Long time no weight loss!  At least on this end (ha ha, this fairly large end) anyway.  I’ve been batting around the inner workings, trying to find the key, looking for the reason why I’m holding on to the weight when it really does mean a lot to me to be a nice size 14 or 12.  Every time I start to lose weight, I panic and start eating or stop exercising.  I don’t know if it’s specifically holding onto the weight of if it’s having a set point on how long I am willing to go without medicating myself with food or what.  I know the food provides instant relief to me when I’m frustrated or sad or angry or feeling un-nurtured (it also helps when I’m hungry, as best as I recall).  Nothing else seems to do anything to help.  OK, shopping does, but in our current financial state, that’s not really an option.  Being that those two things are the only things that make me feel better, I am leaning toward the fact that they are directly doing something for me and it is therefore, a nurturing issue.  I do definitely eat more when I’m feeling low, when Eric is emotionally or physically unavailable or when I’m challenged in some way.  I think it really is all about that “I want my mama” post I did at some point in the almost recent past.  

Every book I’ve ever read about successful weight loss has insisted that there is a “click” you feel and a zone you get into where it just happens and you’re rolling with the flow and you get into the groove of doing all the things to help the weight loss along.  I’m not there and I’ve never been there for long, only visited a time or two or ten.  For some reason, my visa is never approved for a longer trip.  

Anyway, if I am going to sit around and wait for the “click,” I’m possibly going to be fat forever.  Goddess knows I’ve burned off another year, gaining and losing the same 5-10 pounds over and over.  So what I’m doing now is ignoring the click and the idea that “it’s time,” so I’m just going through the exercise motions.  Beginning this week, I’m walking a mile or so every day, listening to Phil (my best walking partner) and doing my Body Flexing twice a day.  I took my measurements on Monday and then took them again because I was getting a nosebleed from how high the numbers were.  Nope, they were right.  Shit.  How does someone’s ass get so much further across the horizon without them turning around and noticing it??  How did I not have the distinct impression that someone was following, only to turn around and find out it was MY ASS?  Why hasn’t someone lovingly asked me when the baby is due with my belly so big?  Don’t they CARE when my baby is due??  

So that told me to get busy, hence, the body flexing twice a day.  I can at LEAST do that!  It only takes 10 minutes per time and it works up a good sweat and I KNOW it works (when I first tried it a year ago, I lost 10 inches off my butt in the first 10 days!!), so why don’t I do it?  How lazy can I get?  I am GOING to do that part, at least give the 20 minutes a day, take a swipe at the WW points system (again) and do my very best to make the walking happen as well.   Since my year of emphasis on the food intake has been ineffective (I can hear Phil say, “So how’s that workin’ for you?”), I’m going with the exercise.  I need it on so many levels, deeply beyond the weight loss and I shouldn’t have any feelings of deprivation as a result.  I just need to do it, whether I’m feeling “the click” or not. 

Last week, I lost 4 pounds just by cutting back on the diet drinks and upping the water intake.  I’d gone back to drinking exactly NO water in a day.  I’ve got to take better care of myself. 

The 4 pounds took me BACK DOWN to my setpoint of 226, so I’m starting from my usual point again.  I’ll see where I am on the measurements in a week.  That is going to be my emphasis rather than the weight because I know I’m going to be building muscle while I’m losing fat, although I’m fairly sure that most people who have good muscle are not 5’5” weighing 226, so the weight will have to drop at some point! 

That’s where I am!  I’ll check in next week.

