Ego preservation and the fat girl's Catch-22

I have been thinking a lot about dating and relationships, in part because I'm still struggling to get over something that ended months ago, and mostly because I like to make sure I have something to fret about at all times.

As I've been mulling over the connection between my weight, my body image, and my receptiveness toward romance, I saw this card posted on this week's Post Secret, and I felt like I could have written it:



I was stunned because yes, that's exactly what I feel whenever I'm getting down on myself and thinking I seem all but transparent to men my age. I think delusional things like, "If I were as thin and fit as I used to be, these same guys would be falling over themselves to talk to me," or I try to rationalize that in a way, being overweight is a good filter for guys who are shallow and only concerned with looks.

The reality is that I am the one rejecting guys, not the other way around. It's not so overt as them coming over to talk to me and me laughing in their faces, but I repel people by making myself unapproachable. When guys are friendly - and even flirtatious with me - I find myself so wary of feeling foolish that I scoff at any possibility that they'd find me attractive. I assume that they're bored, that they're trying to find an in with my more attractive friend, that I'm standing between them and something they need so they're trying to be polite about getting me out of the way, or that they may seem nice but probably have girlfriends who will show up at any second. And so on and so forth. I can imagine an infinite array of possibilities and alternate realities, while believing that a guy would find me attractive and engaging and actually want to talk with me is utterly impossible.

My body language tends to be haughty and almost smug sometimes, rolling my eyes at guys' feeble efforts to show off or not even looking at them, as if I'm above these things and impossible to please. Other times, I act like I am trying not to be seen, hiding behind headphones and a sketchbook, keeping my head down and averting my eyes, doing whatever it takes to avoid even a casual friendly encounter.

I don't really know why I'm like this. It's not the end of the world if I am open, smile, even have some friendly conversation, and then it turns out the guy's not at all interested, has a girlfriend, or wasn't even smiling at me in the first place. Is my fear of appearing foolish or overeager so powerful that it's worth being alone with my defense mechanisms the rest of my life?? I would be the first to criticize people who are afraid of putting themselves out there and interacting with others, yet I find myself doing it all the time lately.

Another maddening aspect of this behavior is that I'm not naturally like this. I'm ordinarily a very warm, approachable, friendly, funny, and outgoing person. I talk with people all the time, eliciting genuine laughs and thought-provoking exchanges. I'm charming, considerate, and once I am talking with just about anyone except a male of datable age, I am the essence of a confident woman wholly at ease with herself and the world. So why do men my own age turn me into a nervous wreck?! Why can I have many-hour conversations with guys a little older than me that cause them to declare they wish they could have found a girl like me when they were my age, yet anyone between 25-39 is some sort of foreign, terror-eliciting species to me?

I started to wonder if it's because I have a good deal of male friends my own age who share their feelings about women with me, perhaps to excess. I see how shallow, emotionally stunted, self-involved, and often cruel they can be, and I assume that all guys their age must be the same. When I talk with strangers at concerts or in bars, I can almost hear them going home and telling their me-equivalent friends that they met a pretty smart, funny, and interesting girl, but they didn't bother following up because she was fat. I can literally hear them saying what one of my particularly unkind friends once said, "If she's let herself go this badly by the time she's 29, I can't imagine what she'd become if I started dating her," followed by the aside, "nice tits, though, for a fat girl."

When I am out with girlfriends and two guys approach us, I assume I am the "landmine" or the fat friend who has to be amused so the more attractive guy can talk to my friend. That's not often the way it works out, and on more than a few occasions, both guys talk to me and ignore my friend, but I am so trained to believe that at the end of the night, they're going to ask for the thinner girl's number that I don't really bother getting my hopes up anymore.

I know that my cynicism comes from years of bad relationships, just as I know that men don't mistreat me because I'm overweight - they treat me badly because I let them. It does seem easier to scornfully call me a "fat bitch" than it should, but when I was in shape, it was "dumb bitch" or "crazy bitch" or any other modifier they could imagine. The point is that the men who are inclined to call me names and treat me like garbage were going to do it anyway, regardless of my weight. And if I put up with ugly treatment, then that's what I should expect.

This brings us full circle in a way, as my weight does repel men who are shallow and only looking for someone with a super gym body who dresses like a stripper. If someone shows interest in me, it's more likely they're actually looking at my face and listening to my words, or that they're looking for something more substantive than a hottie they can take home that night. That is, in some cases. I still do occasionally encounter a baffling variety of man who seeks out the "low-hanging fruit" of heavier, less attractive girls because he assumes, as a particularly misogynistic friend of mine put it "that they're so desperate to get laid, they don't care what I say or do." Apart from an astonishing lack of insight about women, I find that debasing kind of attitude essentially inhuman (and rooted in transparent, ugly insecurity), but I still get wary whenever someone seems a little too assured of himself without displaying genuine confidence. As if I'm supposed to be the one he's settling for.

Recently a friend broke up with his girlfriend after realizing that he didn't love her and was starting to find her annoying. He said he found her completely vapid and boring to be around, save for the fact that she had an amazing body and was always willing to do whatever he wanted in bed. While I was suggesting that staying in the relationship (especially when he was considering cheating on her) wasn't fair to either of them, I felt that it had to be pointed out that part of why he found her boring to talk with is because all she did in her spare time was go to the gym and shop. "How do you think she gets that amazing body?" I asked, "by sitting around reading about physics and current events?" He tallied up the amount of hours she needs to spend at various fitness classes and working out with her trainer, and he recognized that that was the same time he and I spend pursuing degrees in science, reading, and engaging in a whole host of hobbies and fascinations that make us diverse and (I hope) interesting people. He realized that he never asked her about her day anymore because there are only so many times that a person can tell you about working out, shopping, and watching television before you find them utterly insipid and tedious to talk to.

So, like many women my age and weight, I am in a bit of a Catch-22. I want men to find me attractive for my personality, for my heart and my mind. I want them to listen to what I have to say and enjoy me for the substance of who I am. Yet, men my age are unlikely to give me that chance because they are still looking for the girls who spend all day perfecting their bodies and fussing with hair and clothes and makeup. I worry that if I make myself more physically attractive and act more approachable, I will attract the wrong kind of guy, who would mistreat me either way, but I also know that if I do nothing, I won't attract any kind of guy.

I don't know the solution. I want to say All Things in Moderation, since that seems to be my mantra lately. It's possible to be of a healthy weight and fit without spending all my time at the gym taking spinning classes. I can even work hard at it and develop a really great figure, but still dress like a lady and be myself. I can try having some confidence in men that they're not all pigs and believe that some of them might be looking for the same kind of connection I am?

I just really don't want to be wrong, work my ass off to get fit with the expectation that men will treat me better, and find they are even crueler to thin girls. But I guess if I am wrong, I'll still have my personality?

Walk walk walk walk walk

It's been seven weeks since I've started wearing my pedometer to keep track of how much I am walking. I had a few setbacks, most notably another serious case of bronchitis that developed into pneumonia, condemning me to more than a week of bed rest.

However, I've done alright in keeping up a certain amount of activity and mileage, summarized by week below:

Week	Steps	Moderate	Time Mod.	kcal	Miles
1	64,548	31,795	272	2432	25.59
2	55,302	22,464	189	2032	21.52
3	86,245	39,919	332	3333	35.13
4	71,113	40,186	336	2700	28.21
5	61,530	36,419	301	2536	24.46
6	43,067	24,577	208	1667	17.32
7	38.046	20,157	168	1417	14.7

I've averaged 23.84 miles per week, 4.3 hours at a moderate pace, burning 2302 calories. The total mileage I've walked since the beginning of this semester is about 166.93 miles (obviously this doesn't include the negligible days when I don't wear the pedometer around my apartment).

