Why am I losing weight now?

My work environment has changed.  We moved buildings.  Now, when I step off the shuttle, instead of being 20 steps from my desk, I’m about 100 steps, plus a flight of stairs.  I climb this flight of stairs probably six times a day.  My lab is about 50 steps away, instead of 10.  Instead of everything I need being in the lab, it’s not scattered all over, and I spend a significant amount of time finding reagents and glassware, walking back and forth from the fridge (no food!) in a different lab, instruments in yet another lab, etc.  Also, the job no longer does Costco runs, someone else is in charge of the food.  No more goldfish crackers, cookies, chips, bread, string cheese.    And while, yes, there is such a thing as willpower, it’s not a surefire thing, especially when things get stressful, or I’m overly hungry.  Now, snacks are hard-boiled eggs, wild rice salad, chickpea salads, fruit, nasty granola bars (really have to be hungry for to gag down one of these),  overly sweet low-fat yogurt, which I would never be hungry enough to eat.   There’s a soup and salad and sandwich bar, and “healthy” entrees, though I almost always bring my own lunch.*

My New Year’s Resolution this year was to prepare most of my own food.  I’ve been quite successful at it.  I still eat out 3-4 times a week, usually due to social occasions, and an almost weekly burrito, but it is much better than the almost every meal that it used to be.  I’ve got a new half year resolution, to get serious about strength training.  Yes, I use the small weights, but even they’re not getting much easier, and I can barely do all the reps.  So I’m pushing a little harder, not just half-assedly going through the motions.  I even do hard yoga on occasion, not just the stretchy stuff.    It makes me feel really good, though I don’t always enjoy it at the time.

There was a few weeks where I had no car.  Even my bike was out of commission for almost a week, and I was certainly feeling the lack of gym in my life, though I still had plenty of exercise, being that I had to walk everywhere (2.2 miles each way to the shuttle to work), grocery store, farmers market, etc.  So, yes, I admit, I am an addict, I crave the endorphins/dopamine/serotonin/whatever it might be that strenuous exercise gives me.   Not like I crave cigarettes, but certainly more than anything else I’ve encountered to this day.

I’m feeling okay about things.  I’d still like to lose another 10 pounds, which is what I weighed about a year ago, and I’m getting there slowly.   There’s nothing ecstatic about losing a pound, maybe two, per month, but that seems to be my current pace.   I hate to say, but I think I lost weight faster when I wasn’t doing so much gym, though I hate the whole idea of that.  Am I overcompensating with my eating?  I know sometimes I eat just so I don’t bonk at the gym, even if I’m not hungry.  I’m going to look at this over the next few weeks, though I don’t want to cut my gym too much.  Endorphins rule!

I am procrastinating packing for a camping trip, cleaning my apartment.  Feeling disgruntled.  It took me three tries to get the password right for this blog.  I will have to think on that, too.

*My pizza consumption has dropped considerably, as it’s just not around at work too often.  I still like it, still eat it, but levels are way down.

I guess I should say something

I can’t explain completely why I’m not into this blog anymore.  It took a few tries to remember my password.  I’m not really inspired with the weight loss battle so much anymore.  I’m not sure if I can call it maintenance, as I seem to be gaining about a pound per month.  Or was, I’ve been stable for a few months.  I’m not happy at a BMI of 27, but I’m figuring it out, still going to the gym, occasional hikes, biking to work shuttle, etc.  Maybe I should look at it another way, my weight is surprisingly good considering I all but eat ad-libitum.    But my regular eating isn’t the problem, it’s the crap at work, restraint only goes so far.  Cookies, pizza, bread/cheese, all stuff I’m not looking for, but every once in a while, I eat anyway.  We just moved buildings, there should be much less of that stuff now.  And I work on the second floor, have meetings on the third, and walk up and down the stairs, and back to our old building frequently, so there’s a lot more NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis – moving not for the intent of exercise).  Still, the food thing is hard, in the long run.  It’s much easier for me to skip meals, especially dinner, than be strict with the food.  I have to find a level of restraint that works, but won’t stress me out.  There’s no sense in doing anything that I can’t do long-term, especially since I recognize that it’s only going to get harder, as I get older.

