Anyone Out There?

It's the official blogging "delurking" week.

Not that I have any readers who are lurkers. Hell, I don't even think I have any readers.

Do I?

Mostly I feel like I'm talking to myself - doing a lot of whining and complaining and navel gazing and making excuses. Who wants to listen to that, right?

Successful diet and weight loss blogs actually have things like weight loss and diets on them - right?

Me, I'm just floundering around, fumbling my way in the dark, feeling rather lost and alone.

But that's nothing new to me...

Mean Reds

I've got the mean reds. Anyone remember that phrase from Breakfast at Tiffany's? Audrey Hepburn got the mean reds, and I knew just exactly what she meant. It seems to be going around. I'm seeing it in the blogosphere, on forums I frequent. Snarkiness is at a high. Maybe it's just the New Year and holiday let-down. Or maybe there's a full moon. Has Mercury gone retrograde?

I feel mad at the world today. Our fifteen inch snowstorm is melting into huge puddles of mud, and there's the most annoying drip coming from our gutter that's driving me insane. The kids are going stir-crazy because it's too wet to go outside. The Christmas tree is drooping from lack of water, the ornaments hanging heavy on its branches, and the rest of the decorations now just look garish and are begging to be put away for the season.

But I don't want to do any of it.

Harley wanted to take our disgruntled children to the movies today, but the thought of spending $8.50 per person (including kids!) plus concessions (because like we could forgo popcorn and candy?) and then lunch afterward - we could easily drop $60 in an afternoon. For what, to see some CGI Water Horse fly around for two hours while the kids fought over who had the most popcorn and asked to go to the bathroom fourteen times? Ugh.

It's just an escape... I get that.

But I know it won't change anything. Just like the food, as escape, doesn't change anything. It only makes me forget for a little while that I want to duct tape my children to kitchen chairs, strangle Harley until he's purple, and rip the gutters off the house. Everyone's temper is short today. The littles are fighting over a yo-yo and demanding breakfast NOW, Harley wanted s-e-x this morning and then groused because I didn't want to cuddle afterward. He's right. I don't want a cuddle, it's true. I want to rip phone books in half. I want to gnash my terrible teeth and roar my terrible roar, like some Wild Thing out of the kids' books. Instead, I've been wasting my morning throwing around ascerbic comments in forums to idiots.

I've definitely got the mean reds. Seeing the whole world through a thick, crimson haze. Days like today, it doesn't pay to get out of bed.

Stuck

Watched Fried Green Tomatoes this morning while the kids went out to play in the snow that will disappear in a great flood this afternoon and tomorrow.

Great movie.

Kathy Bates character's sobbing into a handkerchief after some young kid called her a fat cow, and Jessica Tandy is patting her on the back and comforting her.

"I just wish I could get it over with and get really fat! I'm too young to be old and I'm too old to be young."

I hear ya, sister. I hear ya. (Has it really been fifteen years since this movie was released? God, I am getting old!) It takes courage to really eat your way toward death. Or to stop. I feel so caught in the middle, afraid to go forward, afraid to go back.

"One candy bar won't hurt ya," Tandy says.

"One, no. But ten or eleven?"

Yep, I hear ya.

I could eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Tastes wayyyyy better than Lean Cuisine. (I'm watching the latest commercial - one woman eating a rice cake, the other drinking some frothy, scary-looking diet drink... and I'm supposed to believe the mouse-sized portion of chicken parts and freeze dried veggies tastes better? Feh!)

What is wrong with me?

I wish I knew. *sigh*

There's Always Room for Cello

Two hundred and eighty pounds.

Which means, I haven't lost anything (didn't expect to) but I didn't gain anything either.

The problem is, I feel crappy.

I am so unhealthy. It wasn't always this way. I was fat, yes, but I could still DO stuff. I could do yoga! Warrior I, II and III, for pete's sake! I could walk a mile on a treadmill, swim twenty laps. I could do a whole aerobics class at the gym.

Now... I can't walk up stairs without panting like a Siberian Husky pulling a sled in Mexico. I can't walk to the corner and back without feeling as tired as a narceleptic on heroin or sweating like a Coke bottle on a picnic table in August.

I'm so out of shape. Unless you count a rather squishy circle as a shape. Harley just said, "More like an ellipse... or like a cello."

The truth is, Yo-Yo Ma gets more exercise than I do just pulling a bow. I've elevated the role of couch potato beyond reason - like a deep fried Oreo Cookie - I'm redundantly sedentary. And the truth is, I so don't want to move. Newton's Law, wasn't it? An object in motion stays in motion... an object at rest stays at rest.