So I guess I am doing something, even though it's not necessarily the aggressive amount of exercise I'd like (yet).


So what have you got to show for it?

In addition to keeping a spreadsheet of my pedometer data, I've kept one of daily (or at least semi-weekly) weigh-ins. There are a lot of fluctuations, but in January, I was 183.5, and this morning I weighed 180. There have been points where I've dipped down to 179 or lower, but also times where I've jutted up to 184 or 185.

The thing I've noticed, though, is that while the scale may remain stubbornly stuck at 180, there have definitely been improvements to the distribution of fat around my body. My arms are still gigantic and disappointing, but my waist and midsection is definitely slimming down a bit. I've been able to wear a number of fitted blouses, dresses, and jackets that had been getting snug, and they've fit better than when I first got them. The particularly gratifying aspect is that those clothes are all size 12, when I've been wearing a size 14.

I have a lot, and I mean a lot of work to do before I'm going to start feeling like I've lost any weight, but it is good to feel like I am heading in the right direction. I know that I have several boxes of really cute spring and summer clothes in my parents' attic, and it would be splendid to be able to wear them again by the time the weather warms up.

I am optimistic that my lungs will have cleared fully enough that I can try jogging tomorrow, or the next day at the latest, and I'm hoping to really give my metabolism a kick by making running a regular part of my days. I did actually run a few times in February when the sidewalks were clear enough of snow and ice, and it felt terrific. I think that even though all this walking may not have as significant an impact as I might like on losing weight, it's definitely helping my leg muscle strength and cardiovascular fitness.

I'm encouraged that if I can get a big jump on the fat, I'll really get the ball rolling on my goals for the spring and summer. Naturally, I'll keep this blog posted if (should I say when?) I do.

Doing what I can

To start, I was happy to weigh-in this morning at 182.5, which is down 1 pound from last Sunday.

I know that it is almost certainly water weight fluctuation and so on and so forth, but I'll take it. My challenge is to get down at least another pound (if not more) by next Sunday.

I've restarted the One Hundred Pushups program this week, and today was day 2 of week 1. Already I saw that the pushups were much easier to do on day 2 than they were on the first day (which was actually on Wednesday - I procrastinated). I noticed that by Friday, my arms and abs were very pleasantly sore, which is a good reminder to myself to keep an eye on what I eat.

And perhaps most significantly today, I hula-hooped for 30 minutes straight. I found a few different figures for the amount of calories burned in 30 min, but the average seems to be 350-400 calories for 30 min with a weighted hoop. My hoop is 5 pounds, and of course I am a heavier person moving myself around, so that figure may be slightly more or less, but it's a great thing to have done either way.

The irony was not lost on me that as I was hooping, I was watching an episode of Chopped on my computer. I love cooking shows, and ordinarily when I'm watching them, I knit or draw or do some sedentary thing. I was happy, this time, to have spent the first 12 min doing my pushups, then the next 30 hula-hooping. I feel like that was time well spent.

I've made plans to go ice skating again this coming weekend, actually with the friend to whom I've been enviously comparing myself. I figured it would be good karma to stop being jealous of her weight loss and instead to start doing healthy activities together. She is not my enemy - my own unhealthy lifestyle is - and allying myself with someone going through the same process as me can only benefit us both. Plus, she's just as excited about ice skating as I am, so it should be a great time!

Walking and skating

I've started keeping a spreadsheet of my pedometer data and adding up the totals week by week. As a reminder, my pedometer generates the following information, approximated from my height and weight:

• total steps walked


• number of steps at a moderate pace


• minutes spent walking at a moderate pace


• kcal burned by walking


• distance travelled (in miles)

When entering this data, I keep mental asterisks, such as the other day, when I wore my pedometer at a weird angle on my hip and it recorded what I know to be a 2-mile walk as less than a mile. I also know that it doesn't give me a caloric boost when I take the stairs instead of the elevator, or when the steps I'm walking are uphill (in the snow!).

But to get a general idea of where I stand, it's a good gauge.

Week One
Total Walked: 64,548 steps
Moderate Pace: 31,795 steps
Moderate Time: 272 min (4.5 hours)
kcal Burned: 2432
Distance: 25.59 miles

Week Two (so far)
Total Walked: 54,972 steps
Moderate Pace: 22,464 steps
Moderate Time: 189 min (3 hours, 9 min)
Calories Burned: 2027 kcal
Distance: 21.41 miles

My Week Two totals lack Sunday's data, but to be honest, I doubt they will be too impressive, as I have a ton of schoolwork to do.

Week Two also deserves an asterisk for real, as I went ice skating on Friday. I wore my pedometer out of habit, so some of my calories and steps are based on that data, but I was actually skating for about 2 hours. I read online that for a 180-pound person, ice skating burns 572 calories/hour, which would have meant I burned 1144 calories Friday night. If I add that to my total for the week, I'm a lot closer to the 3500 I would have needed to burn a pound of fat this week, though still distressingly far away.

More importantly though, ice skating was great fun, and it felt terrific to use my body to do something I love. I was incredibly pleased to find my form had held up after so many years of not skating, and that my legs were strong enough to skate at a pretty decent pace, but stay in control as I dodged less experienced skaters and show-offs who were weaving and buzzing through the crowd. The outdoor rink stays open through the end of this month, so I'll have to get there again soon.

Now How About Calories?

Depending on the source, I've read that an overweight adult should exercise anywhere from 150-300 minutes (2.5-5 hours) per week to lose weight. I don't actually know if the "moderate" pace on my pedometer counts as moderate exercise, or if that 150-300 minutes should be like, running on a treadmill. Usually when I'm looking at my pedometer data, I'm focusing on the time spent at a moderate pace and the caloric estimate, since those are the likeliest indicators of weight loss efficacy.

Where it gets slightly complicated for me is that looking at the time, I should be set, as last week I was at a moderate pace for 4.5 hours and this week it was minimally 3. Calorically, though, the amount I'm exercising seems nowhere near the amount I'd need to burn a pound of fat, without even considering the way I'm eating (i.e. all this exercise must be off-setting calories taken in if I'm to lose weight).

Speaking of Weight

A second page of my spreadsheet has a list of my daily weigh-ins, which I take each morning as I'm getting ready (time permitting). I don't know if it's healthy to weigh oneself every day or not, but it's become a habit over the past few years. I'm aware that the daily fluctuations are most likely to do with water weight and digestive speed more than actual measurable weight losses and gains, but I would like very much to see an overall loss each week.

This week, it's been:

Mon: 182.5
Tues: 183
Wed: 182
Thurs: 184.5
Fri: 182.5
Sat: 182

Last Sunday, I weighed 183.5. I'll have to check in the morning to see if there was a net loss, but as I see between Wednesday and Thursday, it's totally possible for my weight to fluctuate by 2.5 pounds and mean nothing in the grand scheme of things.

