Angerpost.

Weighed in this morning, and I’m up two pounds.  176, maybe more (stupid scale is hard to read).

This is what happens when I’m so weirdly ambivalent about what I eat.

I’m sick of excuses, rationalizations, analysis, self-criticism, all that.  No more posts about how hard it is, or how confused I am, at least for the time being.  Yes, losing weight is hard.  Yes, maintenance is difficult.  But that’s not a reason to do what I’ve been doing.

No more.  No more.  No more.

I may still struggle, and I may even gain more (I REALLY HOPE NOT), but I can promise you this: every time I do, I will own it.  No excuses.  No rationalizations.  No more analysis.

I gained two pounds this week because I let myself eat way, way too much food.  That’s it.

Over this.  Stopping the gaining today.

Hurl.

Had a big but not humongous lunch today: a bowl with brown rice, black beans, spinach, pico de gallo salsa, jack cheese, some zucchini, and some corn.  12 points.  NBD.  I ate it at 2 pm.

At 4:30 pm, I went to the gym.

At 4:35 pm, thereabouts, I stepped on the elliptical.

At 5:05 pm, thereabouts, I stepped off the elliptical, minus 350 calories.

At 5:06 pm, I stepped on the treadmill for a run.

At 5:16 pm, I almost lost my lunch all over the floor of the gym.  In front of everyone.

By the grace of God, I managed to get to the ladies’ locker room and into a toilet stall before the big hurl.  And luckily the locker room was relatively empty and I didn’t have to embarrass myself too much.  Except that everyone on the gym floor who saw me turn green, clap my hands over my mouth, leap off the treadmill, and hurtle toward the ladies’ room.

Now I remember why, in months past, I avoided big lunches later in the afternoon…

Self something.

I read through my old blog posts this morning and noticed, with increasing panic, just how long I’ve been blogging about the struggle.  Going off plan, not tracking, eating big meals in the middle of the day, sneaking sweets.  Gaining this, losing that.  So many start overs.  So many “this weeks” and “from now ons.”  So much rationalizing and analyzing and excusing and reasoning.  For months!  I kept going back and back, hoping to see an end to it, but no.

There was that period in March that I called maintenance, too.  I’d forgotten that that was an active choice.  Maybe it never was.  I don’t know.  And the farther back I go, the more i see admissions of having a big dinner or blowing everything on drinks or something like that.  This has been happening for a while.  For about as long as I haven’t been losing…

It’s hard losing weight at this point.  It was easier before.  That’s just a given.  I have fewer points (or calories or whatever) to deal with so splurges actually make a big impact.  And it’s been hard avoiding those splurges.  But here’s the thing.  For a good year, over a year really, I was really great at avoiding those splurges.  I’ve tracked most of my weigh ins on this blog for quite a while now, and you’ll notice that the first year or so rarely has a weight gain in it.  That’s not just because it was easier to lose.  I was better at saying no then.

Must go back and read those blog posts and see if that mojo is downloadable.

Some updates and some announcements, mostly.

I’m back at work this week, even if my students aren’t (it’s a travel week for kids to visit colleges).  Essentially, I spend all day alone in my classroom “grading.”  If I was smart, I’d cut myself off from all distractions and just power through this stack of papers, but instead I’m drinking coffee, checking blogs, and watching (this is embarrassing) episode after episode of “Teen Mom.”

Don’t judge.

I hadn’t thought about a chile verde burrito once over the past two weeks, but now that I’m back in school and the Mexican place around the corner is beckoning me again, chile verde has been on my mind.  In case you don’t know all my food obsessions, a chile verde burrito is just about the greatest thing in the world: beans, rice, carrots, cheese, onions, and pork simmered in green salsa, wrapped up in a flour tortilla, and then smothered with more green salsa.  It’s heavy and deeply, deeply unhealthy, and for the last month or so of being at school before spring break, I couldn’t seem to stop myself from chowing down on those three or four times a week.

And I’m getting tempted again!

To combat the temptation, I bought some delicious fixins for healthy lunches that I can keep in the faculty refrigerator.  Today’s lunch was a turkey, lettuce, and tomato sandwich on a decent whole grain bread with Dijon mayonnaise, a cup of apple slices, and some Greek yogurt.  All fresh and tasty, a lot of raw food, and enough to quell the temptation for now.