Gotta figure out a way to get myself moving again. I've got Nike sayings running through my head. "Just Do It!" Seems easier said than done, though...

Expert Advice

I didn't make any New Year's resolutions, but I did make a commitment to blog for the next 365 days.

What was I thinking!?

I did tell myself I wasn't going to give up. I wasn't going to abandon this blog, no matter what, even if I didn't find a way through the maze of my food and eating issues. My struggle and thoughts had to be useful, even if I failed... to me, to someone, somewhere.

As I'm writing this, the 2008 Nutrisystem ad is on TV: "I went from a size twelve to a size two!"

Feh. Lady, I'd love to be a size twelve. But I don't want to do it eating Nutrisystem food. Yuk.

Over the holidays, my sister said her new goal was to be 120 pounds by next Christmas. She's not that heavy - she has, perhaps, twenty pounds to lose. But that launched a discussion of weight, and eating, and diet (all while we were shoveling in dessert). She's been doing Weight Watchers - but not the meetings. Just counting her points.

"It's a great way to keep track of your food!" she claimed. "I know, now, that I have 2 points left for twelve candy corn."

Harley raised an eyebrow and snorted. "Now that's a waste of two points."

Points shmoints. But then she pulled out the Dr. Phil book, telling us Dr. Phil had really helped her understand what "type" of person she was when it came to eating and diets. There was a little test inside. Both she and Harley turned out to be perfectionists. Me, I was in the middle - feeling helpless, powerless, as if I have no control.

But do I?

This morning I heard a doctor on a show talking about childhood obesity, saying our bodies are programmed to crave and like salt, sugar and fat.

Well, hell. Isn't there a reason for that? Because I know that's exactly what my body craves. Especially the sugar. Do I have control over that? I don't feel as if I do. Every time I try to stop, something, something drives me back to the white stuff. I gotta have my fix.

On the same show where the doctor was talking about what we crave was a twelve year old obese boy who said, "Food is comfort. It's always the same. It makes me feel good when I eat it. It doesn't make fun of me or hurt me."

Damn. If I'd had that insight at twelve? Where would I be today? I barely have that insight now. I don't even know what the feelings are underneath the food. I'm so out of touch with them... I can't even identify what they are. That's scary to me. No wonder I tested as feeling hopeless, helpless, powerless. I feel caught. Can't go forward, can't go back.

So Dr. Phil had a show yesterday I happened to catch about New Year's resolutions. I don't usually watch him - his "Just say No!" worldview makes me insane. And this show wasn't any different. There was a 400 pound fast food addict eating McDonalds three times a day, like some real life "Supersize Me," and Dr. Phil is saying, "You just need to stop eating so much and exercise more."

This is the answer??

This is the answer.

Damn.

It hit me. That really IS the answer.

And then Dr. Phil said something that made me really sit up and take notice. "Your lifestyle is set up to support what you do. If you had a different lifestyle, things would be different."

He's not wrong. It really made sense, all of a sudden.

Harley and I keep talking about how, come spring, we want to raise chickens (for eggs) and grow our own organic garden. Ultimately, we'd like to be living off the grid somewhere in a sustainable community, but it's baby steps, for now. A garden and some chickens. Which means Harley needs to build a coop and plow a field. I need to plant and hoe and weed and water. And then we need to reap what we sow.

Change your lifestyle, change your life. That makes sense. I think I see a glimmer of hope sparkling somewhere in the distance that doesn't have to do with diets or denial. It has to do with moving our lives into a different space, a different place. For me, it's always seemed like a strange, impossible step, as if we were trying to find the way into another dimension. But now... it feels real. It feels possible.

That's exciting. Maybe I WILL have something to blog about this year.

Whacked!

I think my thyroid is going all wacky again. I can't sleep at night - serious insomnia. Then I'm falling asleep in the middle of the day. And I get hungry very fast - like my stomach is crawling up my throat. It comes out of nowhere, and I have to eat. Like right-freaking-now. Like yesterday. I made an appointment with the doc to have it checked again. Maybe my meds need to be adjusted?

Or maybe it's my blood sugar? Eek!

I'm going to step on the scale again this week. I'm scared. Not today.

How's that for avoidant? :P

New Year's Resolution

Nope. Not gonna do it.

No resolutions to break here.

I'm just going to keep on keeping on... one day at a time.

There just aren't any easy answers. Diets don't work. And Weight Watchers is, without question, a diet. So is everything else out there.

I'm going to have to find my own way. Still struggling. Wondering what's next.

More questions than answers. Maybe that's a good thing?