still overweight.

but just barely.

these have been fab weeks. i'm down to 72,9kg, some mornings. thank you, stress. 72,9kg. weeh.

i only realised this week that my bmi was 31 when i started. now it's 25. i'll soon be below that for the first time in my adult life. yes, the whole bmi thing is faulty and fucked up, but still, i can't wait for someone to put the "normal" label on me. i hadn't realised that at 31, i was considered obese. obese. looking back at it? yes, a bmi of 31 on me? is obese.

i've been feeling pretty fabulous lately. maybe it's the higher synthroid dose kicking in or something; i feel alive and fit but sleep too little. and i am wearing clothes i bought years and years ago. and almost everything is too large. yesterday, i wore a grey corduroy skirt that i bought in the fall of 2005 and it was too roomy. crazy. i very urgently need some new jeans. my skinny pair that i first re-wore on july 14? almost unwearable now. they are baggy and slide off me.

i am starting to like my body again. i look at it in the mirror again. i take care of it, i shave and exfoliate and moisturize and i love it when someone touches me. it's good, all good.

last night though, i ate out of stress, for the first time in months. it's been an emotionally stressful few days (and rightfully so, i'm turning my whole life around), so last night, in a foul mood and when buying toilet paper, i bought some semolina pudding baby food and wasabi peanuts. and i ate them in bed, like back in the fat days. and i felt somewhat better afterwards.

i need to watch this: medicating with food is a bad, bad idea, and a habit i don't want to get back into. now, this was once, and the situation was (and is) pretty damn horrible and another reason for the tiny binge is that i just got back from a business trip this week and just haven't been grocery shopping properly yet. i'm forgiving myself on that one.

anyway. project for this weekend: quite possibly buying some cheapo jeans at h&m to get me through the next few weeks. i'll buy them a wee bit too small to make them last somewhat longer. can't wait, really.

yawn.

i've been working lots and sleeping little. staying below my points today? impossible. maxed out o them. the day was so long and i was so very hungry. nothing too terrible happened, but still.

anyway, goals.

goal check for today

• eating 16 points every day (saving 4 every day) - FAIL! saved none. long day. superhungry. had two pretzels. but didn't finish my dinner.
  
• eating breakfast at work every day, preferrably veges or fruit - SUCCEED - had organic carrots and curt. yum.
  
• drinking enough water - SUCCEED - had more than 2l at work
  
• taking my vitamin every morning at my desk - SUCCEED
  
• finally doing turbo jam - not yet

deliriously happy.

i can't get over how much fun it is these day to put on clothes. a few months ago, i would grab whatever was kinda clean and would hide my lovehandles. mostly jeans and shirts. black shirts. and i felt yuck. my bras hurt me, and i couldn't wait to get out of them in the evening. i jumped out of my jeans at the first chance i got, too.

now i wear leggings, and pants i haven't worn in years and dresses and skirts and colourful shirts and fitted tops. and i love getting dressed.

just saying.

today: those get me laid pants, ballerinas, a grey flowy top, a bright blue scarf, a grey hoodie that had always been too tight. yesterday i wore a skirt that i bought in 2002. ha.

yay. anyway. as to yesterdays goals:


goal check for today

• eating 16 points every day (saving 4 every day) - FAIL! saved none. we had m&ms a work. and i didn't get any dinner till 11, when all i could manage were some fried noodles from the thai take away. oh well.
  
• eating breakfast at work every day, preferrably veges or fruit - SUCCEED - had organic carrots and curt. yum.
  
