This is my upset face

It's just plain frustrating. I've been doing really well recently with my healthy eating and exercising plan. Last week, I worked out Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday (and Sunday of this week) and the only unhealthy thing that I ate was when I went to T.G.I. Fridays with Colleen and her cast after her show and got a chicken club sandwich with a side salad. My sandwich did end up coming with fries too, but I only had a few and gave the rest to one of Colleen's cast mates. I ordered the salad in an attempt to be healthy, even though I know that most salads in restaurants are more unhealthy than many of the traditionally unhealthy foods. But it was a small salad that had iceberg lettuce (which is nutritionally empty), tomatoes, cucumbers, some cabbage, croutons, and honey mustard dressing (I figured that it would be better then ranch). I drank water and didn't have dessert.

However, when I weighed myself this morning (as I do every Monday after I wake up), I had gained 3 pounds. I weighed myself last Friday because I wanted to see if the extra workouts were working and I was 244 and then today I was 247. I just don't understand how this happened. I could get it if I went on a binge or ate a lot of food at T.G.I.Fridays or didn't exercise, but I did everything I could and I still gained weight. The only thing that I could think of is (and I know that this is gross) that I'm constipated. That is the only explanation that I can think of. There is no way that I gained 3 pounds in 3 days while being healthy. A pound equals 3500 calories, so to have gained three pounds, I would have had to consume 10,500 calories, as well as any that I burned from exercising. And I know that the whole point of this is to get healthy, but I would really like to lose some weight too. I know that being 250lbs and 5'6" is just not healthy, even without going by the BMI scale. I don't expect to be 110lbs, but I'd like to be under 200. I was around 200lbs when I was in Germany and I felt good.

The only thing I can do is keep going and see if it gets better next week. Hopefully, I will have lost some weight. I worked out today and I plan to do it every day this week and see if that helps. Fingers crossed.....

And the winner is......

So I have made a decision. I am not going to go to an OA meeting. And before you go, "well you should at least try it before you dismiss it", let me explain why.

OA bases its program around the Twelve Steps, which were created originally for AA.

The Twelve Steps of Overeaters Anonymous

1. We admitted we were powerless over food — that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to compulsive overeaters and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

The first and most important step is admitting that you are powerless over food and that you can't just "use more willpower" to get your life under control. And I have to admit, that while I do have an unhealthy relationship with food, I am not powerless over it. I can eat really healthy and in small portions when I try and I set myself up to succeed. My biggest problems are that I'm lazy and I tend to eat my emotions. I'll eat when I'm bored, depressed, angry, and even happy. There are those out there who claim that all fat people are just lazy and if they just got up off their fat asses, they could lose the weight and be healthy. Clearly, this is not true in many cases. Unhealthy weight is the result of so many factors including medications, metabolism, and genetics. But to a certain extent (and only a certain extent) it is true for me. I am a lazy person in all aspects of my life. I would much rather do nothing than get up and work out.......or do homework......or clean my room. Not to mention that I'm not a fan of sweating. I know that most people aren't, but I inherited my father's lovely ability to sweat like there's no tomorrow. Even when I just walk, I will sweat. So the prospect of working out and feeling like I just came out of a shower of sweat is not appealing.

The other thing that puts me off about going to OA is that, while they claim to not be religiously affiliated, they talk about asking God to remove all defects of our character. I think that I have learned poor eating habits and that I have used food to cope instead of dealing with my problems, but I don't consider my issues with food to be a defect of my character. That's equating my eating problems with neglecting my family or being a jackass. How I handle food is nothing like that and I don't think that it is something that I should ask God to take away. Those of you who know me know that God is important in my life and that I'm a big believer in the Redemptive Gifts. As a Giver, one of my difficulties is that I can be manipulative, to the point of trying to manipulate God (which of course is ridiculous and never works). That would be a defect of character that I would pray about, not whether I eat too much ice cream in a sitting. Not to mention that I wouldn't pray for God to just take away a character flaw. More than likely, He won't do it anyway. Instead, He'll give me opportunities in which I could be manipulative and see if I don't. As much as I know God (which is very little), He's more about giving us the tools to use to help ourselves. We can ask for help and there are times when He will rescue us, but He wants us to do it ourselves. It's like that scene in Evan Almighty where God talks about opportunities. (clip at bottom of post) I just have a real issue with seeing this difficulty as a defect.

Instead of going to OA, I am going to try to employ the Mindful Eating approach. It basically says that you should take time to enjoy your food without distractions and appreciate the flavors, smells, and look of the food. There is no diet to go along with it and no steps or rules. It's just about eating when you are actually hungry, not at a certain time, and being mindful of what you put into your body. It seems to go along with my current plans better than OA, so I'm gonna try it out.

So here's the movie clip.

OA or no OA.....that is the question

So I haven't had a lot of things to talk about recently; hence the lack of posts. I even started this one four or five days ago and just didn't have enough to write about to post it.

Last week was emotionally draining; more so for my mom and her family than for me personally. Grandma's wake was last Wednesday and her funeral was Thursday. The wake was, I have to be honest, really boring. It was long and the only people that I knew were my mom's high school friends and some people from our old church. The funeral was, surprisingly, very nice. It was a Catholic service, but it wasn't long or boring and the priest talked casually and even made a few jokes. My cousin Laura gave the eulogy and it was beautiful. The worst part of it for me was that throughout the entire service, all I could think about was dad, especially when we had to sing "How Great Thou Art" because I could just hear him singing it.

The happier part of last week was that we had a cookout on Saturday, partly as a way to unwind from the week and partly to celebrate Paul and Lisa being in town. Paul is my mom's younger brother and he lives in Texas, so we only get to see him every few years or so. (recently it has always been for funerals) They stayed at our house for the week, which was really nice. Normally, I don't like having guys in the house because I have to be extra careful about being covered up and wearing a bra, but at the same time, it was kind of nice to have some masculine energy in the house. Normally, all we have in the house is a ton of estrogen, what with it being only mom and me here.

This week has been pretty boring. I have made an effort to get back on my healthy eating plan, which is easier said than done, especially when we still had leftovers in the house. Mom went grocery shopping today though, so we're back to the normal food of the house. One interesting thing that did come up this week was that my therapist suggested that I should try out an OA (Overeaters Anonymous) meeting. I told her about my blog and about one of my recent posts "There are days when I feel like a recovering addict" and she said that it might be a good idea to just try it out. I'm not sure if I'm gonna do it though. I have a difficult time opening up to complete strangers. It took me long enough to feel comfortable talking to my therapist Amy, and even then there are times when I can tell that I'm not opening up completely. So the prospect of sitting in a room of people and telling them my darkest food related secrets just scares the crap out of me. I can just picture myself sitting there, arms folded, listening to everyone else and not saying a word. The only nice thing is that the meetings are free, so I wouldn't be wasting money if I went. I don't know. I'll still have to think about it.