It makes me uncomfortable sometimes to read some of the diet blogs, I sincerely believe that your body will adust to what you do to it, to a great extent.  I don’t want to be stuck eating 1200 kcals/day for the rest of my life, or no carbs, or no fat, or no sugar, or anything like that.  Just not going to happen.  If I was a betting woman, I’d estimate I average about 2500/day now, which is too much, even for as much as I exericse.

I’ll get there.  I’m not giving up, I’m just more focused on fixing my mind, which is a way bigger problem.  BTW, congratulate me, I got a job, with benefits and all, first health insurance in almost a decade.  I’m curious to check blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol, other things.  I think I’m healthy, I exercise often, sometimes intensely, and I eat my 5+ servings of fruits/veggies most days.    I have some unhealthy behaviors, along with my weakness for cheese and bacon, that I would also like to get a grip on.

Well, don’t really know if anybody is even reading this, but if you are, hope you’re having a great day!

Greetings from Argentina!

Am I too fat to go?

I’m leaving for Buenos Aires, where supposedly they don’t sell any clothes larger than US 8.   I’m currently size 8/10, all I can think of is that I am NOT shopping, because I’m going to vomit if I try and everything is just a little tight.  Same as it’s always been.   They don’t approve of overweight down there.  Just like most of my gym classes, I’ll be huge in comparison.  Actually, as the New Year gets close, new people are showing up, most still thin, but occasionally bigger than me.

Hopefully a diet of steak, wine, and no sleep will help lose weight?  All I can think about is how am I going to not smoke cigarettes.  So not interested in the food, completely looking for a ciggie excuse.  Damn, I’m an idiot.

Not much to say

Life is going okay.   Still working, dating, exercising, eating.    I don’t really feel like I have much to say about weight these days.  I started tracking my weight, and I’ve gained 2 pounds in the last 3 months.  I haven’t lost weight in almost a year, since I quit smoking.   I think that really sucks.  But I enjoy my gym, even if I’m the fattest one there at size 10.    I’m most interested in fixing myself psychologically, which is very different than losing weight.

Maybe I’ll feel like writing more soon.  I’m off to Argentina in a few days.  Oh, and that laundromat that gives me the creeps had a drive-by a month or so back, 8:45 a.m!   One dead, one injured.  I wonder if sugar was illegal, would people be killing each other for it?   Something to think about for those of you who think sugar = crack/heroin/meth.

Spare some change for hernia surgery?

It’s been a weird few weeks.  I hate working, really hate the commute, have no time.  The ex New Guy’s dad, a long time smoker, 40 y in AA, 80-something old man, didn’t want the slow painful path to death he was destined for, so sat in his bathroom, closed the door, put a bucket on his head, gun in his mouth.   I never met the guy, but NG was a mess for a few weeks.  We’re not dating anymore, but are still friends, and this was difficult for him.  Even more disturbing, I have a good friend whose dad did the same, and an ex-boss/friend whose mom and aunt did the same (one with pills) .   Only Oregon, as far as I know, allows euthenasia for humans, we’re much more compassionate to our pets.  Speaking of which,  my ex-bf and bff had to put his cat down, and since his girlfriend was away, I had to be emotional support.  I lived with them for a few years, and he was with me through the death of two of my past cats, so I felt obligated to return the favor, though it’s not my idea of a fun Saturday.

My clothes got tight.  I saw it happening on the scale, and then all of a sudden, my pants and bras are tight.  There are a lot of mistakes I’ve been making to get here, and I’ve been searching them out, changing them.  I had to give up the Malaysian buffet, or more likely, got sick of it.  I had to give up lattes from the machine for regular coffee, and am using Splenda instead of sugar.  I’m going to skip the buffets, eat less deep fried, and the most important one, eating for stress, when I’m not hungry.  This is the tough one, and I don’t think I’m going to ever not want to eat for stress (OK, what I really want is a ciggie, but I’m not going through that quitting shit again, so no), so I’m approaching this differently.  I’m cooking on Sundays, bringing lunch, which this week is ww pasta with lots of roasted veggies and crushed tomatoes and hot pepper jack.  And turkey/cheese/tomatoes/watercress on ww lavash.  I don’t love this ww pasta/bread, but I notice that it does the job, yet I won’t overeat.   If it’s white lavash,  I’ll eat the edges, ww lavash, I tear the ends off, tear off as much as I can.  Other than that, I don’t worry about fat content, my metabolism is up because I exercise.    If I don’t eat something with enough kcals/fat, I won’t want to stop eating, so I make sure I have enough.

