Depressed

I'm down.

I haven't felt like posting.

Blogging world, please hire me! Or find me a job.

I actually SLEPT THROUGH my appointment with Christine on Monday, she was gracious enough to reschedule me for today and not charge me double. Good woman.

The Great Goldfish Gobble

I'm feeling better. I feel like I have tools at my fingers.

I've also discovered that Whole Wheat Cheddar Goldfish are my binge food! What is that!? WHY is that!? I don't even like them that much. I just feel the total compulsion to eat them. ALL of them. We got a huge box of them for an audition this week. And while the children (and myself) did a pretty good job... we probably have somewhere around 1/8th left. And all I want to do is eat them. So I probably had at least 5 mini trips to the large Goldfish Carton of Doom today. (Toward the end of last week they were in our office kitchen, so much easier to avoid but today my coworker brought them into our office.) 

What are you smiling at, fish!?

Anyway. Spirits are higher. Less bummed about boys, less bummed about life, more jazzed about finding a new job. Taking things into control.

Seeing Christine on Monday was good. We hardly talked about food at all, but just sort of talked through the issues and why I'm overeating goldfish when stressed. It was good, she didn't berate me at all, and I actually lost 1/4lb (WHAT?!). I'm feeling better and more on track with my eating (minus the Goldfish... time to move them back to the kitchen, I think).

Anyway. Going to focus my energy on getting a job and eating on track.

Still Figuring It Out

Still feeling down. Not as despondent. I've spent this whole week snacking. I've alternated from periods of nausea to periods of just bingeing. Yesterday I basically binged all afternoon, but then I met up with friends in the evening. We went to a Mexican place that has really cheap margaritas which were my comfort of last summer. Friends ordered Margaritas, Coronas, and quesadillas. I managed to not order anything despite everyone's willingness to share. I wasn't hungry and I'm sure I'd well surpassed any calorie guideline I'd set for myself.

Small victories, right?

Today I feel a little more centered in my eating. I'm making a plan, because winging it is not going to work for me like it usually does. I'm going to go back to Anna dieting circa December, and just think about and prepare my foods in a constructive manner.

Things are not going the way I want them to right now, but that's no excuse to take it out on my body.

I'm sure I've gained weight this week. The depressing thing is, I have yet to gain weight since I started actively trying to lose weight and the prospect (almost guarantee) of gaining is a little distressing. I'm almost embarrassed to go see Christine. I don't want to talk about the weight gain, even though clearly that will be the focus of our conversation. I need to remember that this is just one week. It was a hard week. And it's good to learn how my relationship with food changes when my general and emotional stress levels get high.

I was also thinking that I probably am past the window of Week 4 for Cto5K. I wonder if I tried to go back to it if I would just not even be able to do it at all. That's a little depressing too. I think I can't dwell on it.

I went to my doctor this week and all the tests they did in the office came out normal (previously my blood pressure would be a little high). They did some test and the percentage of my body that is fat is 34%. Which seems kind of creepy and high. I should have asked what was normal. He told me to work on strength training and gaining lean muscle. I know this all. But stressing about exercise at this point is probably not constructive since I'm starting to lose my footing on the diet. Once I feel better about that/coping without food... I'll think on adding exercise in (again).

Small Victories?

Juice Generation finally launched their website. It is very comprehensive and if I weren't in a totally miserable place, I would be quite pleased with it.

I am bummed my favorite sandwich there is over 500 calories though. Time to reconsider but I think I figured as much.

I need:
A new job
To focus again on my diet
To start running
To go to yoga
To delete OKCupid
To have some Anna time

TO PULL MYSELF OUT OF FUNK LAND. For most of this week, I've been eating totally miserably. Today I feel nauseous and just purely unhappy that even the thought of food is making me feel ill.

I just want to get under a blanket and watch Nurse Jackie while applying for jobs.

Sad

I am sad. There is a solid chunk of my life that is not going the way I want it to. And there's just really nothing I can do about most/any of it. I'm feeling tired. Top that off, this is a huge week for us at work and we have three solid days of auditions. Which means my office provides snacks. Which means today I ate my weight in Goldfish and Yogurt Covered Pretzels. Now, while that's not the worst food items to eat, it's certainly not the best. And what kind of scared me about it, is I really didn't care. I was eating handfuls of Goldfish while JOKING to my coworker about emotionally eating.

And it felt good. It felt comforting and crunchy and compulsive.

I need to get myself out of this funk stat.

Emotional Eating Bell Curve

My roommate and her boyfriend just broke up. She's understandably unhappy about this. This is a relationship she really saw lasting and the break up came as a shock. We've been spending a lot of time together, mostly after work, mostly getting dinner. She's been ordering sumptuous, rich, or fried food. She's eats maybe ... 5 bites? And proclaims that she's full. I don't know how many hardly eaten orders of macaroni and cheese are sitting in our fridge right now. But a lot.

This is something I relate to, as well. People have all sorts of different was of dealing with extreme depression/sadness. Mine, surprisingly, is also to not eat. When a relative dies, when I go through a breakup, when I'm feeling despondent, I drop weight. Also, when I'm overjoyed, I don't eat. I just have other things occupying my life/energy for me to focus on food.

Now, you may be asking yourself, "Hmm... Anna... we are reading your WEIGHT LOSS blog. If you don't emotional eat but rather, emotional STARVE, then where is your problem!?" Hold your horses! I never said I don't emotionally eat. I don't eat at the most extreme forms of emotions. However, the minor emotions, everyday stress, everyday celebrations, everyday anxiety, everyday rewards, I want to eat.

