Well, as I described earlier today, I was having some motivational trouble.  More like, trouble moving my fat ass out of bed.  I dallied around for awhile longer, my throat scratchy and tight from the cigarettes smoked in the bar last night (from a pack a day girl to a completely abstemious post-quit lifestyle, I have somehow now morphed into that most fickle and rare of creatures: the social smoker), my lips dry from the 8 diet pepsi’s I drank last night.  Not a hangover EXACTLY, but maybe a hangovers prettier sister.  No nausea and no headache and none of the horrible intestinal trouble I used to get from drinking beer, in particular.  Aside from the immediate physical ramifications of a boozy night on the town, there are several food related behaviors that I repeated so many times during my drinking life that they became ingrained patterns, rather than once-in-awhile hangover remedies.  This behavior involved an inordinate amount of greasy, savory food as a band aid for the blobby, grotesque physical state and mind-numbing, all-day movie or reading marathons until I either had to work (which at the time was mindless yet lucrative waitressing) or go to sleep.   Since I used to have a lot of drunken nights out and about, there were countless days when I got no exercise and binged on tons of garbage.  No wonder I got so fat.  Anyhow, nowadays, I don’t do those things- I am generally reinvigorated by the can-do spirit of my younger days (pre-booze and bad-boyfriends and all that).  I had been having problems with food earlier this month, before I started this blog, but it hasn’t been consistently bad.  So today, I was having this fairly unpleasant physical experience that reminded me emotionally of a hangover so much that I wanted desperately to binge.  I went almost the whole day without a pratfall, but ended up overeating in the evening.  Dammit!   I did not, in fact, spend all day lazing about the house- I got my ass up (yes, at noon, but whatever), rode the godforsaken stationary bike, walked the dogs, packed them up and took them to Nancy’s for a little running around for them and conversation for me.  It was a good day, until about nine, when I immediately fell to pieces.  I ended up eating a bunch of bread and cheese and rice-a-roni type stuff.  Food breakdown: this morning, egg on rye.  No lunch.  Dinner was a footlong (!) subway sandwich- wheat bread, chicken breast, cheese (white and processed- foul and scrumptious), extra tomatoes, olives, cucumbers, spinach, vinegar, dijon, honey mustard.  Then, THEN, three hours later, the whole staying-reasonably-on-plan thing flew out the window with my resolve, strength and dignity and I ate four slices of whole wheat baguette with gouda and stilton and THEN an entire package of a chicken flavored rice side (700 calories). What the fuck?  This is the biggest slip I’ve had since I started, except maybe the lemon bar thing at the parental home.  I said before, sammies are the road to ruin and here I am a scant week later, eating bread and cheese and footlongs and carbs with abandon like I don’t have almost a whole person’s worth of weight to lose.  I did exercise quite a bit today- walked, stationary biked twice for 45 minutes, weights, situps, pushups, but still I basically doubled my approximate dailycalorie limit.  I have to stop eating sammies and social smoking.  I’m going to chalk up today’s hangover feeling to the emotional reminder of my old life (literally EVERYONE I used to drink with regularly was out last night, for an old work friends going-away party), the smoking, and the crappy attitude today.  Tomorrow, I am jumping back in with renewed spirit and vigor.  I am not going to let this day drag me down; I will move on and get back on plan tomorrow.  Another problem contributing to my bad day is that I desperately need to restock my fridge with veggies and healthy foods, instead of eating crusts of bread and cheese that’s been sitting in the fridge for weeks.  So, going to my co-op for real groceries tomorrow morning.  It’s been a busy week, I just need to regroup a little bit, get a good nights sleep.  Also, I have to really work on how I structure my days, in terms of food.  I often don’t eat breakfast until lunchtime, even when I have to be up early, then skip a midday meal and have a large dinner, which I know is not the best way to go.  I’m a night person by nature and I work mostly from home or my work partner’s home.  So I basically make my own schedule (save for interviews and conferences, like the one I have to attend tomorrow and Sunday), which often involves me working into the night and getting a late-ish start on the day.  I do all my best creative writing and other art projects late at night and sometimes it takes me until two or three in the afternoon to feel REALLY awake, though I am not completely dysfunctional before then.  I love the scheduling freedom and I’ve accepted that I’m not ever going to be perky and sparkly at 7 a.m., but it does wreak a little havoc with a strict dieting schedule because I don’t want to eat too late, but if I wait all day to eat (as I sometimes do, after lunch), then I’m starving.  Also, if I eat at 7, then I’m hungry again by 1 am, but it’s too late to eat.   The dieting works best for me if I have prepared an array of healthy options to have on hand, so I’m not tempted to go out to eat or make something gross.  These days, I’m trying not to eat after eight p.m., I need to take some time tomorrow to stock up my car, purse and office space with some healthy snacks, cook more chicken and tofu and wash lettuce etc. for easy salad makings.  I think I’m going to get low fat string cheese so I can have a healthy snack ready for the evenings, when I’ve already had dinner and pretty much finished up calorically for the day.  Also, need to stock the fridge with club soda and make a ton of iced tea, because the diet pepsi situation has been off the chain the past few weeks.  Ecch, I’m boring myself going on like this, must stop blathering, I’m going to go to sleep and re-focus tomorrow.  