Which brings me to the mom.  I told her that I regained a few pounds, and that I’m cooking for lunch.  She tells me that she just brings yogurt.  That nasty non-fat high sugar single-serving yogurt?   I explain that if I tried to eat only that for lunch, I’d come home and eat the house.  Actually that wouldn’t even work, work is Costco stocked,  I’d also eat ham/cheese on an English muffin, or other not so healthy stuff.  All of a sudden, I understand why she eats so much ice cream every night.

Anyway, hopefully things will be less stressful, now that I’m making the time to cook and making eating my own food a priority.  Sometimes it’s harsh reality sandwich, like tonight.  Another long day, fantasizing about what I’m going to eat (out) when doing my laundry.  There are lots of great restaurants in that 2 blocks near the laundromat in the foodie ‘hood, so I was deciding between grass-fed burger (should probably do salad, not fries), or burrito, or sushi, or ???.  I had decided on burger, with fries (pms), but when I got home at 8:30 pm, I wasn’t hungry.  I debated a minute or two whether I was going to really deprive myself of a great dinner just because of something trivial like not being hungry, but in the end, I did laundry near my own ‘hood, where I’m too scared to even walk across the street to the store.  Even in the daytime.   These few blocks are sketchy, and getting worse.   I came home, made a salad that I’ve been craving for days, and am currently eating fruit.  I love melons and peaches and nectarines and tomatoes.  Yummy!  Not as good as a burger, but there are work luncheons tomorrow and Friday at fancy restaurants, and I can’t eat heavy all the time.  Especially if I’m not hungry.  I’m unwilling to move up sizes, must drop the weight.  It’s not rocket science, just sometimes I don’t feel like being what I might have to call disciplined.  Not strict, just reining it in a little.

Where the boyfriend lives is safer, sort of.  I don’t even get panhandled in his ‘hood, I am not the right demographic, but that’s okay.  Here’s a picture I took at the corner of Market/Castro at 6:30 AM or so.   It’s hard to tell, but it’s a homeless person, with a beautiful, clean white cat, which is the only reason I noticed him.  Most of the guys in this ‘hood have very well behaved dogs, but still.  My cat wouldn’t stand for that for a second.   If he was awake, I’d have given him $5, just for keeping that cat so pretty and brushed.

Teacher: Needs heart doctor, medicine refills, hernia operation, etc.

Even the gym won’t help me here

Oh, how my life has changed since starting work.  Not for the better, with the exception of earning money.  Unemployment was running out, but my lifestyle wrt free unstructured time took a major hit.   By the time I get home from work, gym, socializing, other obligations, eating dinner, cleaning kitchen, (not always in that order) it’s past 10 pm, I need to relax a bit so I can go to bed, so I can get up at 5 and do it again.

And because I don’t drive most days, I can’t easily get to the gym.  I know the conventional wisdom keeps trying to say that exercise isn’t as important as food, but I can eat a whole lot more if I have enough time to exercise as much as I would like.  But I cannot.  I have New Guy who likes to spend time with me.  I have other friends who I like to spend time with, other activities I enjoy.  I had a week or two adjusting to the new food all over the place.  I ate two bags of goldfish crackers (170 cal each).  I ate a small bag of cookies, probably similar.  A small bag of cheetos, a few granola bars, a bunch of string cheese.    A few English muffins with turkey, ham, cheese.  My pants got tight, and now I don’t eat any of that anymore.  I’m not going to any extremes, just bringing lunch from now on.  There’s a Malaysian buffet nearby, not too much deep fried stuff, but I eat too much.  When I wasn’t working, I got there once a month, now that I work there, it is once a week.  Sometimes more.  I went today.  But if I eat lunch at noon, eat dinner 8:30 (my dinner tonight is salad – I am still full)  I went to the gym for two hours.  I think I’m going to go there every other week, probably once a month would be better, but that feels restrictive, which I need to be careful with.  I have to walk a fine line, I read other weight loss/maintenance blogs and know many people don’t eat much, but my metabolism is somewhat jacked.  I don’t do gym as much as I would like, but I ride 4 miles each way on bike as part of commute, walk a bunch, do what I can.   This not getting fat again is bloody inconvenient, I love the exercise, but the food planning is effort.  I can’t even imagine what a pain it would be if I counted calories, weighed stuff, or made any concession other than cooking it myself.