• drinking enough water - SUCCEED - had more than 2l at work
  
• taking my vitamin every morning at my desk - SUCCEED
  
• finally doing turbo jam - not yet

74,8kg.

i even got a stern little text from ww online about "losing to quickly". which was funny, considering last week (when i was all watered and stopped up and 1 kg up) i got the guilt inducing weight gain text. sometime i want to yell at ww: "chill the eff out, by now i know what i am doing."

what's good: i've already lost the weight i still need to lose. i've got an idea how much (or rather: how little) 9kg is. back in the middle of june i weighed about 9kg more than i do now (and already felt splendid). that's not that long ago and getting from there to here was actually kinda easy. it's just what i do now, that points counting and carrot and broccoli eating-thing.

who would have thought.

reward.

got my reward today.



had kinda forgotten (in the eight years since i got my last piercing), that getting one is like getting a new pet: there's a lot of the tender loving care you need to give it to get it settled in alright. ahem.

only hurt for a tiny moment when it was put it (the needle felt good, the jewellry didn't) and even the pressure these first 12 hours has been alright. good stuff.

goal check for today

• eating 16 points every day (saving 4 every day) -SUCCEED - saved six today!
  
• eating breakfast at work every day, preferrably veges or fruit - SUCCEED - had an organic smoothie, didn't eat enough during the day because of super stressful workday, but at least something!
  
• drinking enough water - SUCCEED - had more than 2l at work
  
• taking my vitamin every morning at my desk - SUCCEED
  
• finally doing turbo jam - not yet

ch-ch-ch-changes.

i just tried on a pair of black pants i bought in march 2005, and which i pretty much wore constantly for the next few months. it's a pair of size 10 black pants. and they fit. now. rather perfectly, too. holy. shit.

i wore these pants all through 2005, and in 2006, to lots of nights out with my best friend, and these pants got me laid, more than once as well.

and now i get to wear them again.

wow.

i don't know why this freaks me out so much. i think subconsciously, i haven't really grasped that i am indeed losing weight, and have already lost a lot and currently weigh about what i've weighed most of my adult life, a perfectly okay weight. maybe it is because i hardly get feedback from anyone. it's just me, my scale, my mirror, my clothes. i think part of me - physical disconnect and all - still fears that i am just imagining this. but i am not. wow. i got my black pants back. hooray.

i noticed a definite change on friday, being out and about with some casual friends: i kept getting hit on, and i felt beautiful. and looked good in photos one of them kept snapping. happiness. yes.

[i just tried on my skinniest piece of clothing, a thrifted high waisted woolen pleated skirt that i wore in january 2006 as part of a costume for a party. it is still way too tight, but i can zip it up all the way. and close the button. weeh.]

rewarding myself with a rook.

i'm feeling all smug now: this morning, the scale showerd 74,8kg. holy shit. 14,5kg lost. 9,8 kg to go. one digit in front of the comma. awesomeness. let's hope it's the same (or less) on wednesdays's weigh-in. i weighed this much (or little, rather), in the spring of 2005, when i started dating a particular jerk. i should try on some clothes from back then.

i'd been planning on buying a pair of jeans once i hit 75kg, but i've changed my mind, because it's not really worth yet, with my continually shrinking body. i decided to reward myself in a non-food, non-clothes way with a piercing this week: i'll be getting a rook in my right ear, where i already have a helix one, on wednesday. or maybe tomorrow. only got the idea today, really, talking to a piercer i know, who looked at my ear and suggested it was very well formed for a rook. i'm kinda thrilled. i haven't gotten a piercing in eight years, thinking i'd run out of spots (hate facial piercings, hate tongue piercings, not into genital piercings, sad about not having tiny nipples for that proper nipple piercing look). so awesome, that i haven't, really. i should not be allowed on bmezine.com; i've been ogling rook, trag and nipple piercings all day. especially the latter is kinda stupid, as nipple piercings make me all nostalgic about sex with an exaffair. shouldn't go there.

in any way, today was a good day. and i'm excited about that piercing. yay.

goal check for today

• eating 16 points every day (saving 4 every day) - FAIL - only saved 2,5 - had a 3 point choc bar this arvo, gah.
  