I have to remember that my goal is not just to lose weight. I want to be fitter, more active, and to eat better because it's healthier and will let me live a longer, happier life. It's not the fat that is making me unhealthy - it's the poor nutrition, lack of exercise, and other unhealthy behaviors themselves that are destructive. Being overweight is merely a symptom of an unhealthy lifestyle, and I can't treat just that symptom, but rather must address the whole lifestyle if I want to overcome it.

I'm really happy that I went ice skating this week. I'll be happier if I can fit it in again, along with some other exercise this coming week. I persist in the belief that if I make my lifestyle healthier, I will eventually see results toward my weight loss goals too.

It seems unfair

Since finally getting over the back-to-back cold, bronchitis, flu triple whammy of my winter break, I've returned to my daily commute to school. I had estimated the walking portions as being about 2-3 miles, though I'm not sure what the basis for this estimate was. It turns out my walk is actually more like 4 miles, which I recently confirmed both by wearing my pedometer last week (I finally changed its battery) and checking the walking distance on Google Maps in case I was wearing the pedometer in the wrong place or making some kind of error.

This means that on an average day (of which I have at least four per week this semester), I walk 4 or more miles, usually about an hour of which is at what the pedometer considers a moderate pace. That translates to roughly 400 calories burned (and possibly more, since I am carrying a heavy backpack, negotiating hills and stairs, and so forth). On other days, I've walked 8 and a half miles or more. One would think the weight would come ripping off.

And yet, I must be doing something terribly wrong with my diet if my weight won't budge.


Some Math

To lose one pound of fat, a person must net a loss of 3500 calories. That is, the amount of calories eaten less one's basal metabolic rate and those burned through exercise must together tally up to 500 less per day if one wishes to lose one pound in a week.

For my height, weight, age, and sex, my basal metabolic rate (BMR) is approximately 1611 calories. (You can calculate yours here.)

If I am burning 400 calories a day, yet staying the same weight, I must be eating minimally 400 calories more than that 1611, which puts me at 2000 calories a day or more.

When I did that math, I blinked, dumbfounded. Can that possibly be right??


Examining Thoughtless Days

Since cutting out all take-out and fast food, I would say I eat a fairly healthy diet. I've been resisting actively dieting because I have too much on my metaphorical plate already, and I assumed that getting the grossly unhealthy foods off the table would take care of the situation.

Yesterday, here is what I ate, with approximate times of day:

- 10:00 am: 1 SlimFast meal replacement bar
- 1:15 pm: a second SlimFast bar
- 5:00 pm: a ham and cheese sandwich, on multigrain bread
- 9:00 pm: 2 mint Oreos
- 11:00 pm: half a bag of frozen cauliflower, with a pat of SmartBalance butter spread, salt, and pepper
- 12:30 am: a small handful of raisins
- 1:30 am: instant Ramen, beef flavor

I wouldn't have said that was such a bad day, in so far as I didn't eat a formal "dinner," but I thoughtlessly snacked on the equivalent of a dinner and then some. I've been eating those SlimFast bars because they fit in my purse and I have ten minutes between my morning and afternoon classes, but then when I came home I was so hungry I had a sandwich. That would be fine if that were my dinner, but I had a second dinner through grazing.

Here was Monday, a less typical day when my mom came to the city:
- 9:00 am: SlimFast bar
- 3:00 pm: street vendor hot dog with sauerkraut and mustard
- 7:00 pm: fried rice chip things with peanut sauce, 1.5 curry puffs, large serving of green curry with beef over jasmine rice, big slice of chocolate mousse cake
- 11:00 pm: 2 mint Oreos

Again, I would have said that while I had a huge meal with my mom at dinner, the rest of the day wasn't so bad. Yet the hot dog was a much bigger meal than it seemed, calorie-wise, and I had the same calories in the SlimFast bar as in two Oreos (why do I even have Oreos in my apartment?!).

In my delusional thinking, I've been "pretty good" this week, but clearly I have slipped up a number of times and probably do so every day.

I read suggestions for how to cut calories from one's diet, and they're always absurdities like "Instead of having an egg McMuffin with cheese for breakfast, have a bran muffin!" or "Trade your 600-calorie Starbucks drink for a 200-calorie hot chocolate!" It's always struck me as a little ridiculous, since I am already eating the bran muffins and having neither lattes nor hot chocolate, but calorie-free diet soda instead. I already eat fat-free dressings and a minimum of condiments and sauces, I use SmartBalance cholesterol-reducing spread instead of butter, I eat whole grains, and I've even started drinking water (ugh). More than a few times, I've lamented, "What am I supposed to cut? Real food??"

Well yes, that is precisely what I have to do. I act like I am eating a basically healthy diet, but I sneak treats in. Dessert at dinner, packages of Oreos hanging around the apartment, appetizers instead of salads at dinner, cocktails and beer. When you add up all these little treats, they are precisely the extra calories that my minimal activity can't offset.


So what do you do about it?

I am still endlessly frustrated by the friend of mine who keeps dropping weight by doing Atkins. She's doing it wrong, essentially cutting all carbs from her diet (as in the induction phase) and not reintroducing them or learning how to eat properly. She's also doing minimal exercise (yoga once a week or so), yet she's steadily losing weight, and it drives me nuts. Then again, she has a lot more weight to lose, and after dieting for the past 6 or 8 months, she's only just reached the weight at which I freaked out and decided an emergency intervention was necessary to get my weight under controlled.

I know that I have to stop comparing myself to her because I've already decided that I don't want to lose weight that way.

I also know that I don't have the time or wherewithal to succeed at a formal diet right now. I can try smaller portions and healthier choices, continue eschewing fast food and take-out, resisting desserts and appetizers, drinking more water, eating more vegetables, and so forth.

And that leaves me with a dramatic increase in exercise.

Where I'm at right now, I will basically maintain my weight, give or take, by walking to and from school and not suddenly increasing my calories. My body has established an equilibrium around 180, and if I want to change that without appreciably changing my caloric intake, I need to introduce a big shock of exercise.


Choosing a More Active Lifestyle

When I was young, I never had trouble with my weight. At times, I actually struggled to keep weight on, and for a brief while I was clinically underweight. I know that my metabolism was much higher because I was younger, but more than that, I was an athlete and when I wasn't in training, I had a very active lifestyle.

When I was 14 or 15, my favorite activities were rollerblading, bicycling, playing tennis, swimming, and so forth. A typical spring or summer day would include rollerblading across town to meet up with friends, play tennis, then maybe rollerblade to the beach for a swim. When I was in training, I would make time for 5-mile runs, weight-lifting, and random calisthenics throughout the day. The first time I ever gained weight was when my friends started driving (they were all a year or two older than me) and they no longer wanted to rollerblade or bicycle places, but rather drive to a movie or sit around in basements and drink.

Living in a city, my lifestyle is a sort of hybridization - I walk everywhere now, yet I am walking to sedentary activities or drinking. I walked 9 miles the other day, but I was walking from a restaurant where we had pizza dinner to a bakery where we had cupcakes (it was my friend's birthday). Other days I'll be good all day (like actually good, not delusional good), then blow it with two beers, a bacon cheeseburger, and fries with a friend.

My challenge, I know, is to mitigate socializing with healthier eating. As an example, last week rather than meeting up to sit and drink, I suggested that my friend and I spend the evening at an art museum (obviously this was mainly because I was more interested in art too). We walked all around, then walked between the museum and dinner, which I can only hope offset the drinks and meal a little. I've asked that same friend if instead of meeting for dinner and drinks this weekend, we can go ice skating at a park in the city. Obviously there will be drinking and dinner as well, but I have to think that a couple hours of ice skating are better than a couple hours sitting at a barstool.

