I know many of you were waiting to hear about my experiences on week three of The Beck Diet Solution, but after putting off the entry for longer than it would have taken to complete the first three weeks over again, I realized I have no desire to continue the plan. I think it has some merit, but I don’t want to spend that much time thinking about my weight, my food, and my fitness every week. Not right now, anyway.

Beck burnout seems to have occurred to other people before. It makes me wonder if there is a secret chapter in the middle featuring a wonderful surprise. I heard of a software company that offered a free $100 bill to the first person who actually read their terms of service to find the offer. Dr. Beck might give away free ponies in chapter 32! I’ll never know. If you’re looking for someplace to discuss the book, it looks like Prior Fat Girl has a discussion page set up.

After ditching Beck, I read my One More Time in 2010 post again and thought, “Man, I was really fired up! Did you see how fired up I was?!” That’s all good, but I’ve simmered down from the fireworks and transitioned into a slow burn instead. I am content to do it the slow way, or even the super-slow way. I was listening to the Two Fit Chicks podcast this weekend, and Shauna, aka DietGirl, mentioned that she spent five years reaching her goal weight. That made me stop and look at my iTunes for a few seconds thinking, “If it takes me five years to lose fifty pounds, that’s fine. As long as I keep heading in that general direction, I don’t care how much time it takes.”

Back when I hit 235 pounds in 2006, which is a bit higher than my current weight, but not by much, I wrote:

“I could never lose another pound and I would honestly be happy with my body. Wow. There are girls who look 10 times better than I do who wouldn’t be able to say that.”

And amazingly enough, that’s still true. My current size doesn’t limit my lifestyle. I can buy clothes. I can walk around without getting winded. I probably have a higher risk for diabetes and other obesity-related diseases in the long term, but, well, no one’s perfect and I have to die of something. I’m going to hold the line and slowly push towards a lower weight, but it CANNOT be the sole topic on my mind night and day. And lately, it has been on my mind way more than I’d like for it to be.

When I first lost weight, I was doing it for myself, to make my life better. This go round however, it’s been more about other people. There was a man at my old workplace, Joe Anonymous, who had lost a few hundred pounds via weight loss surgery, but had recently gained back seventy of those pounds. A few of my coworkers and I passed him as he got off the elevator. As soon as the doors closed, one person said, “That was Joe Anonymous. He had weight loss surgery, but he’s gained a lot of weight back.” Immediately, I felt sorry for Joe Anonymous, not just because he’d gained back some weight, but because I doubted we were the first group of people to talk about him in the elevator. He wasn’t morbidly obese anymore; he was much thinner, but evidently not thin enough. I didn’t want people to talk about me that way in elevators, focusing only my body and comparing it to how big or small it’s been before.

The only bad thing about my current weight is all the time I spend thinking about what other people think about my weight. It’s a problem caused only by itself, like a snake eating it’s own tail. It’s a cyclical worry cycle, and I’m getting dizzy spinning around and around in my head all the time. I’ve wasted so many hours worrying about food, the scale, what I ate, what I should eat, and nagging myself to exercise, all because I’m worried people might be disappointed about how big I am if they meet me. Aaaaaaah!! It hasn’t been about about me and my health, it’s been about other people.

That’s why when I’ve gained a few pounds, I freak out a bit and feel like I should do something drastic, because WHAT WILL PEOPLE THINK?! When really, I should just chill out, and get over myself. People don’t think of me half as often as I think they do, and people who judge me on my weight aren’t people I want to like me anyway. I should just get my slow burn on and take care of myself for my own sake, not because I want people I don’t know to like me. It’s so easy to make up a reason that I should be ashamed of my weight. At my thinnest, I worried I was still fat. Now that I’m fatter, I worry that I’m not thin. It’s got to stop. There’s no way to win.

Lately, I feel like I’ve been running for mayor of Crazytown. I’d really like to retract my bid for that office because I don’t want to fritter my life away worrying, especially worrying about what people think of me. I don’t want to get ginormous again either, so I’ll always have to monitor my weight to some extent. I wish I could magically maintain my weight without thought or effort, but that’s not going to happen. I’d like to find a happy medium where I’m spending some time thinking about my healthy living habits, but not so much that I wind myself up over it or feel like I have to justify my choices to the rest of the world. I would like my weight to be between me and myself, not me and the world, but I also know it’s my own damn fault for writing a book and a blog about it.