 I’m still lying in bed, it’s noon, I have tons of work to do and I just want to lie around watching movies all day.  I decided to write this post instead of going out for some sort of artery-clogging lunch (I was thinking greasy chinese food) and I’m going to eat an egg on toast instead.  I’m drinking a ton of water to try to get hydrated because I don’t think I drank enough yesterday, though I am normally a responsible water drinker.  I didn’t write yesterday because I was so busy with items on the agenda. . . including but not limited to: a trip to and from Seattle, dinner with my mother and little brother, reconfiguring my business website, interviewing a local activist, going to therapy, a going away party, baking a cake for said party.  Food could have been worse but was not great.  Yesterdays breakdown:   I ate an egg on rye in the morning, a blank void all day (busy, but very bad form nonetheless), then a virtual smorgasbord at my mothers house.  1 serving homemade chili, 3 small slices of steak, large serving spinach salad with green onions, avocado, cucumbers, dijon vinaigrette, about three servings tortilla chips and salsa (this is where I failed myself), about 10 mini-carrots and hummus.  No cookies, cake or candy involved, but there were chips and I definitely feel like I over ate on regular food as well.  I was out extremely late last night and my ass is just dragging today- whenever I go out to a party or have one here, I end up drinking tons of diet pepsi because I don’t drink and most of my friends still do, so I’m always hyper-caffeinated when I get home at 3 in the morning.  I alternate with club soda when I’m out, but still.  It was a very wild one last night, kind of made me miss the days . . . but not enough to go back to them.  I’ll write todays final breakdown later.  

I don’t know why I’m so surly today, but I can’t help it.  I had a bad food day, but did exercise, very strenuously.  I think the situps are actually starting to show a little bit on my so-far-still-hideous belly, so that’s encouraging, but I just can’t stop obsessing about losing weight faster, better, etc.  I need to just get over it and stay the course.  This is exactly what I hate about the dieting thing- it’s like a partial lobotomy so that all a normally sane and savvy girl can think about is dialing the weight loss routine up a notch.  This is one of the greatest thing about this blogging thing- it’s a semi-anonymous format to air my anxieties related to this specific topic.  Anyhow, today was not great- a disappointing showing after my good behavior at the dinner party.  Worse than usual bad day because it involved actual CANDY, not just extra regular food.  The damn leftover chocolate, and some delicious bread from the party.  Food breakdown:  since this morning, I’ve eaten two tomatoes, two slices of bread with margarine, a large salad (with chicken breast, feta, mixed greens and spinach, carrots, radishes, olives, lite balsamic vinaigrette), 15 squares of chocolate (if I were obsessively counting calories, I would freak out that I had consumed an extra fucking 600 of them from the chocolate, not to mention all the empty carbs and calories of the bread and butter- but since I am technically not, I’m not going to completely lose my shit). If all that weren’t enough, I also, for dinner, had a sandwich: two slices rye, lite mayo, chicken, gouda, tomatoes.  I feel pretty psychologically dirty, but not at all full.  I could easily eat another fifteen squares of chocolate and all the remaining food in the fridge, but I swear I am tapped the fuck out for the day.  No more.  I’m going to a midnight showing of the new Indiana Jones tonight (huzzah!) and when I pick up my friend, I’m going to deposit the rest of the bag of temptation, fancypants chocolate at her house so it won’t drive me to distraction again.  Feh, I must be pre-menstrual or something.  