The weather here has been so bad that my plan to force myself to "go jogging no matter what" can't get off the ground. It's one thing to force oneself out in the cold or light rain, but it's quite different to try to jog on sidewalks with feet of snow or treacherously slippery ice.

That leaves me with things I can do in my apartment.... hula hooping, push-ups, sit-ups, and miscellaneous calisthenics. I have several books of workouts that can be done indoors, including the New York City Ballet Workout and the College Dorm Workout. I vaguely remember how to do yoga, and I could probably find a DVD I've bought at some point.


It still seems unfair

The point, I guess, is that I really need to do something and it seems unfair that I can't just eliminate carbs and solve all my problems. I have to keep reminding myself that the reason I want to lose weight primarily through exercise is because I need to develop a healthy lifestyle. That means activity, finding ways to incorporate exercise into my day, and discovering things I can do to offset the calories from occasional treats.

I have held, in the back of my mind, the excuse that I gained all this weight at once when I first went on antidepressants many years ago. While that may have been true at the time, I haven't addressed the problem and I am obviously eating in a way that sustains 180 pounds of me. I don't want to feel fat and ashamed of my body anymore, and it doesn't really matter how legitimate I think my excuse for gaining was, I am still fat and it's not going to go away on its own. I don't know if it would feel better to have gotten this fat by pigging out on cupcakes and drinking to excess, or like my friend, to have always been obese. I imagine not.

Though it seems a crutch at times, the most powerful weapon I have in my fight to lose weight is the fact that I used to be really fit. I know what my body can be like and how it feels to enjoy it, and the struggle is to get back in touch with that, rather than grasp flailing at some tenuous and imagined abstraction.

Worth the Effort

Continuing some of the ideas from my last post, I read a wonderful Jonah Lehrer article on Why Making Dinner is a Good Idea. Lehrer is a brilliant neuroscientist, who writes fascinating pieces that break down concepts of how the brain/mind works and explains what that means in terms of everyday experiences (among other things).

In this article, he describes an experiment to do with the amount of effort it takes to earn a food reward, as it relates to the enjoyment of it. The study found that mice who did more work (by lever-pushing) to get food then enjoyed it substantially more than food for which they didn't need to work as much. Lehrer then discussed another paper where it was observed that obese individuals got less satisfaction out of food and that overeating is not so much a matter of gluttony, but an issue of needing more food or drink to achieve a satisfying effect. (Definitely read the article - he says it much more articulately).

These ideas relate directly to one of my recent resolves, to put effort into cooking real food for dinner. Over the fall semester, I fell into a worrying pattern of ordering pizza or Chinese takeout most nights of the week, supplemented with food that took a minimal effort to cook, like prepackaged macaroni and cheese or canned soups purchased at the corner store. I don't imagine I need to elaborate on how disastrously unhealthy that's been. Further, I reckon it's at least as expensive, if not much more expensive, than planning meals, buying groceries, and taking some time to cook with fresh foods.

It is encouraging, therefore, to know that the increased satisfaction I get when I take the time to cook isn't simply a virtuous sense of accomplishment, but an actual mechanism of my brain working to reward the effort. And when you add the two ideas up, being more satisfied with something because I've cooked it also suggests I will not need to eat as much to really enjoy it. Win win, right?

In pursuit of this goal, while I've been visiting my parents over break, I've talked a lot with my mom about weeknight meals that she used to prepare for our family, copying down some of her recipes and brainstorming other ideas that work. I know that before I worry too much about "dieting" in the strictest sense, I need to get back into the habit of preparing balanced meals that take a bit of work. I need to plan menus for the week and sort out how my leftovers will work so that I don't find myself making large pots of pasta and mindlessly scooping out bowls of it all week. I also have to work grocery shopping back into my schedule so that I don't find myself with no food in the house and the inclination to plug my credit card number into a pizza delivery website so I can get back to my homework.

As I get back into the cooking groove, I urgently need to get an exercise plan in place as well. For the entire fall semester, I "meant" to sort out what I would do for fitness and never really got around to it. Initially, I figured that if I did nothing else, I was still walking at least 3 miles a day over the course of my commute, with several minutes of steep hills on each end. Unfortunately, even with a heavy backpack, I don't think I'm getting anywhere near an aerobically effective pace (though I bought a new battery for my pedometer, so I will check), and I doubt any amount of walking could make a dent in the awful eating habits I'd developed.

Like I've said before, I want to earn my weight loss and fitness. I know I will be so much happier with myself if I can do it by healthy eating and developing the discipline to exercise even when I'd rather crash in front of my computer and waste hours on the internet. I know that the approach I must take is not that I am dieting or working out to try to lose weight, but that I am changing what my life is like, so that eating healthy and exercising are as much a part of it as the other things I do. The resulting healthy body and mind are the rewards of literally becoming a healthier, fitter person on the inside, and that's the real goal.

Types of Fat and Thin

There is almost no way to talk about the following subject without offending someone, in some way. Everyone has some arbitrary definitions of "fat" or "unhealthy," their cut-off points between curvy and huge, and their concepts of what makes for an attractive body type of not.

An Interjecting Anecdote

Because I love interrupting myself, I'm gonna throw out this experience to illustrate my point.

A little while back, I had been casually dieting and trying to exercise more, though not in a particularly formal way. My family started to notice a difference, and I myself knew that I was developing shapelier muscles and losing fat in significant places. I had to travel to a conference for work, and it occurred to me, as my clothes were all feeling really loose (and looking pretty unprofessional), that I might have dropped down a size.

I was pretty stoked to be a size 12 after years as a 14, and to even have some skirts fit in 10s. I was able to wear a lot of my pre-grad-school "business casual" clothes, as well as a whole bunch of new ones that fit spot-on, if not slightly loosely. I was feeling good, but I still needed to find a dress to wear to a formal event at the conference, so I headed to one more store to try on fancy dresses. Emboldened by the clothes I had just bought and the way they flattered my figure, I looked at styles with more plunging necklines or higher hems, thinking "yeah, this one could show off my legs" or "ooh, this nips in at the waist, that'd be nice..."

With an armful of size 12 dresses, I turned around a crowded rack to move toward the dressing room, where a mother and her college-aged daughter were looking at dresses on the other side. They were both dressed as if they were going to a gym, but in that mall-fashion Juniors way, sporting fake tans, too much makeup, and so forth. They were yammering resentfully about having to shop for some other young woman they knew (I think a cousin?) in the Misses department and wondering what size she might be.

After some debate, the mother squawked, "Listen, she's really, really huge. I think she might even be a twelve!!!"

In that moment, I turned the corner, holding my size 12 dresses and saw that they had one of the ones in my armful (about which I'd been the most hopeful) pulled off the rack as an object of disgust, the way people in weight loss commercials hold out their gigantic pants.

I looked at them, then at the dresses in my arms, with the size labels clearly visible, and we all stood there uncomfortably, a saleswoman less than a foot away saying nothing. I'm not sure why I expected anyone to say anything, like how it's pretty rude to make fun of sizes in the middle of a department store, but because she was silent, I deliberately put all of my dresses back on the rack and made a beeline for the door.

