On the Weigh Down, Month Two

Weight: 168 -- loss of 1.2 pounds

I'm actually rather pleased -- I was scared to get on the scale. I think it would have been a lower number 10 days ago, but I sort of freaked out starting then. Up until then I was feeling pretty relaxed -- eating healthfully, not letting myself get too hungry, eating only until satisfied, etc. I was exercising but not obsessively, and resting when I needed to rest.

Then I started that old familiar dance -- dreaming about what life would be like when I was thin again, stressing about whether or not I ate too much on a particular day, serving myself tiny servings at dinner, getting upset that I didn't walk as many steps as I had the day before, typing my food intake into fitday.com "just to check" and see how many calories I'd eaten, going to bed a bit hungry, spending too much time thinking about food and what I'd eat the next day, not lying down when I needed some rest because I had "too much to do". I was also not getting enough sleep -- getting up at 5am to walk the dog and exercise, and being awakened every single night by T's coughing or C's coughing, or C needing water or C needing her covers on or C having a bad dream....

On January 20, I fought the urge to binge from 2pm until bedtime. I was starving all day on the 21st, but didn't allow myself to eat more than I had planned to eat that day. I ate past satisfaction at lunch and dinner on the 23rd. Finally yesterday I had a binge unlike any I've had for months. It was awful. I was so tired and wanted to take a nap so badly. I'd only had a few hours of sleep between T's coughing fits every 15 minutes and C having the worst diarrhea at 11:45pm (took me 45 minutes to clean her, the bed, the floor, etc). I got off work early because I work tomorrow, but had to wait til MIL brought C home before resting. She didn't come, and didn't come, and didn't come. I finally decided to lay down anyway. I was asleep for 5-10 minutes when the phone rang. It was MIL telling me they'd be there in "a while". I couldn't fall back asleep, went downstairs, and that was all she wrote. By the time they actually got there, I was feeling rather sick.

I took R to her Girl Scout meeting, skipping dinner because (duh) I wasn't hungry. By the time we finished at 8:15pm, I was hungry and R was "famished". We went to McDonald's and I got a double cheeseburger, fries, and an ice cream cone. To be honest, the fries weren't nearly as good as I remembered them being (it's been many months since I've had them), but that didn't stop me from eating almost all of them. I was really, really full (even when I get a meal there, it's usually a kids' meal), but ate two chocolate chip cookies when I got home. I had trouble sleeping because I felt so crummy.

So....no more counting calories for me. No more trying to stay hungry "just a while while longer" before eating. No more forcing myself to go on and on like the Energizer bunny. No more.