Well, things went as well as could have been expected.  I invited two separate factions of my group of friends, hoping there would be a lively, comfortable meshing of personalities, and there was.  We had a delicious dinner (if I do say so myself) hilarious conversation, and it gave me a reason to clear out the stack of recycling that had piled up in one corner of my kitchen for months.  A good night, all in all.  As far as food goes, I definitely could have been better, but it was by no means a disaster.  I had a very busy day today before my lengthy and strenuous dinner party preparations (debearding mussels, deveining prawns, roasting pine nuts, making bruscetta etc.) and did not eat very much, so I was SUPER hungry by the time dinner was ready.  I was able to keep the portions under control.  So. . . food breakdown: morning and afternoon I ate a banana, a slice of low-fat swiss, a tomato.  Dinner: small helping of salad, medium serving of pasta, six mussels, five clams, two prawns, 1 slice white baguette, small serving of very cheesy green beans (about five beans- those were the only disappointing part of the meal; did not turn out too well).  I also, unfortunately, ate about five squares of dark chocolate that someone brought- I didn’t end up making the bananas foster.  Could have been worse.  No exercise today except walking dogs (about two miles) and generally running around hectically all day.  Hard workout, healthy three meals tomorrow.

Well, I ate lightly today and feel much better tonight.  No swimming today but I did walk with the dogs and put a strenuous hour in on the stationary bike, plus weights and crunches.  I am having a dinner party tomorrow to celebrate a close friends return from the East Coast- I have to be really careful about portions.  I’m making italian food, my favorite and my specialty (I am an adventurous cook under normal circumstances but tomorrow I’m making a dinner I know my friend will love and that I know I can execute as perfectly as is possible in my apartments’ kitchen).  I’m making Linguini al Frutti di Mare-  seafood linguini with homemade tomato sauce, clams, scallops, shrimp, mussels and calamari, parsley, garlic, red pepper.  Also sauteed green beans with cannellini beans, garlic, goat cheese and basil and a large mixed green salad with roasted pine nuts and kalamata olives.  Bananas foster for desert.  So my plan is as such: eat small portions of all main meal components, send the remaining pasta home with someone in tupperware, no desert (I’m deliberately not making one of my personal favorites so I won’t be too tempted).  That’s my plan and I’m sticking to it.    Today’s food breakdown: low fat vanilla yogurt with grapenuts and a tomato for breakfast, a banana for a snack, a sammy with lite mayo, basil, chicken breast, low-fat swiss, a tomato, spinach, two slices rye.  Again, after the sandwiches earlier this week, all I want to do is chomp down disgusting sammies from the likes of Meconi’s (an amazing Italian deli here) and, don’t judge me, Arby’s.  But, whatever, I’m keeping it healthy and homemade and I know the sammy-fever will dissipate  soon- it always does.    I’m going to handle the dinner party, exercise, stick to the diet tomorrow and make sure my dogs get an insane amount of exercise so they don’t harass my friends.  I don’t want to go into a negative spiral of thinking- I’m persisting with this damn thing, going to go swimming later this week and persevere, dammit!