Sometimes I get caught in weird traps, for example, this is the first salad I’ve made at home for over a month.  I brought my salad dressing over to NG’s house when I made him dinner, left it there.  It takes just a few minutes to make dressing, why did I not do it for a month?   I don’t always make it easy for myself, and I’m trying to stop doing that.    What’s even weirder, I’m so mean to myself.  I keep telling myself that I’m such a fraud, to be dating decent looking guys who are actually nice to me.  I can make myself feel really bad and self-conscious if I don’t stop.  I subvert that mode of thinking when I notice it.  I tell him that I was fat, that my mother fucked me up, that I run depressed, exercise a lot, try hard not to be crazy about food, don’t like to clean.  But I like to cook, and I like sex, and am kinda smart, and for some guys, they’ll deal with my mess (head and apartment) for that.

Oh, and New Guy tells me he doesn’t have a sweet tooth.  What the hell does that even mean?  I understand the words, something is lost in interpretation.  Who doesn’t love sugar?  He does like it, but he doesn’t indulge.  I find this outrageous.  He explains that he would also love to smoke ciggies (me too!), drink way too much all the time (not my thing), and eat sweets, but he doesn’t.  Obviously, I somewhat understand restraint, having given up ciggies and 50 pounds, but no sweet tooth?  I am tripping on this, but I think of him when I pass by cookies and don’t eat them.  I can’t resist sugar only when drinking, which I don’t love and so should do less.

I have discovered the functionality in functional fitness.   I tried to climb the side of a waterfall, didn’t make it, but I needed every muscle I’ve gained in the gym.  I was actually sore from using my arms to pull me up, bringing my knees up to my chest to climb these boulders.  I couldn’t have done this when large, couldn’t do it without my gym habit.  So here’s a very dorky picture of me, on the rocks.  It’s hard to tell how steep it is, but you can sorta gauge by the waterfall off to the side.   I’m just happy to be somewhere that I can wear shorts.  This is the coldest summer of my life.

600 foot waterfall

My head is spinning

I have gone back to work.  I have no time, my commute sucks, and I am stressed.  Fortunately, I don’t sleep more than 6 hours a night, and most nights that is even less due to insomnia.  Blah.

But first the fun stuff!  Meeting the parents in Idaho.  Cultural differences aside, my mom, who no longer considers me fat, feels free to eat in front of me.  The first night, my dad wants pizza (he only eats it when he sees me-his consolation for having such a poorly adjusted kid?), so we order a cilantro, garlic and broccoli pizza.  I eat a breadstick, he eats 1/2 of a breadstick, my mom eats 6.5 breadsticks.  Not too bad, she didn’t have beer, as dad and I did.   The second day, we rent bikes, go on a 10 mile bike ride.  We stop at a cafe, eat a decent but unspectacular lunch.  She buys two peach danishes for the price of one, offers me one.

Me:  “I don’t eat that”  (even was I was bigger, I didn’t like danishes)

Her:  “You worked it off already!”

me: “It doesn’t work like that.”

My dad laughs, starts telling me about all the crap he buys at the supermarket for her, ice cream, cookies, chips, hamburgers, and though he eats none of that, she loses, he gains.  My mom shrugs, eats the other danish, tells me tomorrow she’ll eat nothing but fruit and veggies.  Seems that’s her solution to weight problems, was always the crappy advice she’d try to tell me I should live by, though she never even tried it herself.  I tell my dad that I think his portion sizes are too big, which is surprising to him, and he doesn’t agree.  I shrug my shoulders at him, roll my eyes at her, buy some peaches and strawberries.

