Days to England: 9
Operation Mini-Skirt Status: Game On!
I'm not going to hide it. I've gained a bit over the summer. Hell, I couldn't hide it even if I tried. My newer pants, after all, are starting to make me look like Camel-Toe Annie.
Internally, I've been battling seven kinds of angst over it, giving myself headaches and uncomfortable kinks in my neck and back. I've had the sniffles and I'm breaking out. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if my body turned itself against my favourite purse just to punish me for treating it, my body, so shabbily. Can you imagine? Handbag allergy from spite.
Externally, I've just ignored the growing bulges, and hoped that everyone else has too. Foolish, of course. In exactly the same way everyone was exclaiming over my weight loss a little less than a year ago, I can now feel them NOT saying anything about how I'm slowly - no, not slowly - gaining it back. That's the worst part. I feel like I've let everyone down. I almost wonder if Oprah had it better when she was riding up and down the scale. Once the tabloids call you fat, well, it's right out there, isn't it? Nothing left to say about it. But when everyone is pointedly NOT saying anything... the only thing you're left with is what your imagination is dreaming up. And it's amazing how imaginative I can be when I get off a scale these days.
I'm afraid. I can't be fat again, but at the same time, I can't go back to losing it the way I did before. Oh God. Here it comes. Here it comes, the real story. The world around me knew how I'd lost it, but I always kept it from here. Too many details, I thought, and too much to defend. But here it is:
Last year, on September 12, I had my first appointment at the Dr. Bernstein clinic. I weighed... well; it doesn't matter what I weighed. From that day forward, for about eight months, I took in no more than 1000 calories a day. Two hundred grams of protein, 455 grams of certain vegetables only, and no more than two pieces of certain fruit a day. The fruit, although allowed, wasn't recommended. Too much sugar, you see. I was allowed a small bread supplement - one breadstick a day, for example. And that's it. No more, no less. Just enough to live on. The list of foods I wasn't allowed to eat was twice the length of the one listing what I was allowed.
I was also required to take a multi-vitamin, and because the diet didn't allow any into my system through natural measures, several potassium supplements a day.
And as for the rest of the mass that I'd accumulated all my life? Well, that was being metabolised and flushed out by the injections of Vitamin B6 and B12 that I was getting at the clinic three times a week. There's the secret right there. That's how I managed to lose 50 pounds in a few months. Granted, I only stayed at that 50 pound mark for about an hour and a half, but for a long time, I was able to claim a 40lb loss and be happy about the way I looked.
That's about the only thing I was happy about though, because not only was that pitiful diet making me miserable, I was also losing my mind. I'd dream - no, fantasize - about food. Plus, the shock of getting a whole new body so quickly was, for many reasons I'm sure I'll get into in another entry, psychologically distressing. A stronger person can handle it, but poppets, a tower of strength I've never claimed to be.
There are those who will shake their heads at this non-traditional and expensive way to lose weight. But I'd tried other methods before... I'd kept food diaries, and cut out the junk, and exercised, and lowered the carbs, and it just didn't come off fast enough. I ever tried Richard Simmons! I needed a boost. I needed to understand that there was another way to look, and that the idea of being thin wasn't just a pipe dream. Bernstein is not a way to live, but it is a way to teach you to eat, and manage your weight. It's a way to shed a bunch quickly, which will keep you motivated. Motivation is what I needed, and I did well with it.
And then... and then... I dropped the ball. I lost the discipline. I started to eat. And I didn't just start to eat... I started to eat anything. I was hoarding food again. I was craving sweets and rewarding the cravings. Bread? It became my best friend all over again. Food was indeed love, poppets.
But now, here it is just 10 days from the Bernstein anniversary, and though I'm nowhere near what I weighed on the September 12, 2002, I'm nowhere near what I should weigh now.
I can't go back to Bernstein. I lost the weight, but I was so unhappy doing it. And the nurses? They weren't very friendly if you gained an ounce, my beauties. It got to the point where I was afraid to go back to face their reactions. After all, by that point, I was losing for them and not for me anymore. Quick, quick... drink some water, take a diuretic so they don't tell you off tomorrow morning. Diuretics, people. Diuretics, and if I had to, laxatives, too. And this is after I'd lost 40 pounds! I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't, so I didn't.
For a while, I was ok. But I'm on a bad road now, and I've got get off of it. I've got a trip to London in a week and half, a wedding in month, and JournalCon a week after that. I can�t be fat, but can't go back to Bernstein, either. I can do this by myself, dammit.
Operation Mini-skirt: Here we go...
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