So I can’t sleep. . . not hungry anymore but just generally feeling anxious and, well, awake.  I was reading a bunch of the other blogs on this site and guzzling bottle after bottle of water (thanks, feathers, it totally DID help :)) and I think I’m totally going to institute a reward system.  I’ve been pondering the successes and shortcomings of my eating plan the past couple of weeks and I think that I need to change up the way I exercise.  I’ve been too lackadaisical about working out and not giving it enough variety.  Also, I was on one of those calorie-count websites earlier tonight and it showed the shocking amount of calories you can burn by swimming or otherwise doing water activities.  I am a student and have access to a beautiful pool and sauna for free, but I’ve been a little too self-conscious to go to the school gym recently.  I need to get over it because 700 calories per hour sounds pretty nice to me.  Also, I happen to be an excellent swimmer.  I swam competitively all through my formative years (since I was 8, then all through high school) and it always kept me in great shape and I am now recalling the satisfied and tired-to-the-bone feeling you get after swimming.  Thinking about swimming at state competitions and open-water meets and playing basketball since I was seven years old. . . it makes me feel so incredibly ashamed that I let my own weight get this out of control, that as someone who was a dedicated athlete (also, softball and soccer when the season was right) and generally healthy person, I completely forgot to take care of my own body, to treat it as the excellent and well-oiled machine it can be.  It just makes me sick.  But anyhoo, I need to stop the Negative Nancy routine and get on with my plans.  So swimming- I’m thinking twice or three times a week, to switch up the stationary bike action.  Also, I really need to get a medium sized pilates ball- in the past, when I have dropped weight, those things have been indispensable for awesome, toning floor exercises.  I’m really noticing a change in my thighs and calves, but my stomach is a real problem and I need to start busting out the crunches EVERY DAY.  As it is now, I probably do them 3 or 4 times a week, but I need to step the whole workout routine up a notch.  Swimming, more stationary bike, more situps, more free weights.  Also, in terms of the reward system, since I don’t have a scale and I hate spending my whole day counting calories, I think that each time I legitimately drop a pants size, I’ll get myself a little gift.  My pants size is generally the indicator of my weight loss as I am much smaller on top- I always used to put on weight only in my ass and legs; it wasn’t until I started to really pack it on that I got a poochy stomach and the horrible saggy boobs I have now.  Hopefully it will all tighten back up (I’m still young-ish, I can hope) with a lot of effort and exercise.  So for rewards. . . I have a few things planned out.  When I reach my goal of getting back into a size ten, I’m getting the new tattoo I’ve been wanting and elaborately planning out for two years now and taking a trip to Italy.  I used to love to travel and avidly pursue a long, hostel-hopping backpacking trip any time I had enough money saved and could get the time off work.  Traveling, exploring makes me feel healthy, invigorated, and alive.  It also provides A-material for an aspiring writer such as myself and the opportunity to meet all sorts of amazing people.  But for each of the many pants sizes to come before that, I will treat myself to a little something something.  I just really need to re-motivate and stay the course, step up the workouts and try to sleep 8 hours every night (something that has not historically been in my repertoire).  Better get cracking, cause mama needs a new pair of shoes!

I’m having kind of a tough food day today- it’s past 8 and i am practically gnawing off all my fingernails to keep myself from eating any more than I already have.  I took it super easy today as i have a very busy week coming up- I’m lying around watching Veronica Mars on DVD, after a long day in the sun with the dogs and my buddy Nancy.  Food breakdown: breakfast was 1 slice rye with 1 egg, 2 slices turkey bacon and a tomato.  The rest of the day was full of heavy grazing: a mango, a tomato, a bowl of rosemary chicken and white bean soup, lots of seaweed, two open faced sammys on rye with sliced chicken breast, tomato and olives, five strips marinated tofu, 1\2 package imitation crab.   I pretty much spent the entire day in the sun, playing with the dogs, hanging with Nancy, getting a hideous sunburn.  It’s so bad I can’t even exercise tonight- my shoulders, chest and back feel itchy and tight and are a singularly unflattering shade somewhere in the area of medium rare.  I did, despite the grilled skin, have a fabulous time today until I returned home to devour everything in my fridge.  Honestly, I still feel hungry but I am trying to exercise some facsimile of restraint.  I’m tired and I have that weird, scratchy, feverish thing going on that comes with a nasty sunburn and I know sleeping is going to be tres uncomfortable tonight.  Better day tomorrow and a strenuous workout.  Back to Veronica.

Food breakdown: no breakfast.  Lunch was a salad with chicken, feta, romaine, spinach, tomatoes, chickpeas and olives.  Dinner was a sandwich with chicken breast, one egg, sliced gouda and mustard.  Snack was lots of roasted teriyaki seaweed.  Sandwiches are another food I have to tread lightly with, like pasta, though not quite to the same extent.  I LOVE a delicious sammy and have been known to go on sammy binges that last two or three weeks.  I’ve been fine with it so far- healthy bread, veggies, lite mayo or none at all, but I have had a couple of them this week and I feel like I’m still in the phase of the diet right now where I need to stick to what I know makes me lose weight and not want to binge.  After I ate the extremely protein-heavy sandwich tonight (I’m out of vegetables and too lazy to hit the store), I started immediately to consider blowing my diet off for the night in favor of a slew of popsicles, potato chips and cake.  But I pulled it back together and all is well.  Actually, I tried on several pairs of pants that I couldn’t even button a few weeks ago and now, not only are they buttonable, but they actually almost fit correctly.  Another two weeks and it’ll be like a whole new wardrobe.  Must persevere.  