Next day, at the last tiny market for hours, she buys non-fat cheese and a huge bag of chips.  I suggested the small bag of chips, but she’s not paying $0.99 for two servings, when she can pay $1.49 for 6.  Thanks mom.  I buy regular cheese, and put some chips on my cheese sandwich.  Crappy lunch.  I eat too many chips, then throw them out when she’s not looking.  Meanwhile, I have to go get breakfast by myself, they eat cereal.  I try the cereal, it’s sweeter than any candy I eat these days.  My dad says he doesn’t have his glasses when he shops, he can’t read the ingredients.  Shredded Wheat, must be healthy!  Uh, can you not taste this?  I really hate that in this family, I am vilified for intentionally eating fat and sugar, while they have neither in the house, but don’t have to, because they eat a bunch of processed crap already full of it?

Work is stressful and the commute is horrible, whether I do public transit or drive, and I may move.  I can’t live like this.  I have a new guy, the first non-pothead I’ve ever dated, and it’s new ground for me.  Coincidentally (or not), he’s also the first conventionally successful (good career, owns gorgeous spotless apt) man I’ve dated.    I can’t park within 1/2 mile of his house, but he lives much closer to my job than I do, so it’s convenient for me to be there.  I don’t feel much spark there.  I miss my old New Guy.

I’ve given up ciggies, given up food for comfort (mostly, anyways), mostly given up weed, all I’ve got left is sex and exercise.  And alcohol, of course, which makes me not feel very well, so any help there is very limited.  Drinking at my level is strange.  When I tell people who can’t drink at all that I can’t drink very much, we don’t understand each other.   I understand even less people who drink a whole lot.    I see people asleep on the sidewalk, cold nights, no pillows or blankets, I understand that least of all.  Maybe that’s something stronger, heroin, who knows.  I could ask the mid-block dealer who quickly finished his transaction to come and hit on me, but I don’t know how to word the question, besides, he’s crude.   I go to the gym for 2 hours, at least 3 days a week, and that’s likely the only thing that keeps me sane.  I try to walk at least an hour on the other days, which works into my commute.  My bike is forgotten.  The processed snacks that they pick up at Costco for employee food are not things that I eat, thankfully.  Sometimes I’ll eat some mini-carrots, or a string cheese, but the fig newtons, bags of corn nuts, granola bars, microwavable soup (80 kcals won’t last me an hour, and yuck), sugary yogurt, I can pass on.  More than one string cheese makes my stomach hurt, so there’s built in moderation.

No news on the weight front.  I hover at BMI = 25, though I’m rarely above it, sometimes a few pounds below.  This may be where I stay, and I think it’s okay.  Still kinda flabby, but I am a middle aged woman, not 16.  It’s what it is.

Why I love moderation and the scale

Yes, sometimes the scale drives me nuts, rarely ever tells me any good news, yet I am grateful for its non-biased input.  I gained 5 pounds, took my time admitting it to myself, then lost it right away.  It’s hard to tell sometimes, as the scale jumps, especially for pms, salty foods.  So, yes, I don’t blink too much when it jumps 5 pounds, as long as it jumps back down within a few days.  But this time, it didn’t.  It stayed up a month, that’s not just noise, and DaNile ain’t just a river in Egypt.  I can’t tell 5 pounds from my haphazardly fitting clothes, and even if I suspected, I can justify it.  I need the scale to keep me honest.  Not sure what caused the gain, I suspect that my veggie/whole food consumption drops as cheese/bread consumption rises.  The scale will let me know, it is too easy for me to go that way.  I am, once again, not overweight.  Barely.  But dropping again!

I’ve been reading summaries of studies, being too lazy (and not so great with statistics) to read them and understand them myself.  First one I liked was about junk food addiction, once again.    Rats were given either no access, restricted access, or extended access to “cafeteria diet”.  Only the rats with extended access became obese, and only these rats had certain brain chemistry changes associated with addiction.  The authors conclude that “common hedonic mechanisms may therefore underlie obesity and drug addiction.”    The rats with restricted access  became neither obese nor showed signs of addiction.  The author compares this to human MRi studies that show OVERCONSUMPTION of highly palatable foods decreases certain dopamine receptors, contributing to reward hyposensitivity.    This is why I feel no need to give up white bread, burgers, pizzza, bacon, ice cream, potato chips.  I recognize these things as not great for weight loss nor health, but I really enjoy them in moderation.  I may eat pizza almost weekly, potato chips, maybe a handful a month, but I enjoy these foods even more due to rarity.  The battle is mostly psychological for me, and I don’t like to feel denied, but I don’t mind moderation, even extreme.