• eating breakfast at work every day, preferrably veges or fruit - SUCCEED - had a pretzel for brekkie and lots of yummy organic carrots with curd for an early lunch
  
• drinking enough water - SUCCEED - had 1,5l at work, will have at least one more litre tonight
  
• taking my vitamin every morning at my desk - FAIL - forgot about it, plain and simple
  
• finally doing turbo jam - not yet

missing sex.

so. sex.

there hasn't been much in my life lately. the bf and i are kinda having a sexless relationship at the moment. and part of the reason is weight. not mine really (even though my libido has been creeping up again since losing weight and doing bikram), but his. and i worries me. tremendously.

you know, the bf is overweight. i don't know what he weighs, but if you look at photos of him from three, four years ago (back before i met him, before he got married and divorced and stressed out at work), you hardly recognize him. he's gained lots of weight. i'd guess 30, 40kg. his stature is big anyway (broad shoulders and all), but he's got a big belly and lots of back rolls these days. he started ww shortly after me, and has lost about 6kg since then, which you can see. so he's working on it, and that's fab. plus i love him, i fell in love knowing him this way. however, as we're moving closer to moving in together and committing even more, and i wonder, whether i can ever be fully happy and content with the physical side of our relationship.

i've read somewhere that being overweight lowers the libido for men, from a purely physical side. fat stores estrogen, estrogen lowers libido. pretty simple, really.

now, the problem is two-fold. for starters, we have totally different libidos anyway. if i could, i'd have sex twice every day. at least. i love sex. it's one of the nicest things you can do with the person you love. he's fine with sex once every two weeks. or less. he thinks cuddling is much more important for a relationship anyway. i love that cuddling, it's great, but i wish he wanted me. longed for me.

eff. this hurts.

limboland.

it's been a bit weird this past week. i miss bikram and the bikram bruises and the bliss and i miss the bf and i miss time to move. i feel good and skinny, but for the first half of the week, quite likely due to constipation and some serious water retention (from the heat? the lack of sweating? the sitting at work?), on my wednesday weigh-in day, i weighed a kilo more than before i headed off to the bf. right now, the scale is showing a 75 before the comma, so no need to panic as of yet. i have been eating lots though, kinda continueing the eating i did at the bfs where i was sweating my ass off once for 90 minutes every day, and i am hungry, tired and bored. didn't go proper grocery shopping until saturday, really. not too awesome.

after an enjoyable drinking binge (3 radlers, 2 g&ts) on friday night with some friends, i've basically slept all weekend, made myself good meals and got my hair cut. am feeling better already, apart from the feeling i get looking at my wrecked appartment, which i totally need to clean up at little tonight. or a lot, actually. i didn't really feel particularly in control of my life this week.

one of my major motivations fell through this week, too. i'd been kinda goaling towards weighing 70kg in early november, when a friend was supposed to visit (to wow him and all), and this week, his trip overseas was postponed till next spring. i guess it's nice to have more time to look hot, but still. bit of a bummer.

oh well. my goals for this coming week:

• eating 16 points every day (saving 4 every day);
  
• eating breakfast at work every day, preferrably veges or fruit;
  
• drinking enough water;
  
• taking my vitamin every morning at my desk; and
  
• finally doing turbo jam.

go me!

bikram bliss.

i've been on holidays at the bfs place the past five days: sleeping, cooking and going to bikram class every day. and i feel so very very good. i've been meaning to write about class every day, but the bf scowls every time i get out the computer, so i didn't.

it's been challenging and fun, these first five days of my cutesy little ten day challenge so far. no soreness, just lots of improvement in my poses. nothing much happening in standing head to knee (even though i've been getting better at that lamppost-no-knee-feeling), but my cobra series, locust and floor bow have gotten much better (i finally "rise up"), in standing seperate knee standing pose i regularly get my forehead on the floor, i no longer freak out in camel (or at least tolerate the freakout well) and in standing bow, i can go higher and hold longer. i still get high afterwards, too. plus i've got bruises on my left hip (from floor bow) and right foot (from hero's pose).

and i feel skinny.

which is weirding me out, big time, because i am NOT skinny, just skinnier. i like my stomach again, and my thights have definitel lost wobble and gained definition. i've doubtlessly lost some weight this past week, even though the boyfriends scale (which is of the unrealiable kind) tells me i weight 76kg. which doesn't freak me out at all. my clothes are so very loose and i love looking at my battered, stretchmarked body. i take up less space now. and i love it.

it, the feeling. and the body, too.

my eating has been a bit warped though: not much during the day (because of yoga) and large dinners with the boy, mostly healthy though. we'll be buying pizza however, tonight. my first pizza in six months or something. how odd.

oh well. i'm happy right now. very very happy. i wish i could do bikram every single day. i will, next year, once i move here. can't wait.

