easily have saved about a grand on personal training and begun my weight loss months and months ago had I known that at any time, I could whip up a 30 minute work out on my TV.

Yesterday, while frantically trying to find an episode of Dora the Explorer for my fevery, teething mess of a child, I discovered a Sport & Fitness button on our OnDemand channel and voila!! Moments later, Ethan was dancing to the thumpa-thumpa music and I was knee-deep in grapevines and shoulder rolls. I had found The Firm. And I can go back and find it any time I want. How cool is that? So I managed to get in a 30 minute work out, in the living room, just like that. Sure, by the end, I was only doing legs because Ethan lost interest in his own grooving and wanted to be held, but still--that's a 20lb weight right there. That's got to be good, right?

3.) New jeans!!! Smaller jeans!! I now have 2 pairs of size 10s that fit me perfectly and do not mush the top of my belly up and over the waist line (aka: muffin top). I am not thrilled that they are 10s, as opposed to the 8s I was wearing before having Ethan, but it is a step in the right direction. I also just bought new yoga pants in a size medium, which I haven't been able to do in 2 years. So all that "it's not the number on the scale, it's the way your clothes fit" stuff is working for me right now.

All in all, even though the infuriating game of yo-yo continues, I'm feeling pretty good. Hopefully within a couple of weeks, the yo'ing will be happening a little farther down the scale.

Oh, so breakfast IS important??

Huh. Who knew? I've only heard that about eleventy billion times. But I thought they meant for OTHER people, not for me. I mean, my body is composed of something entirely different from everyone else, isn't it? So the rules of good nutrition can't possibly apply to Meeeeeeee. I'm special; I don't need breakfast. Those are a couple hundred calories I can definitely cut out. I will drop the pounds left and right if I just avoid that first meal of the day.

Oooooor, I can stare at the scale every day, watching it say the same thing over and over again because I snack all day because, what do you know? I'm HUNGRY!

So today I started eating breakfast. Sigh. Three egg omelets, pancakes and sausages rock. Just kidding. I had 2 egg whites on a high-fiber english muffin with a piece of low fat cheese melted on it. For its serious lack in fat and calories, it was surprisingly tasty. I'm kind of looking forward to having it again, which I didn't think would be the case. That, along with my skinny cinnamon dolce latte makes my sparkpeople nutrition tracker VERY happy.

And on top of being tasty, are you ready for this? I ate breakfast at 8:30 this morning and now, at 12:15, I am JUST starting to think of food again. As a chubby breakfast skipping girl, I assure you, I generally spend a LOT of time each day contemplating food. They say that men think of sex every 9 seconds, right? Food is usually kind of like that for me. So to go almost 4 hours without having to talk myself out of eating a handful of this or a piece of that is pretty major.

Sigh. I guess ALL the nutritionists can be wrong. I'm sold. I eat breakfast.

When you start a blog to keep you honest...

and then you don't write in it...um. Dumbass.

So here I sit. Almost a week into using www.sparkpeople.com. I had used it in the past but what with my stellar record for commitment to weight loss and all, I grew tired of the whole accountability thing and let it fall by the wayside. But I've been good this week, writing down everything, researching nutritional information and searching for the sources of my stagnant weight loss.

Can we say "mindless eating"? Oh my. A bite of Ethan's french toast at breakfast. A bite of his cheese stick at lunch. A nibble from his bagel in the afternoon. You want some Teddy Grahams, Ethan, because Mama does!!! Woot! Cinnamon flavored. Super. If mindless eating was an Olympic sport, my friends, I would be medaling on an hourly basis---ALL events would be owned by me. I would be the Bodie Miller of mindless eating (except I'd actually win something instead of toking up before events--although....toking up might actually help me eat even more mindlessly, huh? Anyway, I digress....)

So yeah. There's that. Tsk. Tsk.

And then there's the whole idea of calorie intake versus where the calories come from. I barely make my minimum calorie intake for the day (yay, me!), but I never hit my daily protein goals, either. And while I cringe at the idea of anything remotely Atkins-y, I know that protein staves off hunger and blah blah blah. So I need to start drinking skim milk or something (insert gagging sound here). And so the search for a sugar-free chocolate syrup that doesn't taste like ass is on. I can't even fathom drinking a glass of skim milk without it, but I neeeeeed those 8gms of protein, damn it.

On a positive note, can we all take a moment to stand in awe of the marvel that is the new line of *skinny* lattes at Starbucks. For years I have had to stand there, at the counter, taking up valuable time, energy and oxygen ordering a: "tall skim, sugar-free, no whip cinnamon dolce latte". Now I can replace everything before "cinnamon" with the word "skinny", and voila! The tall? NINETY calories. That's right--something at Starbucks that isn't just steaming lard in a cup. Ah, the joy.

So to sum up: sparkpeople, protein, skinny lattes. It's all good.

Did anyone see a wagon going by?

Because I fell off of one recently and should probably find it and hop back on.