Which is all to say, The Beck Diet Solution isn’t the solution to my problems right now. Chilling out and getting over myself, probably is. If I lose weight, it has to be for me, not for you. You can talk about that in the elevator if you want to.

I was cleaning out my desk a couple months ago when I found a list of goals I’d written six years ago. Usually it is embarrassing to find lists like those because I either haven’t accomplished anything on the list or I realize I used to want some pretty lame things. In high school, I had to write a letter to my future self and an inordinately large segment of it was devoted to wondering whether Mulder and Scully would have gotten together on The X-Files by the time I read it five years later. The funny thing? I can’t remember if they ever did.

I think I shredded the goal list I found, along with all my credit card statements going back to the 90′s, (must declutter!), so I can’t type it for you verbatim. However, item number one was (of course) “Lose weight.” Cool! Mission accomplished. The next item was something like, “Start a writing project.” Score again! I write on this blog all the time. I was really rolling. Third item, “Get a scholarship.” Oops. Probably should have done that before I graduated. Too late now. Fourth item, “Get an apartment.” Signing a rent check every month is kind of depressing, but if it makes me a success goal-wise, it’s worth every penny. Fifth item, “Visit Europe.” Still haven’t done this, but because of the blog (see goal number 2), I now know several people to crash with if I ever do go.

I was amazed. I’d accomplished almost everything on my list. This was unprecedented. For once, I was someone with accomplishments and not just potential. It made me feel really good about myself, and it made me realize that’s a key to building self-esteem – you have to do things for yourself. Everyone wants to love themselves, but it’s tricky figuring out how to do that outside of an adult toy shop. Everyone wants to like themselves, but it’s not something you can buy. It’s not listed on the credit card statements I was shredding. I get e-mails sometimes for people wanting to know how you build that self-respect. Well, you have to make yourself into someone you respect.

When asked, most people will say they are nice. Buy how do you know if someone is nice? The guy who held the elevator for me even though I was halfway down the hallway, he was pretty nice. And my mom sent me a Valentine’s Day card even though I’m an ungrateful daughter who couldn’t get off her ass to the Hallmark store in time to do the same. That was nice. And someone let me into the right lane of traffic on the snowy ride home this evening, even though he could have been an asshole and blocked me out. That was nice. These people are nice because they did nice things.

So, if you want self-esteem, you need to do things that earn your esteem. Figure out what kind of person you want to be. Then figure out what kind of things that person does. Then start doing them. Eureka! Self-esteem! Okay, it might not be that easy, just like eating less and exercising more isn’t all that easy. But the basic philosophy is true. You might want to think of yourself as a nice person, but if you haven’t actually done anything nice lately, are you really nice? And you may want high self-esteem, but have you actually done anything lately that you hold in high esteem?

“Does it get boring working the same job for that long?” I asked.

“YES!”

“Oh God, yes.”

The other just nodded.

These weren’t the reactions I wanted to hear, but at least they were honest. Everyone agreed that they liked their jobs and the companies they worked for, but even the best job had spurts of boredom. Healthy living can be like a job. It certainly is a lot of work. Recently I started to get bored with it, so to get back into it I decided to make things interesting and fun again.

Something new…and shiny

First off, I decided I needed something new, so I got a two-week trial membership at the fancy ladies gym. It’s small enough that the receptionist knows who you are, which was a nice bit of accountability. If I stopped going, I’m sure Sharon would know I’m slacking off! I got a trainer to show me some of the equipment, so I was able to do new exercises. I went there before work, did the circuit on their shiny machines and ran on the treadmills while watching the fancy flatscreen TVs. Then I used their showers which were also shiny and clean, and not scary and possibly covered in mold like the ones at the downtown YMCA.

