Woo Hoo! I Lost 4.3 lbs.!!!

Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!

I must say I'm very proud of me. Yes, I messed up here and there, no, I didn't stick to the rules exactly, but I did the best I could and got results!!!

Yes, I ate at Applebee's for lunch and I just celebrated with pizza and a sugar cookie, but I Pointed them out, so there. Thankfully the menu has Weight Watchers Points on some foods and the pizza is in my little WW book.

And hey, I'm so proud of Eve, too! She lost 3 lbs. this week and she lost 4+ last week. Wow. She's lost 41 pounds total. I'm so glad to have her as my WW buddy! I know I must be accountable and I need encouragement.

I'm, of course, leery of celebrating too hard. I know me, I know my past with food and addiction. I know what evil lurks inside me when it comes to my food obsession. It truly is an obsession, too. I hate it, but there you have it, I have a food obsession and addiction.

If there is food that is left over from a meal, I obsess about it. If there is one piece of pizza left, I will obsess about it until someone has eaten it, or I eat it myself. It cannot exist, someone has to eat it. And don't even think about leaving the melted cheese stuck to the box! If there's something special, like party foods, dips, cookies, whatever, if it's something I don't usually eat, I obsess about it. I need to eat all I can. What, like I won't ever get it again? Just in case it's my last chip with dip on earth I need to chow down on all of it? What if they stop making it??? I wish I could tell you that I have some rational thoughts while I'm doing it, but I don't. I simply am driven to do it.

All addictions are the same. Does an alcoholic think about the actual consequences to their drinking while they're searching for their next drink? No, they have one thing on their mind, getting that alcohol. It's the same with sex addictions. They are not thinking about anything but having sex or getting their porn. They are driven to fulfill their need for sex. I am driven to eat. We're all the same, all addicts are the same. We're trying to fill a hole inside of us with something that makes us feel good.

I think my addiction is pretty lame. Of all things on this earth that I could be addicted to, food? That's so weak. Only a weak, pathetic person would be addicted to food. I think all addicts must think this way. But I do hate my addiction and think it shows how weak I am.

I know why I have it, though, so for that I am thankful. It's a long story, which I will probably elaborate on eventually, but, for as long as I can remember I have had panic attacks. My mom said she can remember me at about 9 months old gagging when she would take me somewhere new. Now, I was not diagnosed as having Social Anxiety Disorder until I was about 24, so I lived with "getting nervous" over two decades with no explanation as to what was really going on with me. New situations made me nervous and unfortunately I had enlarged tonsils, and whenever I got nervous I would gag, and often times vomit.

This made for a very unhappy life for me, as well as for my family. It seemed that everywhere we went I threw up. We went out to dinner, I ate, I threw up, my father got very angry with me and made me feel horrible about it. My mom and brother were annoyed because I made going out so difficult. I was miserable because I had no way of controlling it. As my brother once complained, "She ruins everything." That's exactly how I felt, too.

I threw up every morning before I got on the bus to go to school for the first several years. I threw up almost every day at lunch--kids would sometimes tease me that my spaghetti was worms or would open their mouth so I could see their partially chewed food, you know how rotten kids can be--but I threw up so much that they eventually made me eat alone in the classroom by myself. I remember doing that until about 3rd grade. I threw up throughout the day or week, depending on the situation. I felt so ashamed but I couldn't control it.

From all of this I learned two things: food is my enemy, food is my comfort.

I would get up in the middle of the night when I was little and I would eat. I can vividly remember what the refrigerator looked like at my height--I couldn't see past the 2nd shelf up. I would eat anything I could reach: raw hot dogs, cheese slices, baloney, and Parmesan cheese out of the palm of my hand. Once I was satisfied, I would go back to bed.

Nobody ever knew I did it. I told my mother about it recently and she was shocked. She had no idea I did anything of the sort. It was my secret time. It was my time to control the food instead of it controlling me. It was a time when nobody was around so I could be completely relaxed and enjoy myself. So, in trying to control the food, it ended up controlling me.

I was a pretty skinny kid until I went to kindergarten. But once I got into that daily routine of vomiting and the shame and ostracism it caused, I turned to my nightly binges to somehow satisfy my craving for acceptance and love, and just to be normal.

I know it's been a roller coaster with food. When you take all of that into consideration, how I couldn't keep from throwing up, how I was belittled or cajoled because I got sick all the time, how I just wanted to be accepted, and then throw in the molestations and the simple fact that I just wanted my father's unconditional love, there's no doubt in my mind why I have always been driven to lose weight, then, when a man enters the picture.

It's such a tangled web, but bottom line, I see it. I see how I obsess about it. I can see the long and tumultuous relationship I've had with food. I can see how my relationships have affected me and how I view weight loss. It's truly incredible to me to think that something as basic as food can rule my life if I let it.