I wanted to curl up in a ball and disappear, and it was a lot of restraint to keep from bursting into hot, mortified tears as I walked to my car. I felt like such a monster, and an oversensitive one at that. "Look at that fatty getting offended when someone points out her fatness," I thought to myself, and I felt especially dumb for the confidence boost I had gained just minutes earlier because I was finally down to this abominably "huge" size 12.

I couldn't help noticing that even though these women were probably of a much smaller clothing size than me, they had flabby arms and disproportionately large butts. They were also really ugly, both in the face, and in their personalities... but that didn't really mean anything as a discount to their behavior.

The thing that stuck out most to me was that it was a reality that many people would hear size 12 and think "huge," just as when I admitted my weight to a friend who said I could stand to lose 30 pounds, he exclaimed "Wow, I knew you'd gained weight, I didn't realize you'd gotten enormous!"

The other point that bothered me was that I might not have been so offended had the woman said a size 16 or a size 20. In my mind, I had an arbitrary measure of where "huge" began, and it was somewhere beyond 14 and up to infinity. If I were talking about myself, I might say "it's not like I'm a triple-XL," without considering that this statement would be incredibly hurtful to someone who had just lost 50 pounds to get down to the XXXL. I would probably even rationalize, "Oh come on, she's got to know that's a huge size," the same way that to these women, I was just obviously "huge."

Types of Fat

So establishing that everyone has a different conception of what's fat and what's not, I've been thinking about body types (probably more than is healthy, but I've been really sick since Christmas) and trying to clarify for myself what that means for my own goals.

The first type of fat is one that's really common among my friends and family, the Formerly Fit. This type applies to women who were formerly athletic and toned, then slowly started getting a little softer and flabbier around the edges. I consider myself to have this body type, and I think it's the only reason I can still trick myself into believing I'm attractive (in the right clothes and light).

I will admit, I'm mildly smug about this type because I know that under the fat are well-developed muscles, I still have tapered ankles and wrists, I've only ever had one chin (with a bit of unwelcome softness, but not a roll yet). I am able to run, hike, swim, kayak, and do some pretty impressively athletic things, just with extra weight.

The second type is the Formerly Thin, which is the descendant of girls who are Skinny Fat. You know the types of people who are not fat, but not toned either, who have never worked to be thin but just are that way, and who as a consequence of being naturally thin, never developed healthy eating habits or discipline about exercise. At some point those girls start drinking more or getting hit with life's stresses, or their metabolism just plain slows, and they get that doughy, shapeless sort of fat where it seems as if they're lacking underlying structure.

I will also admit, I'm not particularly kind to this body type, and it doesn't help that one of my exes is currently dating a girl like this.

Another type of fat I observe very commonly is the Never Been Thin, for whom I have deep and unending sympathy. I have friends and family in this category, who were chubby children, grew into obese adults, and seem to just keep getting fatter every time you see them. Unlike people who were formerly athletes, people with this body type have no idea what they might look and feel like fit, and I imagine that must really effect their self-concept and attitude toward the plausibility of weight loss.

There are, naturally, many nuances and gray areas, but for practical purposes, these three types are generally how I classify overweight women, and I apply my own biases accordingly. Now obviously, someone could be 500 pounds overweight and I wouldn't be able to discern if they were ever fit or not, but for the generally overweight (like 10-100 pounds over), I can almost always tell.

How Body Type Influences Weight Loss

This leads me to another observation: just as there are types of fat, there are types of people who have lost weight. This section is possibly the likeliest of everything I've said to offend, but bear with me.

1. The Return to Fit
This body type is achieved gradually, through a balance of diet and exercise. It usually follows the Formerly Fit fat type, as it is a matter of losing the weight and reconditioning an already athletic physique. Return-to-Fitters seem to show up one day looking amazing and healthy, but because they lost weight healthfully over a matter of time, you don't see them as formerly fat people, just "wow, so-and-so really got in shape."

2. The Still Kinda Big
This type makes me sad because it seems to follow from the Never Been Thin category. People who have naturally larger, bulkier body types can lose every spare molecule of fat in their bodies, but they will still look a little chunky. I don't fully understand this type because, for example, Star Jones was able to completely change body types when she lost weight, yet I know people who do everything healthfully but still have broad hips and thick limbs.

3. The Deflated Fat Person
I notice that this type seems to follow weight loss exclusively through dieting or low-impact exercise and is most common for the Formerly Thin fat type. I also notice it is most common with people who lose weight at a dramatic speed, through gastric bypass surgery, medication, or drastic diets. It's something to do with losing fat before the skin can regain elasticity, or dieting and exercising to become "thin" but never developing muscles. This type tends to retain indicators that they used to be much bigger, especially neck rolls, and while they may be a sliver of their former body, they still don't look healthy, so much as thin.

Why I Want to Lose Weight Slowly

The temptation when facing a large amount of weight to lose (I'd currently like to lose about 60 pounds) is to do something dramatic and sweeping. A friend of mine who has been overweight all of her life started Atkins over the summer and has dropped over 50 pounds now. I think to myself that I could do Atkins for a few months, lose all the weight I'd like to lose, and then I'd be thin and beautiful.

The thing is, though, I don't want to become a Deflated Fat Person. I don't want to lose weight quickly at the price of loose skin or a baggy neck to broadcast to the world that I used to be much heavier.I don't ever want to be just "thin," if it didn't include being fit, toned, and healthy too.

The only body type I'd be happy with is the Return to Fit, which is to say, fit. I am actually happier being a size 14 than I would be as a flabby, saggy size 4 because if you squint, I still look athletic and have an hourglass figure, with a little extra sand in the glass. I would like to get down to a smaller, healthier size, but I don't want to get there by any shortcuts.

I am taking a Tortoise approach here, trying to lose the weight by changing my lifestyle. I am trying, hard, to resist the idea that I could just rip all the weight off quickly and stay thin (because I know that I would just gain it all back, plus some, if I didn't work hard to earn and sustain the loss). I am trying to incorporate my other goals, for improving my nutrition, digestive health, skin, hair, sleep, and emotional well-being. Thin is not the end goal... healthy is.

Patience and integrity will be the biggest challenge on this path, but I know it's the only one that will lead to a lifetime of health and fitness. (And the only one that will keep my boobs up where they belong). I don't want a big "ta-daa!" moment where I reveal how much weight I've lost. I want to just show up looking and feeling really amazing one day.

Ideals, and how to attain them

I'm going to forgo my typical "hi, it's been a while" etc. stuff and just get into what I'd like to talk about, then perhaps I'll backtrack a bit and figure out what I plan to do. Prepare yourself for a long rant.

Thin is not the same as beautiful

I've been thinking about where we get our ideals for body shape, fitness levels, and how we define attractiveness. I had my heart absolutely broken this summer, and if I'm being honest, things are still not okay with any of that. An extra sting came when a mutual friend, who thought he was being objective and analytical, said that as he saw it, everything should have worked out between me and this guy, but that it wouldn't have hurt for me to lose 30-40 pounds so he wouldn't be embarrassed to be seen with me. Yes, I know, I have appallingly awful friends.

I don't want to go on a whole diatribe about body image issues or unrealistic standards or blaming the media because there's no point. No matter how much I may wish it were otherwise, people judge me on my appearance every day, and men will continue to treat me as a substandard human as long as I fall on the heavy end of their perception of normal.