I kind of fell in love with the fancy ladies gym and was thinking of asking it to go steady. However, the fancy ladies gym is several miles away from my house, and we all know long-distance relationships rarely work out. While I was gung-ho about exercising this month, a couple months from now I doubt I would be able to drag myself all the way over there, especially when I drive right past the fancy YMCA to get there. So, while I would highly recommend the fancy ladies gym to anyone who asks, I took my YMCA membership off hold and I’ve been going back there. Except now I use the weight machines because the trainer showed me how.

Something practical

I finally bought a bike the same day I started the ladies gym trial. That’s because bike riding is fun and it’s been much easier to convince myself to go for a bike ride down the canal than to just run 2 miles for the heck of it. I’m much more likely to get my ass moving if my movement has a purpose, like picking up Avenue Q tickets, getting books from the library, or getting quarters at the bank for laundry. I couldn’t accomplish all these tasks on foot, but now with Bluebell, I’m back in the saddle, literally.

Something fun

I have friends who want to lose weight too! I have walked with these friends at lunch by the canal. I have run with one and her boyfriend’s brother, who is a kinesthesiologist who understands stuff like ATP and how to properly stretch. I’m going biking with another friend up and down the trail later this week. Exercise is more fun when it’s done with friends. Or maybe you just spread out the misery?

Nothing full of calories

As for eating, I already know what is good for me to eat and now I’m making an effort to actually eat that stuff instead of donuts. The tricky thing with maintenance is that you can get away with eating more crap, but it’s hard to figure out how much crap until your pants get tighter. I’m not going totally zero-tolerance on sweets and cookies because I think that’s futile and bound to backfire in a binge. But I’m not going to buy any cookies myself. They have plenty of that stuff at the office. So my rule is it’s okay to eat a cookie or a bagel if I’m leaving for the day. That way I know I won’t come back for seconds, which I would feel compelled to do like a carb zombie if I were still in the same room as the food.

I’ve already lost several pounds. I’m hoping to average a loss of one pound a week. The holidays are coming up, so that will be…interesting. The biggest difference is that I really care now, which I didn’t before. That will hopefully propel me forward so I can get back to my happy weight.

There is a box of clothes on my closet floor labeled, “Fat clothes (in case of emergency)” which is slightly less full than it was two weeks ago. Sound the sirens and alert the diet police because this is most definitely an emergency.

I stepped on the scale two weeks ago and a scary number appeared in the window, like a gremlin peering in. Aaah! It wasn’t so much a surprise as an inevitability, considering that I’d stopped exercising for three weeks are started eating whatever the hell I wanted. Oh, the cashiers at Kroger could tell some tales! Let it be known that I have discovered the secret to weight gain: eat more, move less.

I was sick of exercising. I was sick of eating salad. I was sick of seeing everyone eat donuts at meetings while I was eating carrot sticks. I resented how much time exercise took, leaving no time to work on my blog redesign. And most of all I was bored. Bored with Pilates. Bored with running. Bored with lifting weights. Bored, bored, bored. I’d done it all before and it had lost its mystery, just like my new kitten is fascinated every time I flush the toilet, but my seven-year-old cat is so over the wonders of indoor plumbing that he can’t be bothered to roll his eyes in boredom. All I could think was, “Running? Again? Seriously?”

And beyond all that, I started not to care. My book promotions were basically over, so I didn’t have to worry about looking like a bean bag chair on television. I’m happy with my body when I weigh about 180 pounds, so I didn’t feel a need to lose any more weight. So I went to BlogHer and I ate a lot of cookies. And I went to New York and I ate a lot of ice cream. And I went to the state fair and I ate a lot of deep-fried everything. And then I came home and sat in front of the computer, burning very few calories by typing.

I saw the weight slowly creeping up on the scale and in the fit of my clothes, but I didn’t say anything on the blog because then I would be expected to do something about it, which would have greatly interfered with my plan to eat a pint of ice cream in the Fresh Market parking lot after a stressful day at work. I still didn’t care all that much, even though my pants were one size larger and my face was a little rounder.