4.3 pounds, yee haa, that's a little bit of my life I just got back and I'm going to fight this week for even more!

:) Jan

The Return of Weight Watchers

I am fat and I am tired of it. And, I have decided that I will lose weight now.

I am publishing on the WWW for the entire planet to have access, my weight as of yesterday: 274.1 pounds. That number is surreal to me, but it is not the most I have ever weighed. My largest number was 305.6 pounds in January of 2007.

Disgusted? I am. Why did I get to this point? Many reasons and excuses I could give you. Being an insulin-dependent Type II diabetic makes it very difficult. Being on over 22 pills of medication a day makes it difficult. Being a food addict makes it difficult--and let me tell you, I have battled those issues since I was at least 3 and they are deeply ingrained in my actions. Having severe pain from fibromyalgia makes it difficult to want to exercise.

But bottom line, there is no reason I have gotten to this morbidly obese point greater than the fact that I have not used self-control to overcome it. Do I have reasons that losing weight is harder for me than most people? Yes. Just because it's harder, does that mean I should just give up then? Nope.

I can do this. But I need to focus and work at it. There is no room for half-way this time. I have lost weight before, I can do it again. But this time it's for the right reasons.

In the past I have lost weight in order to get a man. My greatest yearning is to be in love with the most wonderful man in the world, the one that I know God has prepared for me. I believe he is out there. But I have always made that my reason to lose weight. I have always felt that a man wouldn't or couldn't love me because I was too fat. I felt like that 100 pounds ago.

Anyway, in 1999 I got down to around 210, which I hadn't weighed in over 5 years. The reason was that I was 25 and decided that I needed a man, needed to be in a relationship, needed to be married. So I lost about 25 pounds and I felt really good. I was exercising, people were noticing. I went on the hunt.

I started going onto free online dating sites. I met some very...interesting...men. Some scary, some boring, some crazy, but that summer I found a man that would love me and so I married him after knowing him about 5 weeks. It was a complete disaster. We didn't know each other at all, he had so many issues from his past, I just wanted to be loved and didn't really love him. Bottom line, I can tell you the actual moment I knew I should just walk away from the situation but decided to marry him anyway.

Of course, I ended up gaining weight after we were married, much more than I had even lost. The more depressed I got, the more I ate, the more I weighed, the more depressed I became, the more I ate.... A vicious cycle. I was diagnosed as diabetic during this time. Looooooooong story short, we divorced in 2001, and me at the weight of about 250.

I have tried to lose weight for men my entire life. I did it in grade school. I remember I would either eat a hot roll or an ice cream bar for lunch, and hardly anything at home. I lost a lot of weight, and of course everybody said I looked great, but I can only imagine the damage I had done to my body, let alone the damage to my psyche. I was still unhappy, even though I was 'skinny'. Anytime a man took notice of me at all I would instantly start to diet and make sure he would know I was losing weight. What a terrible roller coaster it has been.

I am so blessed to see all of this. I spent so many years in denial, in excuses, whatever. Do I think it's going to be easy? No way. I have too many years of incorrect thinking and reacting to overcome for it to come easily. I know that this time. Before I just muddled through hoping I would have it lucky this time. I think I see things much more clearly this time and this will make the difference.

So, my very good friend Eve and I have been talking, and she is successfully doing Weight Watchers. I'm very proud of her. She has lost at least 35 pounds and is feeling better and interacting with her children better. I know she will definitely encourage, motivate and inspire me. I have done Weight Watchers twice before so I know I can do it. I understand the program and it's actually quite easy to follow. The hard part is being honest and real about it.

Today I made some chicken fajita-type stuff and measured out my different components to make sure I was portioning properly--man do we over-portion in this society! Anyway, while measuring out my cheese, one of my favorite foods on earth aside from Reese's peanut butter cups, I had the old urge to make it a 'heaping' 1/4 cup as I would have done in the past. But this time I caught myself and was like, "You are only hurting yourself if you do that and you will fail. If that is your choice, then go ahead and quit now." Believe me, that was a break-through.

I have only eaten once today, which is wrong. I have so many bad habits to change and I need to get on a better schedule. When I did my points for the meal, though, it ended up being almost as much as my minimum for the whole day! I know I need to make much better choices, and I am going to be held back by my lack of money to buy better quality foods, but I will have to work through it. Just because it's hard I can't give up.

That's what I have always done. Too hard? Didn't get the response I wanted? I quit.

Well, not this time. I think I'm getting to the point if I don't change this now I won't have much time left to change it ever. And for crying out loud, at 35 years old, no matter what's been done to me, no matter what has happened, I make the final decision. Well, this time I am deciding to do it. I'm going to screw up, that's certain, but at least I'm screwing it up trying instead of being too lazy or selfish and choosing to fail.

:) Jan