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Weigh-In Wednesday

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I skipped this last week (out of shame).

I really, really wanted to skip this week (out of greater shame) but I’m doing it anyhow.

Today’s weight: 136.0.

I’ve been on a steady incline, fluctuating between 133-136 for the past two weeks. My all-time low was 129.8 on November 22nd and I haven’t been able to get back to that sub-130 milestone since.

Perhaps if I could stop eating junk food, I could make it happen. Perhaps if I went to the gym more than three times a week, I could make it happen.

Waist: 27.75″

I’ve got a bit of a muffin top going in my size 4 jeans. They fit perfectly in November, they are snug in December. Let’s hope I don’t burst out of them in January.

I didn’t measure my thighs, mainly because I didn’t trust myself to not freak out. I can see that they’re wider, thicker, jelly.

I just need to make it through December.

I will regain control in 2014. Until then, I just need to survive.

~ Tori

 

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The Holiday Diet Blues

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I’m having a really hard time with my diet lately.

I’m having a really hard time with nutrition/health/fitness in general.

I love the gym, but I’m not going regularly. I love eating clean foods, but I’m opting for junk. I love being optimistic, but I’m sinking into a bit of a depression.

It must be the holidays…

~ Tori

Benefits to Illness?

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While no one looks forward to being ill, I’ve learned over the past three days of sneezing, coughing, and intense sinus pressure (seriously, think elephant-squatting-on-your-head type pressure, folks) that there are some benefits to being ill:

  • I’ve finally stopped cheating on the Paleo diet. I’d been inhaling Chobani Greek yogurts for the past two weeks, a big no-no on the Caveman Diet, and I finally broke my addiction on Friday. I was eating 2-3 cups of the white toxin per day and it wasn’t until my sinus/respiratory infection settled in that I realized the dairy was a HUGE contributor to mucous-production. I’d always known dairy and colds don’t mix but GOOD GOD, I became a snot-factory after I ate my yogurt on Friday. I had a sore throat and thought it wouldn’t hurt but the subsequent muculence leaking from my face assured me that milk was a very, very bad idea.

 

  • When food has no taste, it has no power over me. Anyone that has followed this blog for more than a few weeks understands that I have a tendency to binge, especially on sweets, so the fact that I have VERY little olfactory capacities right now means that my taste buds are practically paralyzed. I can taste spicy and sour – and that’s about it. So, that being said, I’ve just eaten enough to take my medicine (like a good girl) and that’s about it.

 

  • Your body burns HOT when you’re ill. I’ve been rocking a fever between 99.1 and 100.6 for three days, which means my body is fighting this infection like a champ. Another benefit to kicking some bacterial asses is that you burn more calories with a higher core temperature. I’ve been guzzling Gatorade like it’s my job and yet my weight on the scale – fully dressed and with shoes – was just 135 at the doctor’s office. Yeah. That’s kind of nice.

So, even though I’m hacking up a lung and feel like death warmed over, there are a few benefits to this whole “being sick” thing.

Bon appetit, friends! Or, in my case, NyQuil dreams!

~ Tori

The Poem of the Yo-Yo

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Mondays.

Really, that’s all that needs to be said. Anyone that has followed this blog for more than a week knows that Mondays are the day of the week that are most painful for me as a yo-yo dieter.

Ashamed of my weekend. Determined for my week. Depressed. Committed. Sad. Prepared.

An endless cycle.

WW_weight_loss_yo_Yo

I decided a poem was in order.

Because, really, how can you be depressed when something has a lovely cadence and the words rhyme? A well-constructed poem can make a eulogy sound like a nursery rhyme.

So here goes:

Victoria was a dieter,
Who counted every bite.
She tracked each tiny morsel,
And logged it all by night.
She found the time to run,
She hardly ever skipped the gym.
Every effort that she could make,
Her attempt to live life slim.
Turning down a slice of pizza,
Saying no to each cupcake.
Her will power was infallible,
Her calorie allowance wasn’t fake.
She huffed and puffed and cried,
The sweat, it always poured.
Yet her body rarely changed,
The scale, she, too,abhorred.
You’d think one day she’d adjust,
And learn to love her frame.
But an act of biased futility,
Is a handcuff just the same.
And so she’ll keep on counting,
Deprivation will be her law.
Until one day she wins the battle,
When her self-doubt does withdraw.

Hoping for a good week,

~ Tori

Spoke too soon.

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I am ashamed.

So very ashamed.

Yesterday, I blogged about the fact that I had gone so many weeks without an episode, without giving into the devil inside me. I had gone six, seven weeks without binging and purging.

All I did was taunt the beast.

I don’t know why I did it. I was attending my online lecture, calm and quiet, when it started. A cookie. Then another. Then another.