54,32%

i'm halfway there. no, closer even. this morning, the scale showed 76,1kg. i've lost 54,32% of my intended loss, as my awesome dietgirl spreadsheet tells me). the silly ticker at the bottom of this page is ever so slightly off center to the right.

i'm kinda impressed.

i know this weight. i've been here before, for years, even. i'm back to being me. if i had to, i could stay at this weight and be reasonably happy with it. but i am losing and will be losing further. and i'm a little bit shocked, and all. how can this be so easy? why did nobody effing tell me? 17 weeks of weight watchers, and poof, almost my entire weight gain of two years of slobbiness is gone. wow.

my fear of this loss being caused by the synthroid (a too high dose, obviously) was unfounded, by the way. had a blood check this past week, and my gp actually upped my dose further, to 100mg. i expect my metabolism to love this.

my gp was rather funny, btw. i thanked him for commenting on my weight gain when i saw him in the spring, and told him about joining weight watchers right away back then, and he kept saying "and i started you on synthroid", as if i hadn't been involved in this. but he was quite happy about the change and kept telling me that the change was very obvious. and my blood test results were all good as well. my cholesterol was decent and my other blood fats improved as well. happy days.

and all this comes after a gluttonous weekend at my boyfriends parents' house. i ate lemon cake. lots and lots and lots of lemon cake. not just, because it was good, but because i was all pmsy. and yet, there is this lovely loss of 1,5kg in a week. woah. i shouldn't be surprised that all my clothes fit differently now.

i'll buy some jeans soon. nice, tight jeans. yay.

look at me.

i've climbed over the brickwall: i'm over the weight hump that entertained me these past three weeks or so. back to losing. it feels great. i'm in the middle of 77kg now. close to my halfway goal.

the weirdest thing of all: i feel so frickin' skinny already (even though i am clearly not). which has made me buying clothes. like crazy. and kinda above my means for this month. not that many, truth be told, that hummel dress i bought a few weeks ago, two shirt dresses at h&m (in size 40/10! not sure whether wearing them with leggings makes me look like i forgot my pants...), some tops, some loungewear at tchibo (i'm cheap like that) and some things on etsy, including a shirt that had me at a loss as to what size i should get. next month, i'll need to buy some jeans, because they are all getting ridiculously loose and make me feel crappy. i can't get over all this change: a skirt i bought in early june and that hit right at my waist is now hanging on my hips. it's a great feeling. intoxicating, even.

what's odd though: no one has noticed it yet. or commented on it, rather, which feeds my illusion that maybe this isn't really happening. well, no one besides my mom has commented, who doesn't really count. are they worried about commenting (which would be nice, i guess), or do people who see me every day just not pick up on that hefty change? or maybe people just don't look that closely at other people's bodies to start with. or only notice sudden, dramatic change. but then: isn't this sudden? and dramatic?

oh well. it's all good the way it is. i'm noticing, that's the most important thing.

getting enraged about things not worth getting enraged about.

weight watchers lost my weight data. yeah, i'm to blame, in part at least. they cancelled my account after unsuccessfully trying to take money off my bank account and failing. i contacted customer service as soon as i noticed it had happened to avoid cancellation, yet they still cancelled it, four days after me being in touch. customer service told me to join with the similar name again, so i did, and all my other data, my whole freaking points diary, is still there, but my weight loss graph plus all the stupid stars? gone. and i can't add weights for a time frame "before i was a member". the site tells me my new 10% goal is 70,5kg. at which point i'll have lost close to 20kg. or 20% of my starting weight. assholes.