In a particular moment of outrage, I started really looking carefully at girls in New York City, especially those with adoring boyfriends in tow. It's easy, when you're beating yourself up, to say these girls are just so pretty and lovely, so what's to care if they're not smart or interesting or artistically talented etc. - they must just be that captivating. The thing is, I'm an artist, and I do have a very clear understanding of biology, facial structures, symmetry, and all the mathematical stuff that goes on in the brain in evaluating physical beauty. From years of life drawing and studying the figure, I am uniquely sensitive to appearance and can see flaws from literally miles away. I was kind of stunned to realize that most girls aren't pretty. Not even close. Most of the girls I looked at were either incredibly plain or downright unattractive, once you saw through the hair, makeup, clothing, and accessories. I started looking at their boyfriends (also not all winners) and wondering if they were really that easily duped by some general concept of "beauty" defined by all these things that are so literally on the surface.

The only thing these girls had in common was that they were thin. I don't mean to say they had good bodies because again, they usually didn't. I mean they were thin, if not skinny, and that was enough, when combined with a bunch of stuff to have the general public regard them as beautiful.

Since this summer, I've moved back to the city, and I spend a lot of time people-watching on public transit. I look at women in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, and I do, admittedly, analyze the hell out of their appearance. Girls who are thin, but not toned, grow into women who are unobtrusively shapeless, and as they start to age more, become somewhat flabby and saggy and wrinkled. If they maintain their hair and have nice skin, I think they are still treated as attractive even though, as I really can't stress enough, they're not beautiful. And yet, they are the standard for beauty, when really all they have to offer is average features and the fact that they're not fat.

I look around and wonder what kind of farce we are living in. It's like the scene from E.T. when he's dressed like a lady - is there just some shell of "thin" that wears and carries all the right stuff that actually tricks people into the illusion of a beautiful woman? Yes, evidently, and if you want proof, take a really good look at all the people around you regarded as attractive.

Now here I run into a verbal quandary because I lack accessible ways to describe myself without sounding immensely egotistical. Basically, however thin or heavy I have been, people always say that I am pretty, if not more frequently veering toward beautiful. I have symmetrical, balanced features that are harmoniously arranged on my face. I have perfectly straight, really white teeth and an infectious dimpled smile. I have natural golden blonde hair highlighted by the sun and pleasantly shaped blue eyes that light up a lot. I am overweight, but I still have an hourglass figure, with toned shapely legs and tapered ankles/wrists that betray a history of athleticism. I carry myself gracefully, and I dress like a lady. Men of older generations openly regard me as gorgeous, and just about every time I leave home, men flirt with me, check me out, or hit on me (which is not at all uncommon in NYC, but I'm not just talking about the street version).

Yet guys my own age don't seem to see anything attractive about me physically (let alone aspects of personality, intelligence, sense of humor, wit etc.). They do the up-and-down, then compare with a skinny girl next to me and deem me unfit to date because I am, by their definition "fat." And to date a fat girl is more shameful than anything they can imagine.

It makes me crazy and a little sick. I cannot count the amount of girlfriends I've been introduced to by enthusiastic male friends who turn out to be mousy, plain if not ugly, and not at all interesting, but extremely thin. I see them all dressed and made up, and they look to me like children in their mother's clothes, their limbs completely lacking shape and their torsos free of any curves save the jutting-out collarbones and hips. And yet, all of my friends would call these girls pretty, if not beautiful. When you see them dressed down, without makeup and their hair piled on their head in a bun, it's even worse. They literally remind me of nothing so much as prepubescent friends from grade school in gym class, but their boyfriends can't keep their hands off of them. I cannot, for my life, understand when a stick-thin skinny girl braless in a camisole became my generation's standard of beauty, but I don't like it.

Still, I should be thin

My motivations in losing weight have always been because I am concerned for my health and want to feel better, both physically and psychologically. I used my weight as a scapegoat through an abusive relationship, and I continue to use it to beat myself up now, but I can finally see that it's not just me who is disordered in the way I think about my body.

When I was a senior in high school, I was a size 4. I remember buying my Calvin Klein prom dress and feeling proud that the 4 was actually a little loose in places because I had an athletic, but petite build and the dress was cut straighter than me. The thing that I always enjoyed about my body was its curves: curves from muscles, hips, and breasts, that made me look feminine and womanly, while still lithe and strong. In what seems now like another lifetime, I had enviably toned arms from swimming and dance and a perfectly-toned midsection. Because I was a runner (among other sports), I didn't have a trace of cellulite on my thighs or butt, and I looked fantastic in a bathing suit.

I don't really need to trace all the ways my figure went to hell since then, but that description is probably about as far from how I would characterize myself now as possible, and it does disgust me. My goal has never been to become one of those frail, skinny, shapeless girls who I loathe in public, and if anything, I'd rather be slightly overweight and curvy than one of them. There is, however, a happy medium between unattractively thin and my current shape, and I feel like I owe it to myself to get back into that kind of shape.

I should do more research and double-check my math, but I am pretty sure that at my height and build, 120-130 is an ideal weight. The last time I weighed that, I think I wore a size 2, but a 4-6 is much more plausible. In my head, the ideal measurements for an hourglass shape are about in that 34-24-36 or 36-26-36 kind of range, but damned if I know how actually accurate or attainable that might be.

All other goals aside, I want to lose weight because I want to be considered attractive. I want to like myself, and I want other people to like me. I want men to put any kind of effort into getting to know me or discovering the things that are actually beautiful about me, but they're not going to do it if they have to look past what they see as just a fat chick. I am tired of being dismissed and disregarded. I know that at a healthier weight, I could be not just thin, but beautiful.


What I can do about it

Right now, I weigh 179. This is, believe it or not, down from the 190 I weighed at the end of the summer (heavy-duty depression having kicked in something terrible). I have been fluctuating around 180 for at least the past 3 years, and I don't think I've been below 160 since I was in my early twenties. I have plenty of excuses, including the dramatic amount of weight I gained (and never lost) when I first went on antidepressants, but that was so long ago it can't possibly matter anymore.

My previous attempts to lose weight have primarily been through dieting because that (erroneously) seemed easier to control and work into my schedule. There was a time when I was swimming regularly, and I was getting toned and fitter in terms of cardiovascular health, but not losing weight or really improving my psychological health. I want some kind of dramatic, impactful exercise that can seriously make a dent in the fat of my upper arms and midsection and make progress toward my overall weight loss goals.

Currently, I walk between 2-3 moderately-paced miles a day, at least four times a week, including stretches up and down nearly 45-degree hills in my neighborhood. I take the stairs as much as I can, with a 25-pound backpack strapped on. I may not be the picture of fitness, but I am capable of strenuous hiking for several miles at any given time, and as of this fall I could kayak for an hour straight without fatigue. Something my mother says, and with which I am inclined to agree is that "underneath all this fat, there's still an athlete."

I need, now, a way to bring her out.

I think my approach needs to be diversified and realistic. I can't, for example, say that I'm going to join a gym and do circuit training for three hours a day because that is just setting myself up to fail (I also don't have the time or money for it). I already walk a lot, which is probably the only reason I've lost 10 pounds since moving and the way I've maintained a base metabolic rate in the face of ghastly eating habits (again, no time, no money, lots of stress and emotions). I am tempted, over and over, to declare that I will start running and drag myself outside with my iPod strapped to my arm, but I do worry that I will only do it once or twice and when the soaring self-satisfaction settles down, give up and go back to doing nothing.

