Jennifer Lynn

I was not looking forward to weigh day today. I knew it wouldn’t be pretty. Truly, I broke even-neither loosing or gaining any weight, but I was still sad. For the most part, I ate pretty good this week. I did eat a personal pepperoni pizza from Schlotsky’s on Wednesday, but it was pure heaven and I don’t regret a bite. It just makes me sad that just a few bumps and I sabatoge myself once again.

I hate that I feel whiny about not losing weight. Where is my “up with people” mentality? Why are weight memoirs always so damned sad?

I wanna be funny, I want my fat to be jovial, I want my chins to be chipper.

Oh my God. Up with People still exists! Oh, that brightens my whole outlook! I went to an up with people concert when I was in jr. high. I was horribly excited about it too. Egads. They seem to be a little more respectable these days, check it out: http://www.upwithpeople.org

This article says that the traveling show shut down in 2000 because of financial woes. Give me a break-each participant had to PAY $14,300 to be a part of the show. That is just wrong. http://archives.cnn.com/2000/SHOWBIZ/Arts/12/07/up.with.people.ap/

I know, I know, I’m a strange one.

~Jen

Someone somewhere decided I couldn’t handle any more stress this week. Hey, I think that someone is me. I weighed in this morning at 319. 319!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That is a loss of 5.5 pounds this week. Double cheeseburger included.

Happy floaty feelings all around.

So, I am having a rough week. My job is a joke, my staff are not valued any more than I am yet they are begging me not to quit and I am still fat. Then, in the midsts of this, I get an annonymous email from some evil person saying how much they hate fat people. Mean people suck.

I find out that administration cares less about my department and I don’t go eat.
I get an evil email from a total stranger that makes me cry in my office and I don’t go eat.

I go to pick up a salad for my dinner last night and I pick up a double cheeseburger. I am screaming at myself the whole time, Jen don’t do this and I did it anyway. I then tell myself to throw it out for some creature to get clogged arteries with and I ate it anyways. I completely get druggies now. I understand the compulsion, the awareness and doing it anyways.

My guilt and shame made me sick to my stomach when I got home. I forced myself to be active and I was yelling at myself the whole time (home alone). I even weighed as a punishment with my clothes on, my shoes on and having just eaten a double cheeseburger. Guess what? I lost weight. Damn it. Ris gets home and I am terrified to tell her and I don’t for a while. I am grumpy still and she is tip-toeing around me when I finally tell her. It was really hard. I am grateful that she let me beat me up instead of helping out. Instead we walked all over the property reading meters and shot some hoops.

I think something snapped last night.

I don’t know if it will last, but I am so focused I am not even hungry. I am always hungry so I don’t know what to make of it. That or I am just so depressed that I don’t realize it yet. I wish I had more answers but I guess its better that I don’t. One day at a time, one step in front of the next until you get thru.

~Jen

No shit. Here is my book review of I’m not the new me by Wendy McClure. I read this book on vacation so that tells you that it was a pretty light read and had a quick pace. However, I must admit that I was not as interested when I learned that she didn’t weigh anything close to what I do.

I think that is a big issue. She was only like 220 and lost 20 or so pounds and that was a huge deal. What I find in the new “memoir” books that are coming out about weight loss is that they don’t deal so much with the anguish and the horrible feelings that come with being overweight-they all focus on what life is like mostly after the weight has been lost. What the fuck is the point of that? I have no clue. It tunes me out and leaves me disappointed. I want to connect with someone that expresses the reality of it all. Frances Kuffel came real close-close enough to have me in tears but again, she focused on life after the weight loss. I’m not there yet-I need the before not the after.

The other issue is Weight Watchers. I know WW is a great tool for some people. I tried weight watchers several years ago and you know what? I felt fat and judged sitting in a room with 30 people who suddenly got a boost in their self-esteem by looking at me. No one needed to lose more than 20 pounds in that room and I was disgusted and heart-broken. So, I don’t enjoy reading a book about how someone used ww to drop the pounds.

Fat girl’s a critic isn’t she? Why not. I have a theory that fat people are more critical of everything because they are constantly being judged. It is what they know.

There is one part of the book that made me crack up. It involves her scale and I have this problem all the time.
“When I stood on it it spat out a wild range of numbers: 203! 36…140. 278! Blink-blink. 4. 322! 231…219. The scale language it spoke seemed to be severely impaired by some sort of Tourette’s syndrome, compelled to blurt out horrible numbers before it could tell me what I really weighed. I would stand there politely and wait while it twitched and fluttered its digital eyelids. Fat whore! it seemed to sputter at me. Bitch! Big-ass bitch!”

I totally relate!

Don’t get me wrong, I laughed a lot with the book. We just aren’t in the same spot Wendy and me and I seem to be searching desperately for someone who is. I’m tired of being judged and told what I need to do by people who have no clue. I am tired of being treated like a child.

Nope, I am not the new me.

Ah, I did weigh yesterday. 224.5 Not the general direction I have been looking for. Working on it.

I spent three days this last week touring a library system that our director came from. We were expecting to be blown away and instead determined that it just blows. My roomy is another reference librarian that is fairly new to the system. She is overweight-tho not as large as me. In my humble opinion, she should be. She is obsessed with food. I mean obsessed with food like I can’t imagine(and that is saying something). She knows menus, she knows cost analysis, she knows food and talks about food and where to eat like it is nirvana. I like food yes, but I don’t do that. It was disconcerting to me, but I tried to play along. We stayed up and talked late the first night we were there and as we were talking she got up to grab her meds. She had two large baggies full of medication. Antidepressants, insulin resistance drugs, something for her heart etc… I was so surprised.

On to more exciting things. I have been reading about this insulin resistance thing and wondering if it affects me at all. Another friend of mine who is not chubby at all, is on it as she was doing everything perfect and didn’t drop a pound. I am awaiting the results of how it makes her feel. I hate being on any medications-but if there is something wrong with me, I will take all the help I can get. The doc will probably put me on anything I ask her to so I am proceeding with caution.

While I was reading about this stuff I came across a BMI chart that actually goes up far enough to my level. Holy Crap! My BMI is 52 and falls under not just obese, but extreme obese. Woo hoo! Nothing like grabbing a hold of something and taking it as far as I can. I just figured this out so it is still swishing about in my brain.

I also realize that it is June and September is not really that far away-unless I don’t eat until then, it is unlikely that I will be totally comfortable in a plane with co-workers. I found myself wishing that my roommate from this last trip would be flying too so I would have someone to commiserate with.

I am just a mess. At least I know I am a mess. I am not religious at all, but I really like the line in Kanye West’s song ‘God show me the way because the devil trying to bring me down”. I don’t know who my God is, maybe Buddha. I know who my devil is. The devil is me.

~Jen

Alrighty, (I say that a lot don’t I?) Fridays will now and forever be weigh days. It allows for hard hard work thru the week and a little slack on the weekends. Today, drum roll please, I weigh 322.5.

Ouchy, but I can pinpoint the moment I gained all my weight back. It happened all at once it seemed-feeling more grouchy, more uncomfortable and my new clothes were uncomfortable. I think it was probably higher, we did a lot of huffing and puffing on our vacation.

What freaks me out a little bit is that my workplace is sending me to D.C. in September, with a few other reference managers. I know that they will get whatever is cheapest and that means little planes. I am terrified of being the same size and having to ask to purchase a second seat. *sigh*

~Jen