The second post I like talks about the “meat and potatoes” pattern of eating, and what various studies and metastudies show, and don’t show.  And various holes, weaknesses in the studies.  Interesting reading, I like this guy and am glad I found his blog.    Of course I don’t expect to agree 100% with everything he says, but he seems smart, reasonable, and rational, which works for me.  Sorry the post is over a week old, I’m not very punctual with these blog posts.  And just because I take so many, some random pictures.   A man was shot while sitting in a car a block away from where these chickens were last Thursday, only our second murder this year.   Nobody saw anything.  This is my bike route.

Fog rolls in

Free range chickens

Never lived in a small town

Went on long weekend trip with NG over Memorial Day, visited a friend in a strange and beautiful place, 30o miles North.  It’s a tiny place, surrounded by state and national parks on 3 sides, ocean on the other.  There’s not many jobs, logging mill has shut down, most of the hotels have shut down, the ones that are left have a few tourists, but cater mostly to locals.  The Mexican restaurant is shutting down, the bar is rarely open, the grocery store is open until 5 pm.  The diner attached to the hotel is so bad I can’t eat there no matter how hungry I am.  Not even bacon and eggs, which are hard to screw up.   There seems to be more elk than people.  I saw a momma black bear, two cubs, which was a real treat.

It seems that in a lot of small towns, there’s not much to do but sit around and drink (or almost as popular, though not tolerated by my host, crank).    Our host sat around and drank beer all day, we went hiking a whole bunch.  We’d go out in the morning around 8 or 9, come back around 5.   After a beer or two (my limit, sadly), we’d have to go walk the 2 miles down the levee.  I tolerate drunks less and less as I get older, preferring instead herds of elk, sea lions, or teenagers driving ATVs.  Besides my drinking friend, another guest is a “big boy”, his answer as to why he wears ear plugs to sleep.   Ignorant me, I didn’t know that this means a diabetic who snores loudly.   An uncontrolled (or did he say out of contol) diabetic, who often has to get up at 5 am because his blood sugar is wonky, to drink a beer, go to bed.  WTF kinda crazy shit is that?  He must be seeing things because he’s drunk?  Except 5 am is time to wake up, bedtime is 9 pm, with the sun, no drunk at that hour.  I feel as if I’m in the Twlight Zone, and I sleep in a tent in the yard.

If they want fresh veggies, meat, they grow/raise it or trade for it themselves.  Most folks are too poor to drive 30 miles to the big town (hah) for quality stuff.    The only cooking facilities in the house are two propane burners.  The whole kitchen gives me the creeps, we mostly eat out, other than the fruits and veggies and the portable food I prepped ahead of time.  We’re both semi-famished, even with a restaurant meal or two daily.  I am surprised for some reason that 8 hours or walking or hiking burns so many more calories than an hour or two at the gym.    Maybe I burn 500-1000 at gym, hiking 6+ hours (all steep but the levee), burns over 2500 (both approximated, though not wildly) .   When we left, I ate a burger, fries, salad, and ice cream.  Kind of a meal that makes me cringe (or even binge, once upon a time), but I was HUNGRY.    My weight dropped 5 pounds from the top to the bottom of my range before I even left, and there it stays.  I may actually have a loss once pms is over and gone.