There is a fitness center in my apartment complex, and I have to decide if I can work it into my schedule regularly enough to make it worth the money. Usually the appeal in exercising is getting to spend some time outdoors and, ideally, go somewhere, but this might be a viable alternative during the inclement weather that is right around the corner.

I also know that the single area that makes me feel fattest and grossest, by far, is my upper arms. They are the mystery of my existence, as both my mother and I have disproportionately bulky arms that make us look much larger even than we are. I used to theorize that I must have a lot of flabby muscle from swimming, dancing, playing softball etc. (and my mother from basketball and softball), but it's more likely that that is just a part of our bodies where she and I are inclined to gain weight, for whatever reason. Some women get fat in the ass or thighs, we get fat arms. It is what it is.

So in addition to general core training and aerobic exercise to lose weight all over, I want to really tone the hell out of my arms, through a combination of the One Hundred Push-Ups program, weight-bearing exercise with 3-pound dumbbells, and triceps-focused exercises with TheraBands. I added the last two items to my Christmas list, since my last set of TheraBands have now dry-rotted in the trunk of my car and I gave away my dumbbells years ago.



This summer among my mother's birthday gifts, we also gave her a hula hoop, which was weighted for core fitness.



I had never learned how to hula hoop before, and my whole family took turns trying clumsily to learn. We joked that most of the exercise came from bending down to pick it up after you spun it around your waist a few times and dropped it. In an obsessive day that resulted in incredible bruising all over, I did finally master the art of hula hooping, and I found it was a tremendous workout with the weighted hoop. So I'm asking for a hula hoop of my own for Christmas too.

In a fit of optimism when I was moving, I did bring my exercise mat, and my entire apartment is carpeted, which should facilitate the push-ups and whatever floor-work type exercise I want to do. To prevent unnecessary wallowing about matters of heartbreak, frustration with school etc., I am probably going to institute a policy that I can't imagine is as healthy as it is punitive: if I'm going to think miserable unhappy thoughts, I will hula hoop or do crunches or arm workouts or something while I'm at it. I'll either stop being miserable or start being thin, so it's win-win.

I need to make a plan of some sort for diet, though it's challenging because I've become a sort of pseudo-vegetarian of late. Most meals are centered around eating as many vegetables as possible, and most of my protein is coming from beans, cheese, and tunafish... but there is a major amount of fat and carbs in the meals I'm making. To save money and time, I bought packages of SlimFast bars for breakfasts and lunches, but I'm not formally doing the plan as intended because I still eat whatever I want the rest of the day. The intention, I guess, was to get some kind of nutrition going in the morning and afternoon so my metabolism didn't shut down completely, and by keeping it relatively low-calorie and nutritious I hoped it could counterbalance some of the horrible food choices I made for dinners. I need to take an overall more balanced approach and come up with healthy vegetarian meals (that should be really easy, wouldn't you think??) that aren't all macaroni and cheese or pasta with vegetables or take-out Chinese or pizza (aye, there's the rub). As always, I need to drink more water and eat less sweets, and I should probably take some time to examine how I got to a place in life where junk food is one of my few joys.

I am on a truly abysmally disordered sleep schedule, if you can call it that, which seems largely due to piss-poor time management. This has been the case for as long as I can remember, but I know that if I want to succeed in anything else I want to do in life, I really do need to get my sleep problems under control. I had some success when I first moved with melatonin and a set of rituals about making my bed nicely (that's become habit), showering before bed, laying out my clothes every night, keeping my bedroom as this really clean orderly sanctuary, etc, but I started needing to pull all-nighters and sleeping at erratic hours, and that all went to hell. I It is my sincerest hope that catching up on schoolwork and starting to exercise regularly will make it easier to sleep in a sane way, but I can't expect that to happen without a massive concerted effort.

And happiness. That seems thousands of miles away, but I have to believe that it is possible to be happy whatever my circumstances. I've isolated myself from most of my friends (which is not necessarily a bad thing, since most of my friendships were really destructive), and I have almost no time to spend with the few I still like anyway. That's not good, as I recognize that for as misanthropic as I can be, socialization is an important part of mental health. I have to either make new, healthier friendships, or work the time into my schedule to see my current friends more...or at least talk with them more than once a month (I'm a very bad friend when I'm busy). I have to believe that eating better and exercising will help improve my moods, but it probably wouldn't hurt to start taking St John's Wort and some of the other herbs I was taking previously for depression. I am still leery of prescription psychiatric meds and doubtful that my student health insurance would make it in any way affordable to get counseling, but I am getting really tired of being unhappy for weeks on end. I'm accustomed to cycling moods, sometimes rapidly, but it feels like I slipped into a pretty deep depression somewhere in October and have come out of it for a day or two here and there since then. I don't like the thoughts I have, and I really don't like being this unhappy. Fortunately I am still able to remain the tiniest bit objective about the situation and recognize it's something for which I am responsible and capable of changing.

So, that was a huge amount of rambling, but I think I've caught myself up on matters of psychological and physical health. Mostly.

I need to really try to get my act together and be more forgiving of myself if my discipline falters or life intervenes.

To summarize, going forward I am going to:

• stop wallowing about that heartbreaking situation and the unchangeable things I don't like in life right now


• get caught up on schoolwork and sincerely try to manage my time better


• take up some form of more strenuous aerobic exercise like running or joining the fitness center


• change the battery in my pedometer and attempt to walk more every day and increase my pace


• start the One Hundred Push-Ups program in earnest


• start arm toning exercises


• start hula hooping and doing crunches for core fitness


• try to start drinking more water


• seriously evaluate my diet and try to come up with better meal choices for dinners


• put actual effort into getting onto a healthier sleep-wake cycle


• start taking St John's Wort and other herbs for depression again


• be nicer to myself, by doing all of the above, and taking on healthier thinking habits

Something's got to work, right?

New Plan, Day Ten

I was up late (until at least 4) talking with that guy friend who's not my boyfriend (he needs a nickname) and slept in until 12 again. I think at some point it'd be more accurate to say I'm already on a bad sleep schedule. Anyway, I was in a bad mood all day because I have a big deadline I've been avoiding and my parents are making me insane preparing for a big party they're throwing this weekend.

See the thing with this party... it's not like I have a say in what they do here, since it's their house. Not holding this party would be tantamount to canceling Christmas, so no matter how much I really needed to spend this week and this coming weekend working on my thesis (and needed a quiet house instead of one bustling with cleaning and the constant nagging to help clean, because obviously I have NOTHING better to do...), they are only concerned with getting ready for the party. And whereas I want to be able to focus on schoolwork and my job work, I now have to halt all progress and focus on getting my room clean (even though I really want to just lock the door) and cleaning the common areas of the house where I keep things, like my painting studio that is in the kitchen, where most of the party always congregates. Also, I don't really want to see a bunch of family and my parents' friends because honestly, I'd rather put my head down and finish my thesis, or have a quiet weekend at home. This party literally couldn't come at a worse time, and I am completely dreading it.

This is to say nothing of what it's going to do to my diet, which is going dreadfully in terms of progress (I weighed myself, it's not good). Anyway, on with the day.

Breakfast, 1pm

• ham and cheese on Lite whole-grain English muffin
• navel orange
• 12 oz. Coke Cherry Zero

While preparing this, I read the nutrition information on the English muffins and was pleasantly surprised that they are only 100 calories, so they do count as just one bread (this was a disagreement I had with my mother), and that they have 8 grams of dietary fiber to boot. Not bad.