Which brings me to something I've been pondering in the past few days as my hand automatically reaches for crap I shouldn't eat and my brain does absolutely nothing to stop the process. Why do we sabotage ourselves? Why is it the second I start to hear, "You look fantastic!" "You're definitely losing weight!", and I start to not loathe pictures of myself, I feel the need to open the fridge and begin to eat. Why is that?

It happens all. the. time.

The past week or two have been a bit of a free fall for me. Not that I have been surrounding myself with piles of Krispy Kremes and eating my way through them. I'm not driving-thru Taco Bell ordering 15 chalupas and choco-tacos. I don't do stuff like that. Ever. I don't eat shitty crap foods like that. I eat relatively healthy foods; sadly, just too much of it. And in the past week or so, I've not really done anything to check myself.

"But, FatSarah," you say. "You were going to start writing down everything you ate. You said so just the other day. It's been over a week. You should have over a week's worth of food journals! What happened?!"

What happened was I wrote down breakfast that first day. Then I snuck a few bites of Ethan's lunch, along with my own lunch. Then I mindlessly popped a few of his Goldfish that afternoon. Then I was too tired to cook so we had take-out Thai that night. At the end of the day, I couldn't face the long list of "you should know betters" that would have been staring back at me had I written it all down.

So I have that first breakfast, and then I have today's breakfast. Because I might still eat like crap here and there, but I have to hold myself accountable more. I know that. And I don't know why I'm afraid to do it.

Perhaps it is the expectation and anticipation of others that makes it easier to just backslide. A very well-meaning friend said to me the other day, "It's so great that you're doing this for yourself. And you know, now that people are noticing it, you have to just keep going! That's great!" I know it was a compliment, but I cannot put into words the fear that gripped my throat when I realized she was right. People were starting to notice my weight loss. They were going to start looking for more of it, less of me. It's far less pressure to just be the chubby girl who everything thinks is funny and has a pretty face.

I remember it happening last time as well. After spending most of my 20s in this same weight range, I distinctly recall the barrage of compliments as I neared 15-20 pounds of weight loss. I stopped being me and became the pounds I was losing. It's all anyone talked about. It's all they wanted to hear about--how was I doing it? How was I feeling? Did I know how great I looked? The pressure to keep it up was tremendous. When I stopped losing at 140 and stayed there, gradually the attention receded and I felt like myself for the next 5 years.

It is such an irony. I want to lose weight, but I don't want people to notice. I don't want them to talk to me about it, or compliment me on it. Maybe because when they do I have to admit that I am/was fat and that it is/was enough of a detriment to my appearance that the absence of a few pounds becomes noteworthy.

But is it fair to ask people NOT to notice? Not to compliment and comment? I think it's one of my biggest hurdles on this path because it is such a contradiction and it is such psychological barrier for me. I will actually find a way to eat more right after someone has pointed out how good I look. I've caught myself doing it on more than one occasion. I can't expect people to know how it makes me feel to be in the spotlight for this particular "accomplishment". They only mean well when they say flattering things. I need to get past it.

Which is why I'm back on the blog, back on the wagon, poised and ready for the next compliment that comes my way to make sure I don't use it as an excuse to take another superfluous bite.

Oh, and skim chai tea lattes taste way better than soy chai tea lattes and they save me 20 grams of fat. Fabulous.

Ah, the sweet smell of

failure.

161.

Better than 165 or 162. But still, 161. Not 160. I suppose I could step on the scale in 3 hours and it would say 159, but at the moment this morning that I decided to face the numbers, it said 161, so that's what I have to go with, right?

It sucks. The old FatSarah would throw her hands up and say, "See?!! I can't lose weight! Why try? I'll just embrace my tubbiness and forget about trying to get rid of it!" But I can't this time. There's too much at stake this time and for the rest of my life for me to do that anymore.

So I start the new year with a new goal. I have no idea how long it will before I find myself staring at the business end of a pregnancy test, so I can't say that "I will lose 20 pounds this year," because honestly, I could lose another 5 and then gain 30.

The goal, instead, is going to be to eat more healthfully, losing weight for as long as is possible, whether it's 2 more weeks or 12 more months. Pregnancy, if I'm lucky enough to find it this year, will not be an excuse to gorge myself like it was last time (that's an exaggeration, but not by much). I'm going to start by using the fancy, "all the bells and whistles" food journal I got the other day.

Welcome to the world of "if you bite it, you write it--2008".

Ignorance is bliss...

I have no idea how much I weigh. I know I haven't gained a ton (even a tiny ton) because my clothes still feel the same way they did two weeks ago. But with the exception of a few errant hops on the scale since my last post, I have allowed myself to be oblivious to the scale.

But not oblivious to my eating habits. That being said, I am not sure I want to step on the scale tomorrow. Today was the first time I've actually been kind of bad and I hate the idea of how I'm going to feel tomorrow if I see anything higher than 160, what with my big old boast-y "i'm not going to gain anything blah blah blah" bragginess in my last post. Blech.

I'll be here to face the music, though. With bells on. And hopefully no extra fat.