While the class went on, unknowingly a witness and an accomplice to my self-destruction, I shoved it in. Cookies.

Chips. If it was edible, it was going down.

My brain screamed at me. It yelled and cursed and chastised me.

“You don’t even like cookies!”

“You are not even HUNGRY!”

“You’ve had dinner. And a snack. Now STOP.”

But my damned hands wouldn’t stop. They couldn’t. Treacherous, five-fingered harbingers of hate and lust and sloth. Just shoving away.

Oh, and my mouth!

The greedy bitch – she took it all. Happily, eagerly, little porcelain teeth gnashing with joy and ecstasy as the chocolate melted and the crumbles fell.

It lasted maybe five minutes. A package of cookies. A bag of tortilla chips. Gobbled up. Devoured. Inhaled with barely a breath between bites.

The lecture continued.

How were they to know the sin I had just committed?

My stomach flipped and the bile rose in my throat.

What had I done? What could I do?

I excused myself as quickly as I could from the closing banter of my class, shoving my laptop away and rushing to the only salvation, the only punishment and recourse available to me: the drugstore.

I had no other option.

Of course, ipecac syrup was out. Why have places stopped carrying this god-send for the bulimics? Perhaps they realize that their product is never used with the right intentions and that they’re encouraging (and enabling) people to continue this self-destructive habit. Well played, pharmaceutical companies, well played. I’ll just find another way.

I had to settle on the old favorite: laxatives.

Would 15 pills be enough? I’ll buy the 90 count, just in case.

In the darkness of my car, no one to witness (or mock or judge), I popped them, washed down by sugar free Gatorade [as if it mattered anymore] and prayed it would hurt as much as I wanted it to. Please be painful. Please let the memory of this pain last long enough that it prevents a future binge. Please let this be the last time I go through this.

I’m not religious, but prayers filled the car like music fills the church. Please, God, please.

When I got home, I told my husband I had a sour stomach (not a lie) and he felt guilty that it might have been the dinner he brought me. The thoughtful, healthy dinner he dropped off that served as an appetizer to my binge.

Ashamed to tell him the truth, I let him believe that.

“Perhaps the chicken was bad?” I offered.

I’m a terrible human being.

The pills kicked in around 4am, the pain in my abdomen so violent that my half-asleep brain was convinced that a murderer was stabbing me, unrelentingly, eager to rip the very intestines from my body.

Purge, purge, purge.

Three hours, off and on.

Step on the scale… down.

Down, down, down.

No… don’t let that smile creep on your face as the numbers drop. You’re sick. Sicko. Look what you did to yourself. Look what you’re doing. Look what you’ve done.

I couldn’t go to work today, my stomach in shreds, my head aching. I’ve done this to myself.

WHY?

I’m ashamed. So very ashamed.

~ Tori

Mondays

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Ah, here we go again.

Another Monday.

Yet another re-commitment to my diet. To a better lifestyle. To everything that is good and wholesome and caring for my body.

My weight jumped back up today, which I can only attribute to the massive dinner I had Saturday night at Kobe’s. Soy sauce, noodles, and rice – OH MY!

Good God, they give you a ton of food there. Despite spending 90 minutes on the elliptical and 15 mins running fartleks on the treadmill that afternoon, I couldn’t cancel out the massive amount of calories I consumed in one sitting.

Why is it SO easy to consume 2,500 calories and yet SO hard to burn it back off?

It’s unfair that I can take thousands of calories into my body in just minutes but it takes HOURS of vigorous exercise to burn them back off.

Seriously, was this God’s practical joke on the human race? Make food delicious, readily available, and chock full of calories and then make it ridiculously hard to expend enough energy to burn it off? Then, to top it off, introduce a society that glorifies thinness and collarbones and you’ve got a bona fide eating disorder on your hands.

Grrrrrrrrrr.

Sorry, I’m in a bad mood today. I’m just tired of the fact that I work out EXTREMELY hard and then sabotage my own success by pigging out. I love food too much – but it doesn’t love me back.

There once was a lady name Tori,
Who, with food, she had quite the love story,
They got in a fight –
And try as she might,
She couldn’t kick its ass out the door-y.

[A bit of a forced rhyme, but you get what I’m feeling here.]

Tired of the yo-yo,

~ Tori

 

Bad Decisions

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Two days in a row, I’ve skipped the gym.

Two days in a row, I made really bad food choices. I skipped lunch, then gorged when I got home. The day before, I pretty much polished off a box of Kix cereal all on my own.

What gives?

Last week, I had the will power of a saint. This week, I’m like a flailing infant, unable to keep my arms and legs in check. I’m eating everything, letting my laziness overpower my desire to workout, and I’m starting to feel like I’m going to be forever stuck in the 140-141 plateau.

