Breakfast : 1 Bowl of organic Toasty O’s with unsweetened Almond Milk. 1 Cup of Jasmine Earl grey.
Snack : Just Green Honest Tea and 1 organic orange.
Lunch : 3 pieces of Fennel and seed crackers with munster cheese and roasted red pepper veggies.
Dinner : Spinach mushroom and veggie wraps with salsa. Kale and Caprice salad. Two slices of dried apples for desert.
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A year ago was a really strange time for me. I believe graduating and moving home really threw me for a loop. I ended a relationship and needed something to focus on but I think the problem was there even before that. I went to my boyfriends house for christmas, that night when his mom posted pictures, I was horrified. I swore up and down to myself that I would NEVER get the freshman 15, much less the 5 years in college 10 to 20. In the pictures sat a 155lb girl going way too close to 160 and never even noticing it.
Mind you I am 5’10 and a half ;] but I had never been so big in my life and I had also never been so uncomfortable. Apparently the average weight for a woman in the US is 160 now, and I find this very easy to believe, no I wasn’t obese or really “Fat” but I didn’t feel right in my skin and the lifestyle I had tried so hard for, just wasn’t working. Sure, drinking every night didn’t help, nor did thinking that if I ate fast food, Sonic 6 times a week was “better than McDonalds.” Sure I was making conscious choices, just not really the right ones.
After I saw those pictures things just kinda clicked. For lent I gave up beer and candy. 40 days of fasting from something I loved and something I just didn’t need. I noticed after those 40 days I was becoming pickier, more aware of what I was eating and drinking. Even if I was just replacing Beer with Jack Daniels and Diet coke, they were drastic changes for my body, at least in the caloric sense. I ate less at meals, didn’t put everything on my plate and if I was eating out I kept it simple, grilled chicken was safe as well as salads and other un-fried items. The biggest obstacle for me was coming home after a night and a few drinks and NOT raiding the kitchen for junk food just to settle my stomach. I didn’t really eat these bad things before, but I would eat the entire grilled chicken breast AND the side salad, the rolls that came before then wash it down with a pint or two. Then at night when I was 4 sheets to the wind I would scavenge for frozen pizzas and things I would never eat if I were sober. When the 40 days were over I had one beer, but kept with my liquor diet when I did drink and remained picky.
By April and may things had really paid off, I was down to 140 and I felt so much better, in my skin and in my clothes, just…better. I’ve never had an “eating problem” per say but every bite of food I do or don’t eat is in my brain, it eats at me. I think about it, I dwell on it I downright obsess on it. I used to INSIST on eating 3 meals a day, all large and eventfull, I would think about when my next meal was going to take place, how I was going to make time for it and even what I would not be eating. Around May I just stopped caring. I didn’t think about food, if I forgot a meal, no biggie, I ate when I felt hungry and lived by driving to the grocery store to get just what I needed for that particular meal. I kept almost NO food in the house with the exception of Oranges and Goldfish and drank tea constantly. Now I’m not saying this was healthy at all, I was going through a breakup and was just looking for things to distract me, I would go work out at the gym for hours, eat a hand full of goldfish and just be on my way.
When I weighed myself in June/July I was at 132 , the thinnest I have been since probably middle school and frankly, the happiest. Clothes fit, I didn’t suck in my stomach anymore or press my wrist and elbow to my hip bones to make sure I hadn’t grown any since the last time I checked. I didn’t change 20 times because my stomach pouched out just a little in a tight shirt and I just walked/lounged/jumped around the beach with my swimsuit completely confident and carefree. I spent the month before I moved into my apartment just putting on old clothes, I was so excited that all this stuff fit and felt amazing.
Skipping to now, 135, i’ve mostly maintained my weight but I feel like everything has changed. I have started thinking again, a million times a day I am thinking about food, how many calories, where it came from, what is in it, ect. I keep wanting to get into some sort of nutrition field so maybe I can understand my obsession a little more. I work out every few days but I want to go more. I want to feel good in my clothes again, not suck it in, not constantly check my stomach just because I feel like it’s protruding constantly. I want to just NOT think and eat just the half of sandwich instead of the whole, or say no to that glass of beer even though I REALLY want it. I want to be once again comfortable with myself and my skin.
Sorry for the rant. More later I guess. I just needed to get all of this out, it eats at me and I hate myself for it but my it’s my brain and bad habits are so hard to break.