I’m rebelling.  I’ve been trying to figure out why, but as soon as the WW Points started to work for me, I started perfecting the fine art of potato skin making, with Sage’s assistance.  I’ve considered all of the angles.   I like food very much.  It’s a very sensual experience for me to eat.  I enjoy sensation through all five sense and taste is one of them, so I relish it.  I just love to eat.  I love the feeling of being full.  I love the variety of tastes and textures.  I’m just an oral kind of person.  I love the feeling of being nurtured, so I especially love food that someone else prepared for me, even if it’s some nameless, faceless chef in a restaurant.  I’ve spent 30 years taking care of other people and I love it when someone take care of me for a while.  My hubby is a wonderful, loving man with countless positive traits, but nurturing definitely is not one of them.  He doesn’t have a nurturing bone in his body.  He loves his kids and is one of the best dads I’ve ever seen.  He loves me and is a great husband overall, but nurture he doesn’t do.  I miss nurture.  I get lots of nurture from online friends, but it doesn’t work for me in the same way that in person nurture does and doesn’t really fill that gap.  It’s great, don’t get me wrong and I’d probably die without it, but I need the in person stuff.  On the other hand, my hubby is someone who requires huge amounts of nurturing, plus there are the three little kids and three big kids (who don’t require much nurturing, but the Mom thing is still there).  My best in-person friend is working very hard this year to NOT be nurturing, which is a very, very good thing for her and will definitely be best in the long run (and in the short run), so that’s totally cool.  I know about myself that in absence of external emotional nurturing, I eat.  I wish I could get it all from myself or do it for myself.  One of the ways that I do is by shopping at thrift shop.  Getting “stuff” helps me, but with Eric laid off, we’ve been cutting back, so that had to go.  I’m not a prissy person, so manicures and such don’t feed me in any particular way.  I keep trying to find nonfood emotional nourishment, but nothing seems to compete.  I have a very rich and wonderful spiritual life, but that doesn’t carry me through either.  I need to want this more, to the point that it overrides the need for nurturing.  I’m not exercising.  I’m not drinking the water.  I’m not taking the ThermaPro and I’m eating like a pig. 

To hit the reset button, I’m fasting for today and however far I can go, probably until lunch or dinner tomorrow, longer if I can.  I took the ThermaPro (and weirdly, I’m not buzzing from it) and a multivitamin.  I’m drinking juice and water and I have strawberries (a great antioxidant) if I get really, really hungry.  I have new Dr Phil tapes (“Get Real” workshop – E-bay!!) and I’ll start walking again today.  I know I’m in bad shape when I have new Dr Phil tapes for a couple of weeks and I’m not out there walking.  I don’t want to do it, but I know I need to, so I’m doing it anyway.  

I think what I need is a mommy.  My mom was in and out of surgery for most of the time I was growing up, from about 10 on, and I had to take care of my dad and brothers for the next 6 years until I left home and started taking care of my (then) husband and little boy.   Since then, there’s never been a time (day) that I wasn’t taking care of someone.  I feel like *I* want to be taken care of for a while.  I want days where people dote on me and let me sleep until I’m ready to get up and let me write when I want to write and let me eat when and what I want to eat and read when I want to read and take a bath in a tub that doesn’t have a straight back, drippy faucet, shower door and ugly bright blue paint everywhere.  I need a mommy to give me hugs and rub my hair and make food for me and do my laundry and watch my kids and buy me stuff and call me “Baby” and “Sweetie” and love me unconditionally.  God, I just described Sage.  I wish he wasn’t so far away and few and far between.  Sometimes, Sage is the most “real” person I know.  J  Those of you who know him can vouch for this.  He’s so kind and loving and unselfish and giving and if my, he weren’t so unavailable, my hubby might have something to worry about.  ;)  But everyone involved knows that he doesn’t.  

I’ve read so many books on weight loss and dieting and lifestyle change and healing from the inside out and taking responsibility for your actions and choices and forgiving and forgetting and healing your past and creating your own reality and fakin’ it until you’re makin’ it and loving yourself first and that it’s not what you’re eating, but what’s eating you and the quest for inner peace and the development of the soul and getting right with yourself and deciding whether your inner child needs a hug or a spanking.  I get it intellectually, but some integral cylinder at my core just isn’t firing.  Yeah, I’ll keep on keeping on.  I’ll drink the water and do the exercise and take the pills and count the points and all that, but damn, I’ve got to figure this out somehow.  

Susan Sarrandon is on The View right now.  WHAT a bitch and a killjoy!  God forbid we have any fun and not be crying about the atrocities happening in Burma and the rest of the world!  I *love* activists and their passion and dedication, but I *hate* when they get all huffy and pissy and indignant when you don’t cream all over their causes or worse, don’t particularly give a shit about their cause.   Pffft.  Fuck you, Thelma or Louise or whichever one you are.  >:<