Then my pants got really tight and I had to move up two sizes larger than my skinniest size. I stepped on the scale and saw scarier and scarier numbers. Then I was lying in bed and heard my heartbeat as I rested my ear against the pillow. I counted and noticed that it was beating over 60 beats per minute. This above all things pissed me off, more than the pants and more than the scale. My resting heart rate had previously been a rather freakish 40-45 beats per minutes, which is very low and typical only in athletes. When I would visit the doctor’s office, the nurses always commented on my low pulse. It made me proud because it was proof that I was in shape. I was an athlete. But now my heart was beating faster, which meant it wasn’t quite as strong because I hadn’t been exercising it.

And suddenly all that apathy I’d been swimming in got sucked out with the tide and I started to care again. A LOT. Because while I expect my weight to fluctuate slightly up and down for the rest of my life, ultimately there has to be a line. This is the line. I promised not to buy new pants, and I’ve stuck to that promise, though via a loophole since I’m wearing old, larger pants instead of buying new ones. I can’t get any fatter. It’s rather amazing how quickly I gained back weight. It happened at a rate of over a pound a week, as if I was an actress preparing to play Bridget Jones. I didn’t even do it on purpose.

For the past two weeks I’ve been getting my ass back in gear again, working on ways to lose this weight I’ve gained. I’m not going to say how much because I’m sick of weighing in each month. I will say it’s between 10-20 pounds and I am going to mention that it happened. I’ve always thought it was bullshit when people stopped blogging when they gained weight. It happens to everyone. It’s why weight maintenance is so hard. There’s no sense in not talking about it. I’m not ashamed that I like to eat donuts. Granted, I tend to wait until I’m back on the straight and narrow before I mention any gains, but oh well, I ain’t perfect. That’s why this is a blog and not a 24/7 objective window into my life.

I’ll talk about everything I’ve been doing to lose weight again in my next entry. But now I should go shower because I’m all sweaty from running.

Lately, that list has become my grocery list. I was doing really well for a week and then, holy shit, I found myself plowing through the fridge at 11 o’clock at night, stirring peanut butter into ricotta cheese just because I wanted to eat SOMETHING. The next day I gave a coworker a ride home and was relieved I hadn’t left any embarrassing music in the CD player, but was less happy that the Krispy Kreme bag from breakfast was lying on the passenger’s side floor. I felt like I’d left a used syringe on the top of the trash, me, the poster girl for weight loss (literally, I have posters) who drank 400 calories of chocolate milk for lunch last week.

Some days I’ve been doing really well and some days it’s been so out of control I’ve felt like there must be something very, very, wrong with my brain. Like, perhaps my never-ending headache has screwed up my brain chemicals in ways I don’t understand and led me down a spiral of compulsive overeating. I’ve been hesitant to blog about this because the book changed things. I didn’t want it to, but it did. It’s a lot harder to be honest about my struggles when I’ve got a book out there with me standing in one leg of my fat pants on the cover.

How might it affect publicity if I admit that I’ve gained 10 pounds? I don’t know. Maybe somebody thinking about doing a story about my book will come here, read this and decide I am not worthy of their air-time and I’ll miss a big sales opportunity. I like to be honest about my struggles, but the simple message of a success story seems like a much easier sell than the complex “I’ve lost a lot of weight but still constantly struggle and will probably always be fucked up around food” story that is the reality.

It’s terribly ironic that at least 5 of those pounds are due to the stress of promoting a weight-loss memoir. The rest I refer to as my “mi-gain,” the weight I’ve gained due to my never-ending headache. But I figure, screw it, I’m not perfect and you’ll all be far less disappointed if I don’t pretend I am. I’m probably being far too hard on myself anyway. I’m nowhere near morbidly obese again, and I could go run a 5K after I finish writing this blog entry, which is more than a lot of skinny people can do. However, I’ve got to stop eating like I have been or else those things will cease to be true. And I REFUSE to buy new pants. I WILL NOT GO BACK TO LANE BRYANT. That bitch is dead to me.