I know that I have even one burrito, I set myself up to have it every day.  I just have to avoid it as much as possible.

Other than that, things are going OK, and I’m happy to be settling into my groove at home.

I’ve been thinking about the fact that I can’t seem to go more than three weeks without cascading off the tracking wagon.  It’s not so much the fact that I overeat or even binge at times — I mean, no one’s perfect — it’s more the fact that I use that as an excuse not to track.  And not tracking pretty much ensures more overeating and bingeing.  Over the last several months, I’ve noticed that once I stop tracking, it takes a couple of weeks at least to get back on track.  Three weeks on, two weeks off, something like that, pretty much ensures that my weight goes in circles instead of down.

So of the ten billion things I want to accomplish this next year, the first is this: I want to go a whole five weeks (a whole “cycle”) staying on track.  Even if I overeat, even if I binge, I’ll be succeeding if I track every little thing I eat and use that information to make better choices.

I started the cycle on April 6, so I want to make it to May 11.  Do you think I can do it?  35 days of tracking?

I’m on day 4.

And I think I can do it.

Dah doo run run.

It’s been nice settling back to my old routines.  This morning I made coffee (bliss) before hiking in the Hollywood hills (double bliss) and then this evening will feature a drive up the coast (triple bliss) to see my folks for Sunday night dinner (quadruple bliss).

I’m about to give you too much information.  Are you ready for it?  Here it goes.

It’s a well-known fact that gringos like me shouldn’t drink local water in Central America unless we want to get married to our toilets.  I was a nut about avoiding anything but purified water.  I drank bottled water only, brushed my teeth with bottled water, saying no to ice in drinks despite the heat and humidity, and avoided any uncooked food that was washed in local water.  And I was fine.  Not a thing happened.

Since returning to LA, though… it’s been a different story.

I’m not sure if it’s because I had ice with my soda on the way home (we flew Delta, I figured that would be OK) or what, but I have needed to be in the vicinity of my toilet for the past 48 hours.  I’ll be just hanging around, absolutely fine, and then — the urge.  It hits.  It terrifies me.  Sometimes I make it to the bathroom within seconds of a catastrophe.

It’s starting to get better, but boy howdy.  This hasn’t been too fun.

And I’m back.

Guatemala was — wow, no words.  I haven’t had a chance to download any pictures, but as soon as I do, I’ll get a few of them up here.  This was the experience of a lifetime for me.

It was also one of serious reflection.  I won’t go into the details, but there was a lot of thinking, a lot of back and forth, a lot of round and round.  I’ve come to a couple of conclusions.

1. Whatever I do going forward has to be different from what I’ve been doing because…

2. I’m not done losing weight.

I’m not.

There’s more to go, and it’s time to get there.

I’ll admit being very nervous about my weigh in tomorrow morning.  While I drank lots of water and got plenty of exercise in Guatemala, I also wasn’t paying particular attention to tracking (despite vows to do otherwise).  One of the big problems is that there was very few raw food I could eat on this trip, so my usual fall-back of lots of fruit and raw veggies was simply not there.  I just feel UCK right now, honestly.

More to tell you, more to unfold.  But.  Officially.  Moving forward.

My maintenance-induced existential crisis.

I’ve been mopey all morning and kind of sad.  A small part of the moping is that I haven’t heard much from the fellow I went out with a couple of times recently and whom I’m apparently into enough to feel mopey if I don’t hear from him.  Most of it comes from the fact that deciding to maintain this weight has more or less induced a major existential crisis for me, since it’s been the BIG THING in my life for at least four or five years now, and here I am, and what now.

Do I… focus on my career?  Do I find love (and why isn’t he texting me)?  Do I move to an island?  What do I do?

This leads to questions about the meaning of existence, what am I supposed to believe, what is death, all kinds of unhealthy craziness for a Sunday morning.

I feel pretty much like Woody Allen in this scene:

Talking.

It was so beautiful yesterday, perfect L.A. weather: upper 70s, warm, sunny, and just a touch hazy to make everything seem golden.  There is only one thing to do on a day like that, which is a lovely hike in Griffith Park.  I rounded up a pair of friends and did just that.

As we were exploring, we began to talk a bit about the weight I’ve lost, and I more or less said that I think I’m moving into maintenance mode.

“So not on a diet anymore?” my friends said.

Me: “Well… yes, on a diet, but not actively trying to lose weight.”