In September, I started a new job. There is a reason this weight loss journey for me didn't begin until November. I don't want to blame my old job because everything I eat/do is in my control. However, I was miserable and stressed out all the time. My nights were consumed with anxiety dreams. In a little under a year and a half I gained 15lbs bringing me to the heaviest weight I've ever been and probably the unhappiest I've been since middle school. When I finally left that job, I my regular stasis returned to a neutral place (as opposed to a stressed unhappy place), and finally I could focus more on myself and what I needed to do to make myself a healthier, happier person.

And so, with my many months of statistics I've endured, I propose to you, dear readers, the emotional eating bell curve. The middle represents where (most of us) spend most of our emotional states. Neutral. Content. All that. As you go out two standard deviations, you get into either that stressed or celebratory state. And as you go one more standard deviation out you're in the despair or exuberant. If I had any skills in graph making or computers I'd draw it out for you real pretty. But for now, Google images will have to represent (the little ticks on the side represent the standard deviations away from the mean):

Sorry if this is convoluted stats babble. But does this make sense? Do you guys find your eating/not eating/over eating follow a pattern like this? Is it different?

Untag

I think one of the best things Facebook can do is let you untag pictures. Pictures that don't make you look like yourself, pictures where you're doing things you wouldn't want your mom to see, or, in my case, pictures that make you look FAT. I go through my Facebook photos from time to time and sometimes have a hard time distinguishing what I look like now (down 45lbs) from what I looked like then. There are some obvious changes. I've clearly lost weight in my face (no double chin anymore!). But beyond that, I have a hard time understanding how different I look. Compared to the last time I lost weight, people have been making relatively little fuss about the changes I'm making. So while last time I really felt MUCH thinner, I don't really have that same sense of it all right now (even though I'm pounds away from my lowest weight in recent memory).

I saw one picture of me in a friend's album from last summer. And somehow it hit me that I didn't like many of the other pictures in that album. But, of course, only one picture was tagged. So I went through the album and, lo and behold, I found this picture:

And... wow. I don't look like that anymore. This is probably around the heaviest I ever was and it's almost hard for me to look at, let alone share. And now, most of my Facebook pictures are from 15lbs ago. I did have one taken last week, and while you can't see what my body looks like in the greatest detail, I think the change can speak for itself.

So there we have it! Definitely moving in the right direction and it doesn't hurt my eyes to look at me.

Adieu Obesity!

As of yesterday, you are reading the words of someone OVERWEIGHT and no longer OBESE (by BMI standards anyway). This was officially my next goal and I just met it! I'm feeling rather jazzed. I somehow managed to drop three pounds this week. Part of me thinks just obsessing over the fat content of food let me refocus, however, toward the end of the week, I really wasn't paying much attention. I also found myself in situations where I couldn't find fat-free items and so just relied on old diet habits (which obviously work too). But I'm feeling really good! This brings the total lost to 45lbs, and the weight with Christine at 40lbs.

In honor of the occasion my friend made me an ecard!

I have to pause to just think about what that means. Over 20 percent of the old me is gone. Poof! Five-ish months ago I started this journey and I'm so excited to see how it's all turned out. I finally feel like I understand moderation. I finally am not feeling totally reliant on food or alcohol to make an evening "fun." I am under 5lbs away from what I weighed as a sophomore in high school (I hit a weight I found so preposterously high so I joined Weight Watchers... that's why I remember what I weighed... funny to think of that as a celebratory weight now).

I feel like throwing an "Anna's Not Obese!" Party. But I wonder if that's 1) a little self congratulatory and 2) just telling too much. I'll think about it. Ideally hosted at my apartment and everyone brings their favorite healthy snacks. 

I have fallen off the exercise wagon. Between my knee, and then getting sick, and then the total frustration that is Cto5k week 4... it just hasn't been happening. I'm going to try and nurse myself to health and then get back on that running. One of my friends told me that people are most likely to quit during week 4 and week 7. Somehow those are the most difficult jumps for people to make.

I did want to briefly mention BAI. I was feeling bummed about my continued obesity when a friend brought this up to me. Apparently it's a new way of formulating how much fat a person has without using their weight as a factor. It simply takes your height and your hip measurement and gives you a number. BMI has been criticized a lot for not taking anything like muscle mass etc into account, and apparently BAI addresses some of those issues. Here is the calculator if you're curious as to where you fall. A few weeks ago I calculated my BAI and I was totally overweight and not obese. Good feeling.

I wonder if this is entering TMI territory, but we're all friends, right? I went on a third date with that boy I've mentioned before. This time the date ended at his apartment. And this is the thinnest I've ever been while dating someone. And just making out with this boy even felt different. I felt smaller (even though this boy is rail thin... I showed a picture of him to Christine and she was CONVINCED he had to be on coke to be that thin... I assured her that he's not). I used to hate having a guy's arm around my stomach because then he could feel all the fat, and I wasn't at all self conscious about that. The lights were on FULL and usually I'd feel uncomfortable with THAT. And there was an early point where I felt a little exposed and I think he picked up on that and said "You're beautiful." And I seriously melted. I felt so feminine and attractive and wanted.

I think I still have a long way to go before I feel totally comfortable with my body and men, but already this felt like a huge change. The last time I made out with someone to this extent was October. And even when I hit this weight zone before in college, I really didn't date. I think I was too obsessed with my diet and all that goes along with being a college sophomore. So this is a new chapter in all this. Again, sorry if this was TMI, but I think it's a real relevant part of my weight loss journey.