So, Saturday was another fresh start, a day for healthy eating and definitely not donuts. It is disgustingly optimistic of me to say this, but I truly believe you can always start over tomorrow. Even if you eat a half-gallon of ice cream and a loaf of banana bread on Friday night, you can start fresh on Saturday. It is never too late to lose weight. Of course, I tried to be healthy by trying this new muesli-meth mix, but found myself craving it in the evening, so I reached for my desk drawer to indulge my other compulsive habit instead – gum chewing – only to discover – OH MY GOD! I was out of gum! I cannot remember a nanosecond in the past two years that I have been without gum. Ever since my dentist told me chewing gum with Xylitol would help prevent tooth decay, I’ve used it as an excuse to have breath so minty fresh that it would rival a Scope spokesman. (And no, I don’t think the gum chewing is causing the headache, so shut up.)

No gum. Crazy mad cravings. I ate too much muesli. I felt bad. “It’s OK,” I said. “You can make it up tomorrow,” I said, even though I haven’t been doing that lately. “I’ll buy some salad tomorrow and then…OH MY GOD! IT IS NOT OK! It is every letter in the alphabet except O and K! Your pants are tight. Your clothes feel uncomfortable. And you’re speaking at a blogging convention in a month in front of a couple hundred of people! You cannot gain any more weight! This. Must. End!”

So I went for a walk.

Thankfully, it was June 21, the longest day of the year and I think the sun set at midnight. I was able to walk almost 3 miles, and though I don’t have a calorie counter handy I think it worked off the extra muesli, which is now stored in the trunk of my car. (I was going to throw it out, but it is just too good to trash, oh sweet poison.) I don’t want to develop some anal habit where I am compelled to exercise off every extra calorie I eat, but I’m so glad I went for that walk. It made me feel a little bit more in control of my life, and my illness has made me feel anything but in control. It also does good things to my brain chemicals, making me feel a bit happier and less binge-tastic.

And it was a beautiful day. There was mist rising from the sidewalk as the sun evaporated puddles from the recent summer storm. Young couples were holding hands. Old couples were holding hands. Disaffected goth teens were smoking by the canal and I’m sure if I’d taken a photo they would all laugh at what they were wearing and how cool they thought they were in 10 years. I felt like I was part of my community and it reminded me of how much I just like walking. I’ve been doing a lot of running lately, but walking is perfectly good exercise too. You don’t burn as much energy as fast, but it’s calming in a different way and it’s less painful. I think I’m going to try to do more walking, maybe around town at lunch, and definitely AWAY from the food in my kitchen.

I know some women (and men) have spent their whole lives gaining and losing 10 pounds, but it’s something I’ve only been doing for the past year. Before then I just kept gaining 10 pounds and gaining 10 pounds and gaining 10 pounds and oh, lookie there, I weighed almost 400 pounds. It definitely requires a different mindset than the one I had when I blasted off 200 pounds at once. I’ll probably write more about that in detail later, but these past 6 months or so have definitely been the hardest for me. I haven’t been as hardcore about health and fitness. There’s been slippage, slowly, slowly, slowly, eating out more, not exercising quite as much and IT MUST STOP. So, I’m going to be stricter, probably do phase 1 of South Beach again, and there will be lots of walking, because there will NOT be new pants.

The lyrics are:

My buddy (my buddy), my buddy (my buddy),

Wherever I go, he goes

My buddy (my buddy), my buddy (my buddy),

My buddy and me

Only I change the lyrics to:

My headache (my headache), my headache (my headache),

Wherever I go, it goes

My headache (my headache), my headache (my headache),

My headache and me

Remember that headache I had back in March? The one I thought had gone away? Well, it eased up for awhile there, but it never really went away. Which means I’ve been in pain 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, ever since February 18th, 2008. (I still have a scar from that monster zit too.) I ran my half-marathon with my headache. I went to my book release party with my headache. I appeared on TV with my headache. I toured New York with my headache. *sing song* My headache and me!

It hasn’t been a series of headaches, just one never-ending headache that will not go away. (Like Iraq, or the presidential primary.) I’ve been doing a lot of reading on headaches, and mine is best described as a chronic tension-type headache. I feel a constant pressure or tightening around my forehead, behind my nose, and around my cheeks. Some days it’s pretty tolerable and I’m able to do the dishes and live a semblance of a normal life. Some days it’s really bad and all I can do is watch streaming movies from Netflix on my laptop in bed.