Friends: “Oh.  Wait, explain that?”

Me: “Well, you know, I won’t be restricting so many calories that I’m actively losing.  I’ll just be eating the right amount and getting lots of exercise.”

Friends: “So you can eat whatever you want!”

Me: “Well… Yes and no.  I mean, I eat whatever I want now, and I did the whole time I was losing weight.  I just didn’t eat whatever I wanted when I wanted it.”

Friends: “I get it.  You just won’t have to be counting everything anymore.”

Me: “Well… yes, I’ll be counting.  I think I have to.  Or at the very least, I think it’ll be important for me to write down everything I eat, just to be aware.”

Friends: “You’ll still be on a meal plan.”

Me: “Yes.”

Friends: “And you’ll still be counting calories and all that.”

Me: “Yes.”

Friends: “So what’s going to be different, exactly?”

Me: “I won’t be losing weight.”

Friends: “Isn’t that what you’re doing now.”

Me: “Yes.”

Friends: …

Me: …

And restarting.

Oooh, Oscar Sunday in Los Angeles.

You know what Oscar Sunday is for us here?  Helicopters.  Helicopters everywhere.  News helicopters getting “aerial shots” (I guess people want to see celebrities from way high up and far away?).  Police helicopters keeping an eye on things.  There’s also heightened police security in the streets, and lots of limousines, most of them carrying people you wouldn’t recognize anyway.  There’s a lot more traffic, too, because the whole Hollywood and Highland area is closed off, and pretty much every major party location gets a lot of traffic, so the best thing to do is to stay at home and be grumpy while the city goes kerwumpus.  Essentially it’s loud, crowded, and annoying on Oscar Sunday.

I used to live in East Hollywood right below Sunset and only a few major blocks east of Highland, which essentially meant I was trapped on Oscar Sunday.  I now live in West Hollywood, where there are ways out and where the traffic impact isn’t so bad, but because I live where all the trendy food places are, I find it hard to shop or walk around the neighborhood with so many people picking up their Oscar party treats.

You know I’ve never done the red carpet look-at-the-celebrities thing?  For one thing, it seems like a giant waste of time, since you can see celebrities everyday depending on where you go and look for them, and two… actually, one is reason enough.

Anyway, yesterday was Oscar Sunday, and I totally overdid it for dinner.  TOTALLY.  And even though I spent a good portion of the day cleaning my apartment and thus getting some exercise, I didn’t go for the hike I’d planned.  I even drove to the trail head (I was hiking Runyon) but since everyone else in L.A. had the same idea as I had, the place was super crowded.  I took a look, looped once for a spot, gave up, and went home.  And that was exercise.

Which is a bummer because I’m about to go into a busy, busy week, and getting exercise is not going to be easy.  Worse yet, next week rehearsals for the musical start, and I won’t be getting much exercise for the two weeks of the show.  So this is my one week to get a good blast of exercise in.  It’s the week not to suck at motivation.

There’s nothing much to do about yesterday’s craziness except to restart.  Luckily, that’s easy.  Good breakfast this morning, a good lunch this afternoon, lots of snacks to keep me full, and then a run, and a solid dinner.  Lots of water.  Lots of making myself do things, since I won’t have much free time.  Here we go.

Bad mood getting worse. *Updated!*

Oh, today is going to be baaaaaaad, and there’s no rational reason why.

During my first period this morning, my students started complaining about something fairly innocuous that has nothing to do with me and then I turned into this:

And that shut them up.  They are mystified.  And I don’t blame them.

Now I’m in the teacher’s lounge during my prep and four other teachers are in here with me sitting at the work table (I’m pouting on the couches), and no one has said good morning to me, and now that is pissing me off.  Even though if they were all chatty, I’d be pissed about that.

I think I will live blog my rage, so stay tuned.

Update 1: Someone brought in French macarons and left them on the food table in the faculty lounge.  Having a food table in the one free space in the building is a bad thing, and then they bring in French macarons.  AND NO ONE WILL EAT THEM BECAUSE NO ONE KNOWS WHAT THEY ARE.  And I happen to know they’re delicious.  WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME, UNIVERSE?????!!!?!?!?!?!?!

Update 2: I have no interest in being perky or fun today.  I just want to eat a sandwich and be independently wealthy.  Why wasn’t I born independently wealthy?  Must keep it together for the sake of the children.