if they can't fix this, i will never get to see that "25kg" star i'm striving for. and bizzarely enough, i want that stupid star, even though i know that it doesn't really matter. i'm kinda angry right now. more angry than i should be.

i'm also still angry about my stupid scale. i've been stepping on and off for the hour that i've been awake, hoping for a lower number, yet i'm still stuck with most of that extra kilo the new batteries gave me. haha.

gah.

in non-enraged news, i had an awesome long weekend at the boyfriends place. with some going out, some sleeping in and a lot of bikram. i went to bikram class on saturday, completely collapsed, spend all day sunday at the bikram seminar getting my ass seriously kicked for eight hours of seminar and two hours of the hardest bikram class i've ever been to (and loving it) and had a fantastic class on monday, during which i even managed to stretch my leg in "stading head to knee" and didn't take any breaks. i don't think i've felt this at home in my body in ages.

i'll be at the boyfriends' place for nine days at the end of the month, a time when we wanted to holiday together, but when he now needs to work, so i'm planning on going to class every single day. my very own one third of a thirty day challenge or so.

in non rage, non bikram news, i bought an adorable weird sportsweary type dress at hummel. in size m. which is a little too tight ass wise, but size l was way too large chest wise. i'll shrink into it and wear it with leggings, which i would have done any way. no matter what the scale says when i step on it right now (after going to the loo one last time) for todays official weight-in.


[edited to add: after another bathroom trip (finally not constipated anymore, haha!) 78,3kg. same as at last weeks' weigh-in with the old batteries. so i lost that scale weight, even if nothing tells me i did. at least something. and what all that freaking obsession about the scale is all about is something i need to address some other time.]

dear ass, meet brickwall. brickwall, meet ass.

did you know that if you do not lose weight, weight watchers gives you a condescending little message. "it looks like you haven't lost weight this week, did you track your points?". it does this, even if all you've "gained" is 300 grams. weeh. great motivation, that.

it feels like i've hit a brick wall in this effort, nonetheless. with my ass. my ample ass.

first off, i bought new batteries for my scale. and guess what: i'm supposedly heaver today than i was yesterday. great. my paranoia about it was spot on. yesterday, i was 78,3. today i am 79kg. thank you, scale.

secondly, i have a feeling that now i've lost my hypothryrodism weight (who knows when my thyroid gave up, but i'd gladly blame the ten kilos in one year thing on it - my thyroid made me eat all these pringles!). in any way, i have a feeling that this will be harder, much harder from now on. now, that i am on to the real weight. the one i was before.

the past week was shit. first, i was on a team building trip for work that revolved around food, then i visited the parents with the boyfriend. grilling ensued at both occasions. it's a tough thing for vegetarians, pointswise; soy sausages are basically just fat and water (ten poins! like: half a pizza). i made a ww salad for dinner at my rents, and ate lass than i would have before, but way more than i should have. lots of bread. and ice cream. normal ice cream, not sorbet, and i almost fell back into my overeating habits.

since being back, i did okay. stayed within my allotted points and my food rut. maybe i need to mix this up, too, to encourage weight loss. who knows. still haven't started working out. my place is a mess, i am a mess and tired and exhausted in the evenings (because i don't work out, haha). i need to do this.

in any way, this weekend, i'm travelling to see the boy and will go to three bikram classes while i am there, including a full day workshop with a bikram master. that'll make me feel better.

can't wait for the work. and the post-bikram high. i need it.

disconnect.

i'd been feeling so great lately, smug even, about losing all this weight, just like that. a week and a half after wearing my skinny jeans for the first time in months, i can do every skinny-girl-in-training's fave trick: take them off without undoing the button and zipper.

and then i saw some photos someone took of me yesterday.



in one shot, i looked almost pregnant, my stomach pressing against the fabric of one of my fave asphalt coloured t-shirts, a shirt i'd registered in my head as almost too big. in another, i look stocky, dressed in a boxy black long sleeve and the too loose jeans. they are horrible, these pics. i hate that i look like this. that i still look fat. i'm not unpretty, but fat.