I decided not to talk about my headache here for several reasons. My medical issues seemed to be a topic to keep in the “Do not blog about” circle of my personal Venn diagram. When I did talk about the headache months ago, I got tired of people diagnosing me with everything from lupus to a dead twin in my forehead. I also wanted to have fun with my book release in May. I didn’t want people to feel sorry for me and I didn’t want it to be a topic of conversation during all the talking I’ve been doing. As a natural introvert, I’ve learned how to put on a fake, extroverted exterior when the situation demands it. I’m sure many people in my life have had no idea that I’ve been constantly suffering since the end of February – except for the select few who have been kind enough to listen to my bitching and occasional crying on the telephone. Other than that, I’ve kept it between me and my neurologist. (Yes, I have a neurologist now!)

However, dealing with this headache has become such a gigantic part of my life that it’s starting to get weird not blogging about it. It’s like Godzilla has come to town, cutting a swath of destruction through my life, and I’m blogging about how nice the weather is. It’s getting to a point where it’s affecting my weight too, so I may as well come clean before the horrifying weigh-in at the end of the month. Blogging about my weight loss issues seemed to help me lose weight, so perhaps blogging about my chronic pain will help me manage that as well.

Tomorrow, I’m going to go over all the treatments I’ve tried, all the treatments that are still on the list to try, possible causes I’ve considered and all the tests I’ve taken (sadly none of which involved filling in bubbles on a Scantron sheet, which I kind of enjoy). So, please, please, PLEASE, DEAR GOD, PLEASE!!! hold off on diagnosing me with anything or recommending any treatments for me until that post tomorrow. It is a long, looooooooong, post and if I tacked it onto this entry your monitor would not have enough pixels to display it. The day after that I’ll blog about all the ways this headache is destroying the lovely life I have spent so many years building. My headache: A three-part series.

Also, from now on we can just consider this my health/fitness/chronic pain management blog, because really, they’re all linked.

Lately, a couple of people have asked me how I’ve managed to hold down a full time job, maintain a blog, promote that thing I’m promoting (that you’re probably sick of hearing about), and keep up a diet and fitness regimen. The answer is: not very well! I’ve been spending so much time running around telling people about all the running I’m doing that I haven’t had much time to do all that running I’m telling people I’m doing. Also, during the last month of half-marathon training, I stopped doing Pilates and weight-lifting regularly to find the time to complete those 45-minute training runs during the middle of the week. In the past two weeks, I’ve only gone out to exercise three times, which is totally unacceptable. I haven’t been this lazy about exercise since before I started losing weight over three years ago. The net result: I’ve gone up one jean size and three miles suddenly seems like a lot longer to run.

Strangely, my weight has only gone up a couple pounds, but I suspect I’ve lost muscle mass and gained fat, so I’m a fatter 180-something than I was a couple months ago. I still have to remind myself that 5 pounds actually is a lot of weight to gain and can change your clothing size. When I was morbidly obese, losing 5 pounds had basically no effect on my size and appearance, but now that I’m smaller it’s not insignificant. I keep forgetting that.

What I’ve realized is that there really are a finite number of things that you can accomplish in a day, no matter how hard you work. And the way I’ve been living my life recently is not sustainable if I want to keep the weight off. Thankfully, things are starting to let up a little in my schedule, so I can start going to classes at the YMCA and doing my exercise DVDs again.

I’ve always heard that maintenance is harder than weight loss, and I’d have to agree with that sentiment. You have to earn a healthy body every day and if I keep slacking off like I have been I’m just going to get fat again. I view my relationship with my body like any relationship – it takes work to keep things fresh. I’ve got to work to keep the spark there and keep things interesting. So, I’m going to look for a 5K to sign up for and work towards setting a new personal record. And when I have some time in a week and a half, I’m going to start shopping for a new bike. (BTW, the winner of the Lipton Tea bike contest has already been contacted and confirmed her information. Congrats, Christy!)