Joy-  there really are very few ways to make tofu taste REALLY good, but I am one of those freaks who happens to like it a lot.  Also, whenever I am dieting, it has been an indispensable source of protein and generally healthful goodness.  I love it in stir fries, as a snack and for salads.  The way I make it is super easy:  I prefer Nigiri extra firm tofu (in the produce section), which I cut into 1\2 inch thick strips then marinate the strips in my favorite marinade. . . which is low-sodium soy sauce,  a little dijon mustard, splash of sesame oil, sprinkling of sesame seeds, lots of pressed garlic, grated ginger and a pinch of brown sugar.  Leave out the brown sugar if you don’t like a sweeter ‘teriyaki’ flavor.  I always just wing it on the amounts of everything- it should look like a soy-sauced based brown soup.  Then I bake it on a shallow baking dish until the liquid cooks away.  If you cook it for 15 minutes or so on 400, it will make firm, teriyaki-ish strips of tofu- perfect if you need a low calorie protein hit and delicious on any salad with an asian-style vinaigrette.  The seaweed is another thing that I just happen to love- it’s even less appealing to everybody than tofu, but I think it has a fascinatingly yummy taste and tecture.  I love the dried, teriyaki strips of seaweed or the shredded kind, also teriyaki.  It’s very good in salads (especially with the tofu!) and as something to snack on, which has virtually no calories.  You can get it at any asian grocery, it’s called nori.hope you have a wonderful weekend. 

So last night in the midst of my customarily monstrous insomnia, I cooked up two batches of stuff to have on salads- one chicken, one tofu.  I am in the process of a refrigerator re-stocking that will aid the diet process.  I still need to cook edamame for easy snacking and chop vegetables for even-easier salads and stir fries, but I’m happy to actually have my fridge stocked and ready for action- not full of leftovers and takeout and general nastiness.   I actually had a wonderful day today- on track with the diet, got a lot of sun and exercise, had dinner with the girls and a long phone conversation with my far-flung best friend, did some reading.  Amazing- the warm weather really lifts everyones spirit; the whole town felt perked up, energized, positive.  In the three months of nice(ish) weather we get per year (before the whole Northwest turns to a large, amorphous, drizzly, grey mass for the remaining nine months), the area between Vancouver B.C. and San Francisco gets a collectively stunned smile on it’s face.  Ah, the beginning of summer!   Food breakdown: breakfast was two eggs, rye toast, a tomato and 3 slices turkey bacon.  Lunch was a small salad with romaine, tofu, seaweed, radishes, sprouts, tomatoes, asian vinaigrette.  Dinner was a large salad with chicken, tomatoes, chickpeas, olives, radishes, feta.  I rode the stationary bike for 40 minutes, plus weights etc., cleaned the house vigorously (mopped to a Motown soundtrack, sweated up a storm- the one drawback of the summer around these parts is that my house gets hot as hells fire), walked twice with the dogs.  I have a complicated relationship with the summer months, as do most larger ladies.  It’s my favorite time of year and I love to swim and be in the sunshine, but these activities often include revealing more of my chunkiness then I am usually comfortable with.  Hopefully, by next summer, most of the anxiety that comes along with bathing suit weather will have disappeared like the 80 pounds I plan to lose by then.  But I’m NOT going to do the thing where I decide to forsake activities I truly enjoy because I’m worried people will judge my blubbery thighs and back fat.  I mean, no miniskirts or non-bermuda shorts (honestly, let’s not go crazy here) but I’m going to go swimming and wear tank tops and generally behave like a girl who is not consumed by morbid shame.  Fuck morbid shame, fuck not swimming in the summer and fuck wearing smothering little cardigans with everything.  I’m just going to persevere with the diet and try not to get demoralized by the absence of my bikini body and the seeming proliferation of everyone else’s.