it's a total disconnect: anorexics look in the mirror and think they're fatter than they are. i look into the mirror and think that i am skinnier than i am.

i realised i still have such a long, long way to go with my weight loss, even if i'm almost halfweigh to goal, even if i weigh less than i have in 18 (?) months or so.

it's so odd. i think this disconnect stems from the fact that i ignored my weight for such a long time. for the past three months, i've been tracking my weight, when for ages before that, i never stepped on the scale, ever, for fear of what i'd see. i'm trying to reconstruct what i weighed when, to understand when and how i managed to gain all this weight, and why the hell i let it happen. how the hell did i get here?

it's sketchy, but i have some clues: i know that last august, i weighed about 84kg. from barely filled spreadsheets i created with every diet effort, i gather that the year before, in august 2006, i weighed 74kg. a year before that, after a year of extremely hard workouts and heartache, i was at my skinniest documented weight in recent years, hitting 69kg for a short little while in the fall of 2005. that's where i want to get back to. i liked my body back then.

but yeah, 14kg in three years, plus an extra five. 20kg. that is SO much weight. the possible culprits: my deskbound job, long hours, a complete lack of workouts, an overweight boyfriend, lots of emotional stress and the bakery downstairs from the office.

i still got the job, the long hours, the overweight boyfriend. the bakery is still there, but i've been avoiding it, and it's easy now. once you're out of the cheese roll and muffin-combo ever afternoon-habit, life is better. i have been working on reducing the emotional stress, telling people to get lost, but there have not been any (!) workouts yet. i got a turbojam dvd off ebay a few weeks ago after seeing the scarily awesome results that sundry mourning's linda got from it, but haven't done it once. haven't been to the gym in months, because it's too far from home and work and i am always exhausted after work. the only thing i've been up to is a couple of bikram classes when i'm at the boys', but that's it. but i absolutely need to start working out. otherwise, life will suck royally. because weight watchers now allots me a meagre 20 points, total. which is mean. and likely to drop further. so i need to workout to be able to eat more. and to feel better.

i know i feel so much better (and see results so quickly) when i work out. so why is it so hard to get myself moving?

gah.

in other news, i'm starting to get all paranoid. am i really losing weight? maybe it's just the battery in my scale dying slowly! maybe it's just my thyroid medication! maybe i don't need that medication to start with! maybe, maybe, maybe.

they're so very lame, these selfdoubts.

the skinny jeans.

i fit into my skinny jeans today. mind you, they're not really skinny, they're ultra low rise jeans from the gap in a size 14. not skinny at all. but my skinniest.

had to run some laundry today, so the jeans my boyfriend bought for me in ny in january (which were kinda too large when he got them and out of which i was bursting out of in may) had to go into the wash as well. so i grabbed a pair of jeans i bought in the fall of '06, and which i hadn't worn in at least 8 months, and hadn't comfortably worn for another three months before that. and they fit. really well, too. i wore thema all day without any discomfort. woah.

i shouldn't be that surprised: this morning, the scale showed 79,3 kg, a loss of exactly 10kg. what a shocker. i've got my weigh in tomorrow, a day early, because i'm off on a business trip later tomorrow. i hope that superlow weight wasn't a fluke.

but then, i am working really hard on my weight (how shallow can you get to write a sentence like that?): i aim to eat 17 of my allotted 21 points and have managed that so well. i'm staying away from my usual vices (breads and chocolates) and actually cook meals every night. mostly the same, point-safe meals, but still.

anyway. skinny jeans, yeah.

five more kg down, and i'll buy some new ones. it's a goal.

it works! it works!

i signed up for weight watchers on april 30th, bursting out of my fat jeans and feeling horrid. ten weeks of points counting later and i've lost almost 9kg and can't wear my fat jeans anymore, because they are way too lose. so far, weight watchers works for me, and i'm quite shocked about it. who would have thought that it'd be this easy?

in any way, their forums suck and i need to document this, ha, journey somewhere. hence this blog, which should be irrelevant to anyone but me.

welcome, nontheless.

this morning, the scales showed a 7 as the first number. hooray.