I know sometimes people can be hesitant to admit their struggles or gains on weight-loss blogs. I mean, the point of the blog is to lose weight, not gain it, right? But I don’t think anyone just loses the pounds and then gets the same exact number on the scale every day after that. There are always fluctuations and there will always be forces trying to pull my weight up higher again. The name of this blog isn’t “How skinny can I get?” or “How I lost weight and never struggled again” or “How can I pretend to be perfect?” It’s called “Half of Me” and I always try to keep it true to what is going on with the half of me that’s left. So that’s the situation and that’s the plan and grrrrrr I’m ready to knock off a couple pounds again. I’m sure it won’t be the last time I’ll have to do it.

The odd thing about weight loss is that if you gain back the weight, people act like you never lost it at all. They pretend everyone had a mass delusion and all that time you spent on the treadmill never happened, no matter how worn down your running shoes are. Last year the Indianapolis Colts won the Superbowl. This year, they did not. However, no one raided their houses and took back their Superbowl rings. We still had that parade in below-freezing weather last year. Even if those players never play football again, they will always be able to say they were Superbowl winners. No matter what happens with my weight, I did at one point in my life lose 200 pounds. Even if I were to gain it all back, it doesn’t undo the fact that I lost 200 pounds. It happened. It shouldn’t be any less of an accomplishment if I one day stop running half-marathons and start eating lots of Cheetos. I hope that never happens. I’d like to stay thin, healthy and happy for the rest of my life and will do my best to stay so.

However, when I step on the scale and see that I’ve gained some weight, it isn’t pleasant. But at least I’ve got a blog entry to post if that ever happens again.

Except for the part with the three pints of ice cream.

Don’t worry, I didn’t eat them all in one night. I still have some restraint. But when I stare into the vortex of uncertainty, I like to imagine the swirling vortex is a chocolate marshmallow Pinwheel cookie and then I devour it whole. Twelve times.

I’ve read a lot of blogs over the years and I’ve always felt bad for the bloggers who gain weight when their life takes an unexpected turn – be it divorce or unemployment or moving. I’ve read along and sympathized, but secretly I was glad it wasn’t me and that stress-eating happened to other people. I told them to knock it off and that eating cookies would not solve their problems. For the most part I believe that, but honestly, the cookies did help a little. So did the ice cream. They made me feel good for several minutes when I wasn’t feeling all that good.

They did not solve my problems, though. Ultimately they could have caused more problems if my pants had stopped fitting. I was amazed that my jeans could go from being a little loose to being a little tight in just the course of a week. I’d never really dedicated myself to hardcore stress eating like that any time in the past few years. But I wanted to do the “wrong” thing because I’ve done the “right” thing for so long. As much as I like that I can run and skip and jump, I have to admit I really like eating too. It’s fun. It’s almost a hobby. When I was pigging out, I knew I was making bad choices, but I didn’t care. I always tell stressed out people not to overeat, but it’s much easier to tell someone to drop the chocolate bar when you are not personally worried and anxious. I always seem to forget how stressful stress is. The word “stress” is so overused that the actual impact of the feeling gets detached from the word.

My time of stress also coincided with my cold, so I felt like the weight I lost due to illness was a gift card from my body redeemable for ten pounds of bad eating. Only, I really need to stop now. Hear that, self? Stop with the overeating, already! The stress is gone and while your life is slightly different now, you don’t need to be buying candy bars at Walgreens in the middle of the night. I need to take up knitting or something to keep me busy in the evenings when I have an urge to eat everything in sight. I need to stop buying binge foods like cereal and breads. I need to get back into my humdrum, health and fitness routine. Everything was working fine before! Why can’t we go back to before? Life was so groovy then and I had my own happy theme song playing on an infinite loop.

But sometimes life changes. Or your theme song gets switched. It just does. Your average day today is not going to be your average day fifty years from now. You have to roll with it and make healthy living a part of your life no matter what. I have the advantage that I know what to do to lose weight, I just have to do it. I must adapt to survive. And having three pounds of pumpkin puree in your freezer is not an excuse to eat an entire pumpkin cheesecake. Well, it’s an excuse, just not a good one. I suppose this is just part of the never-ending battle, sometimes you lose, sometimes you win, but you just have to keep fighting even when your sword looks like a cake knife.