It is also worth noting that this was the last of the caffeinated soda in the house, which has put me in a terrible mood. Both of my parents cannot function without coffee or tea in the morning (I don't really do well with either - the acidity burns holes in my stomach), yet they couldn't care less about when we run out of soda. My father seems to view it primarily as a mixer for rum drinks, and my mother doesn't really care what she drinks, but will drink all the soda if it's there, then not worry about replacing it. I know this is my own neurosis, but it is SO annoying.

Lunch, 5pm

• beef tacos with cheese, salsa, lettuce, tomatoes, pickled jalapeños and fresh cilantro
• 24 oz. water (np)

I made these from leftovers a little before dinner, in the middle of tense conversations with both of my parents. They were fine, but I didn't enjoy them the way I usually love tacos because I was in the middle of a terrible day. Ugh.

Dinner, 8pm

• turkey tostada made with ground turkey, salsa, spices, reduced-fat Cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomato, sliced avocado, pickled jalapeños, and fresh cilantro on a whole wheat wrap
• 24 oz water (np)

My mother kind of annoyed the bejesus out of me while cooking these. Last week I tried showing her how to make them, and she wouldn't pay attention. Then I explained it about five or six times and said it's really the same exact preparation as tacos, just with turkey. When she was buying groceries for the week, I said I cannot cook anything until after Wednesday because of this stupid deadline for school stuff, and she bought groceries for meals that she claims only I know how to cook. Disregarding that she's the one who taught me how to make tacos in the first place, who doesn't know how to make tacos?!

Gah. Today is really frustrating. Anyway, this tostada was messy and the wrap fell apart whenever I tried to make something I could hold. I was also disgusted and annoyed because my family has somehow gotten in the habit of eating dinner in the TV room. This wouldn't be so bad, except that room has only two armchairs in it for furniture, and my dad uses the spare kitchen chair they bring in as a table. So my options are usually to ask him to stop using it as a table and sit in the greasy spot where he spilled turkey meat (I did that last night) or sit on the floor with my back to the radiator, with two big dogs panting in my face. I absolutely hate eating in that room, and I'd finally had it and decided to eat the rest of my dinner at the dining room table like a person.

Dessert, 9pm

• Yoplait Light yogurt, red velvet cake flavor
• sliced kiwi

I'm not sure I even really tasted this. I was fuming over stupid arguments with my parents and frustration about not being able to concentrate on work. There is literally not a single room in the house where I can do schoolwork right now, and they couldn't care less. They don't actually realize that if I can't get this work done, I will not graduate, and my father keeps harping on that if I really wanted to, I could write my thesis in three days. He has no idea what he's talking about, nor does my mother, because neither of them have written a graduate dissertation before, but they seem to think it's just a big paper. I want to cry.

Late-night Snack, 11pm

• bowl of tomato soup with basil, salt and fresh cracked pepper
• 16 oz. Crystal Light lemonade (np)

I had closed myself up in my room trying to get anything done, and I couldn't concentrate because my parents were bickering about something and coming in literally every few minutes to talk to me about nonsense. I took a break on Facebook, where my mom started IMing me, pestering me to play my word in Scrabble. I nearly threw my computer out the window and told her I was going to drive to the store to buy soda and while I was there I was going to get cookies too, since it doesn't matter what I do this week, the whole diet is going to get ruined this weekend. She responded by saying if I do get cookies, only get enough for myself because she has no self control if they're in the house. Then nagged me about laundry, while the machines were still full of her laundry and like, the sheets to the guest bed and curtains and stuff.

I went downstairs and decided to have soup and found the dregs of a pitcher of lemonade in the fridge. I was so tired and had such a caffeine-deprivation headache by this point that I just slurped down both and went to bed, annoyed beyond belief.

Summary
Today was a stupid, frustrating day. I want to move out of my parents' house immediately, but I have nowhere to go. That's how I started living here in the first place, and that's the same situation I'll be in IF I am able to graduate. My life is enormously stupid.

New Plan, Day Nine

I don't know why, but I slept until after noon today. I wasn't even really tired, but I think I was avoiding responsibilities.

Breakfast, 12:30pm

• ham and cheese toasted on Lite whole grain English muffin
• navel orange
• 12 oz. Diet Fanta orange (not pictured)

It was an interesting contrast between real orange and orange soda - I really enjoyed both.

Lunch, 3pm

• leftover chicken, vegetable and tomato risotto
• fresh herb salad with creamy Caesar dressing
• 12 oz. Coke Cherry Zero

I worried that this wouldn't reheat well (because risotto is famous for its fickleness and ability to quickly turn to slop if not treated gently), but in fact I think it got better after a little time in the fridge for the Arborio rice to absorb even more tomato flavor. It looks dry in this photo, but once I stirred it up, it was creamy, delicate, and really tasty. It had barely any chicken in this serving, which is probably good since I worry about how long ago that was first cooked - I'll have to thank my father for picking so much of the chicken out when it was in the fridge.

Pre-Dinner Snack, 8pm

• fresh herb salad with creamy Caesar dressing
• several glasses of Diet Coke (I lost count)

While my mother was cooking dinner, I was hovering, and of course standing in a kitchen while food is cooking is the easiest way to get hungry. I kept milling around trying to think of something to eat and finally decided on a salad, which I inhaled.

Dinner, 8:15pm

• beef tacos with reduced fat Cheddar cheese, salsa, sliced avocado, Romaine lettuce, tomatoes, pickled jalapeños and fresh cilantro
• 24 oz. Diet Coke (not pictured)

Oh man, so delicious. I don't think there will ever be a time in my life when I couldn't go for a taco, and these were superb. I ranted and raved while eating them, feeling like I was pigging out.

Snacks, 10-11:30pm

• Yoplait Light Thick n' Creamy yogurt, Cinnamon bun flavor (not pictured)
• 2 caramel popcorn cakes with sugar-free Concord grape jelly
• navel orange (np)
• broccoli florets dipped in Walden Farms calorie-free Ranch dressing
• 72 oz. water (np)

I'm not sure what to say except that I was grazing. I wasn't hungry per se - dinner was very satisfying and filling. It was more like having the munchies, which I think is hormone-related at the moment. I was going for crunchy foods in the popcorn cakes and broccoli, though I realize now that the cakes probably put me over for breads.

The broccoli was surprisingly delicious, even if I had a "who are you and what have you done with Vicki?" moment as I was preparing it to eat. I'm still mystified by how a dressing (which was actually rather tasty) could be calorie free, and it seems to have a lot to do with Xanthan gum and other wacky chemical food additives more frequently encountered in molecular gastronomy. Mmmm, delicious science.

I also drank all of my waters in one shot, two bottles in a row and the third about 45 min later. I dunno, it's just easier to sit and sip it through my water bottle straw, and if I have to spend an hour or two having to pee every 15 min, it seems less awful than feeling like I'm about to wet my pants all day.

Summary

I had an enormous appetite today, which is dangerous when combined with an utter lack of activity. I think I made decent choices, and I'm glad I got 9 waters in, though I forgot I was supposed to aim for 10-12. Sigh. One more bottleful.

I really need to do some exercise, but I've been using a looming deadline (which I've been procrastinating like a champ) as an excuse not to do anything. Disorganization and poor time management have a global negative effect on my life, but I am also starting to see the clear ways they impact my diet and fitness. I may elaborate more on that in a separate post.