So this worked well for me, though I don’t like being so, uh, food insecure?   Food inconvenient probably a better term.  I think that I wasn’t losing (and possibly gained – even though the scale bounces a lot, it stayed 5 pounds up for a month), because I was eating when not hungry.  I realize that just because it’s the norm to eat 3 meals a day, with maybe a snack or two, and some even like 5 or 6, I don’t have to constrain myself to any schedule.  Sometimes it’s more convenient to eat big meals, or I overeat at a party (or just eat differently), I may not get hungry again for a long time.  I’ve decided that it’s perfectly acceptable to skip meals, even breakfast.  I know that goes against conventional wisdom, but it seems nuttier to force myself to eat when I’m stuffed.  And all of a sudden, it all gets less complex.  This doesn’t mean that I’m going to eat erratically, or ignore nutrition or anything weird.  If left to my own devices, I’ll eat four small meals a day, with snacks.   Mostly plant based, not too processed.  The line between snack/meal is arbitrary, usually based on how hungry I am.  Sometimes a salad is a meal, sometimes a bowl of cereal is a snack, vice versa.   Sometimes I eat dinner at 8 pm or later, usually I just eat a snack, wake up hungry.  I’m hungry a lot more than I’m used to, which is okay when there is food, not so fun when I am semi-camping with no way to cook, nowhere to eat.  I eat healthy enough, and I am happy to be just a little less neurotic about food than before.

This is comfortable, and makes sense to me.  It’s not really Eat Stop Eat, or anything formal, it’s just me following my hunger.  I understand that it might be controversial for some reason or other, but the current research, what there is of it, doesn’t really show ill effects.  With all the obsession with paleo eating, this should really be trendy these days.  I doubt our early ancestors ate three square meals a day, they probably ate sporadically, whenever they could.   Anyway, nothing is really changing, I’m just no longer going to force myself to eat if I don’t wanna.   Thanks to Dr. J for making me think about this today.  He’s not quite talking about the same thing, but this math works for me.

met on levee, little goat thinks my jacket is tasty!

wild coast

We were fat women once

The first party I went to last week happened on a Tuesday, in a pub.  It was nice to see some people I hadn’t seen in a while, meet new people.  I’m getting better at being friendlier and not isolating so much, though it’s not always so comfortable.  I still get annoyed when social activities interfere with my gym, though I dispel this when it occurs.  I get enough exercise, and I often have to remind myself of that.  Over and over.  This is what retraining the brain seems to consist of, managing mind tricks and games and other stuff  to unfuck ones thinking,  not as fun as playing with food, exercise.   I don’t know if everyone who lost a bunch of weight, or had a less than stellar childhood, or healed themselves from ED has to do this.    I think many people do this to some extent at some point in their lives, many so they don’t pass on neurosis to their children, some just to have a chance at a fulfilling, content life, whatever.   I’ve got my work cut out for me in this dept, I know, and that’s all I’m saying about my last post.  No comment.

Anyway, back to the party.  I invited a friend (the one who had WLS) to another party a few days later, but she couldn’t go.  Sitting down, later, I mentioned to a good friend of hers who I’ve known for a long time that I invited her, and he said she has four dates this week.  Making up for lost time – decades of being fat.  He explains to me how not only don’t people not date fat women, they are ignored, people try to not look them in the eye at parties, they get the worst seats in restaurants, etc.  The irony of having life as a fat woman explained to me by a skinny man is not lost on me, but no more so than the smoky room us two ex-smokers are sitting in.  She is very thin now, scares me.  Even more so, as she has mentioned that her toenails are glued together, as they crack from lack of calcium.  Absorption problems.  She, like me, is not used to the kind of attention that she is getting from men.  We talk about dating stuff a bunch, not so much about our pasts.  I feed her as much as she’ll eat whenever she comes over, she’s kinda lazy about eating, especially plants.

The Thursday party was fun.  Private beach, no dogs.  No road.  There was a road once, washed out about 5 years ago.  It was usable as a flat path for a few more years, then that slid too.  Now 200 steps are the only way in/out.  There are about 10 houses there, and everyone there, from very small children and senior citizens, to extremely pregnant women, walks those 200 steps to leave, enter.  Garbage, compost, recycling are carried out.  At least they have running water.  In however many years, the rest of the cliff, and the houses, will go to the ocean.  But for now, it’s a great place for a bonfire, party!  I dislike bonfire smoke more than I dislike cigarette smoke, but still like beach fires.  I wish people would avoid the wood treated with creosote, arsenic, hexavalent chromium!  Especially those who are purists in eating, think nothing of breathing that crap!  Yuck.

Looking down the steps to the beach