IMG_1774

I’ve faced some criticism lately, where people tell me that I AM at a healthy weight and I need to stop being obsessive.

What people don’t seem to realize is that I’m 5’2″. I’m very petite, so 140 on my frame is different than 140 on the frame of an average [5’5-5’7″] woman. For me, 140 means thick thighs, squishy tummy, and arms that wiggle and shimmy like leaves on the breeze.

For my frame and height, I should probably be between 120-125.

Of course, I wouldn’t know for a fact what my true ideal weight is because I’ve NEVER been there.

I was in the 140s-150s in elementary school, the 150s-170s in middle school, and the 170s-214 range in High School. I’ve never been my ideal weight, so I’m basically guessing as to where it should be.

If I keep up with my current habits, my ideal weight will remain that: a guess and not a reality.

I really need to get myself into gear and stop making excuses. I’m still signed up for GymPact and I have to get 3 more workouts in during the next 4 days or I lose $10/session. At the minimum, that should get me moving!

Enough bemoaning the past. Today is a new day. I will make better decisions. I have kickball tonight, so that should be fun. 🙂

As always, my friends, bon appetit –

~ Tori

Renewal Monday

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You guessed it. It’s Sunday night.

That means I’m in the deep, dark trenches of remorse. Remorse for a weekend weeks of bad eating, weeks of sub par workouts, and weeks of mistreatment to my body as a whole.

My postings on here have been minimal the last few weeks, primarily because my commitment to any diet/exercise regime, despite solid inspiration, was basically non-existent.

As a result, the scale is reporting a number so high, it’s too painful for me to post. A number that I haven’t seen in almost a year. An increase of almost 12 pounds since October 2012, which is horrifying to me.

In the course of a few weeks, I undid the hard work of nearly eight months of intense dieting and exercise.

Funny how that works.

I’ve decided it’s time to put my money where my mouth is. Since setting goals only works for me when financial loss is on the line, this seems to be the only reasonable option for me. Don’t believe me? The ONLY reason I stuck with my diet through April was because I didn’t want to purchase a second bridesmaid’s dress if I couldn’t fit into the first one.

The same went for my girlfriend’s wedding the year before. I always manage to follow through on my goals when it involves the purchase of another $200 dress.

So, I just downloaded GymPact to my iPhone.

gympact

I’ve committed to 5 workouts per week. I’ve set the stakes at $2.50 earned for workouts completed, $5 per workout missed. So I have the potential to make $12.50 per week or lose up to $25. If these stakes aren’t enough to keep me going, I’ll up the ante to $10 per missed workout. Whatever it takes.

The next few days, I’m going to try and cleanse, especially from this weekend, and focus on just fresh veggies and lean meat – no sugars, no processed foods, minimal salt. I hope to post a weight update by midweek – assuming I’ll have flushed the superfluous weight – and just praying that it’s not as painful as it was this evening. Yikes.

Wish me luck!

~ Tori

Vingt à Neuf (because everything sounds better in French)

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So, another birthday has come and gone. It’s official. I’m 29.

I have entered the last and final year of my 20s.

Boy, that went fast.

I had just gotten into the groove of the 20s, feeling like I was coming into my own. Now, suddenly, I’ve gained sight of the bridge leading into my 30s. Whoa, slow your horses there, friend. I’ve only just set the cruise-control on my 20s and it’s already time to slow down, shift gears, and prepare for the ascent into those trichotomous digits? No, no, no. I’m not quite ready for that, thanks.

I’m 29 and I still feel like I’m 21. I’m a college student (for the second time), I drink more of my calories than I eat (whoops), and my weight is still yo-yo’ing more than it remains still. Shouldn’t I have better control of that on the brink of the triple-decade?

As you can probably guess, I did NOT hit my goal weight by my birthday. In fact, I packed on two pounds, bringing me back to 144.

Lovely.

I was 134.4 [my lowest since grade school] just before the holidays, and I’ve been spiraling out of control [OK, that’s slightly dramatic, but you know what I mean] since Christmas dinner.

Will my 29th year of life bring me some stability?

Will I suddenly, on the cusp of “true” adulthood, find balance in my diet, in my exercise, and in my body image? Or will I spend this last year of my 20s just as obsessive about food and numbers on a scale as I had for the decade prior?

I’d like to say that I am starting 29 with a renewed sense of self-worth and purpose, but really, I’m just starting it with a muffin top, a lingering hangover, and a wish for another piece of birthday cake.

Hmmmmmm.

Maybe it’ll be better tomorrow. Until then —

Bon appetit, my friends!

~ Tori