And... breathe.

Wow. Okay, so this week has been a bit of a rollercoaster. It started on a major high, sunk to the lowest low I've had in months and months, and now I'm riding upwards to optimism again. Just goes to show, I should take everything more slowly and just breathe a bit more and just stop and think, and I think I should go a bit easier on myself too. I need to allow myself a little bit of failure, a little bit of lost willpower, a little leeway to be weak.

I don't have to be perfect.

But I do have to keep trying.

Weight loss is a slow thing. And the more weight you lose, the slower it goes.

That's fine. That's good.

In the end, it doesn't matter one bit how slow it goes, so long as it goes! So long as I'm not gaining, I am one happy cat.

(That's a happy cat.)

Heee...

Fuck.

So... this evening has not gone well.

It started with hunger. So I ate, and then ate a bit more, then nibbled a bit more, then snacked, and ate and ate and ate, and by Christ I feel sick... what in seven hells did I do that for?
Fuck, I knew it wasn't natural for me to go so long without fucking up, and now it's just been one short spiral down into fully fucking breaking down. I was getting self-harm urges half an hour ago, that's how low I've gone. I haven't cut in years, but I don't think the urges ever go away. They get rarer, sure, but when they come back, suddenly I'm that pathetic 13 year old again, hating herself enough to rip her body apart. Fuck. Fuck.

Fuck.

Now I'm crying. I'm curled up in my bed listening to songs that I know will make me cry, letting my thoughts go all the places they're not meant to go- to her, and her, and him, and them, and me and me and me, and that time, and those days, and that place, and fuck fuck fuck fuck

And so on and so forth. (You can imagine an interval about now while I hyperventilate a bit and sob into my hands.)

What if I can't actually do this? What if I'm always going to be this way? It all felt a bit like a dream, all this progress... how quickly might it reverse? Christ, I'm tired, I'm so tired of being me, I'm so fucking sick of my little idiosyncracies, my little issues, my bloody fucked up mind, how did I get this way? What made me this way? Why am I so fucking unnatural?

Ugh.

I need you, where are you? Where are you? Why don't you need me too? Please. Please. Help me. I need you. I need you.

Eh?

What on earth is going on? I've been eating as usual (in fact a little more than I was eating last week) for the past few days, and my stomach won't shut up with rumbling. No matter what I put into it- fibre, wholegrains, protein, starchy carbs, etc. etc... an hour later it's growling at me again! I exercised quite a bit yesterday, but I've spent most of today in the library, and I've eaten three square meals along with snacks.

What the hell, stomach? Shut up and stop pestering me.

Miffed.

Will wonders never cease?

So this morning was my weigh-in, and I'm down three pounds. Woot!

And as if this wasn't enough to brighten my day, I decided to look for a long jumper/dress type thing whilst I was in town, and found some really nice ones. So since the sizes looked pretty big and chunky, I thought I'd start with a 14 (since I tried a size 14 jacket last week and, amazingly, it fit). And then, being in a gleeful mood from my weigh-in, I thought: "What the hell, I'll try a 12 too, just for laughs."

The 14 was a bit big, the 12 fit well, but it wasn't exactly tight! So after a few moments of obsessively checking the labels to make sure they were actually those sizes, I thought "Well the world has clearly gone insane, so why not throw all sense to the wind and try a 10?"

10. I have never worn a size 10. I went straight from children's clothes to size 12, and then very quickly to 14, 16, 18, and so forth. In fact, when I was younger I didn't even understand how clothes sizing worked. At first, I thought size 12 was for 12 year-olds. (I also remember when I stopped thinking this: I was buying a skirt from a chap at a market stall and I picked a size 12 and he looked at it and looked at me and laughed and said 'you sure you have the right size?' I bought it anyway and it fit, just about. Silly man...) After that I just ignored sizes and picked up whatever hanger was at the back of the rail since the largest were always at the back. And I figured this was because the ugly clothes for ugly people were kept at the back out of sight. I have clothes somewhere that are sizes 20, 22, and 24, although I've never actually been that size, simply because I used to think that I must be the fattest size available, so I just picked the biggest clothes, was so relieved when they fit (not really seeing that they were far too big!), and bought them anyway.

But long story short... me in a size 10? That's a crazy idea.

Now, I know it's a little small on me at the moment, and it's a jumper, and it's a chunky style, and sizes vary wildly, so it's probably way bigger than a 'normal' size 10, but still...

Crazy.

Bacon!

So, I just had a bacon and egg sandwich, and it cost me no more than 250 calories. What is up with the universe?

When I started restricting, there were some things that I cut out of my diet without even bothering to check their calorie count: pizza, cheesecake, biscuits, and bacon, to name but a few.

And all was well and dandy (apart from the cheesecake cravings...) until I casually picked up a pack of back bacon in a supermarket and looked at the nutritional info.

"70 calories a rasher," I read.

Intrigued, I put it down, and picked up some bacon medallions (like normal bacon, but without the weird extension with the annoying fat that I always cut of anyway... wow, bacon is hard to explain without sounding like a lunatic), and read...

"31 calories a rasher."

Holy shit. When did the world turn upside down?? Suffice to say, they were deposited in my basket in a somewhat dazed state. (As in, I was dazed, not the bacon.)

So I fried two rashers and an egg in a spray or two of FryLight, and had then with two slices of Weightwatchers Malted Danish bread (I don't use Weightwatchers, and frankly I don't even understand them - what is god's name are 'points', I ask you? We already have units for measuring food, more than enough in fact, chiefly grams and calories. So be off without your 'points'. Crazy people. But anyway, the bread - it's 51 calories a slice. What's not to like?), and for less than 250 calories and a full 22g of protein, I seem to have made a bacon and egg sandwich healthy...

Win.

Apologies for slightly random post, and also for strange frequency of parentheses- (apparently I have lots to say today).

Baby steps

So, I just weighed in where I hoped I would, and YAY!! for three reasons:
1. I am now officially (well, BMI official) no longer obese! I'm now merely overweight. Yay for small achievements!
2. I've now lost a stone and a half in total, and since I've got three more to lose to meet my current goal, that means I'm a third of the way there.
3. I'm now down to roughly my lowest weight since I entered teenage-ery. The last time I weighed about this much was Winter 2007, which was one of the most anxiously happy times of my life. This time, I'm going lower, and happier.

So this coming week, I'm not going to be obsessing over calories. Hopefully if I eat up to my maintenance for a little while, it'll surprise my metabolism and shake things up again. My loss has definitely been slowing the more my body adjusts to eating less.

So excited for this week, it'll be so nice to get away for a bit and de-stress. Determined not to ruin it through panic over food. Anyway, I'd have to eat 10500 calories over my BMR to gain back those 3 pounds I just lost. And even that wouldn't be disasterous. Whatever is gained can be lost again.

In that spirit, here's some pretty relaxing music: