I'm thinking of taking the blog down.  No one really reads it, and I barely post to it anymore.  It was a nice outlet while I was going through my post partum depression, and a tool that really helped me heal, if for no other reason then literally getting the negative thoughts organized and laid out to look at.  But that time has passed.  Life is good and while I do enjoy journaling, I don't crave the anonymous people looking at it like I did then.  I don't know what I'll put here, but I think it's just going to be parked for awhile.

Anyway, the reason I'm here today.  I'm sabotaging myself.  I know it.  I know it as I'm doing it.  I don't know why.  And I don't know how to stop.  I hit a new weight loss low the other day, 187.  That's seven pounds away from where I was when I got pregnant with Spencer and 17 pounds away from my low when I was losing before having kids.  I was so proud of myself, so happy with the way my clothes fit.  So excited to move my little X on the weight loss message boards to show another milestone met.  It happened because I got sick and couldn't eat for a couple of days.  Which is not the way to healthy, sustainable weight loss, blah, blah, but it happens and I'll take any possible benefit from feeling like utter hell for 2.5 days.  That was Wednesday morning.  Since then, I've over eaten and made very poor choice every single day.  Eating food that I don't even really want, eating to the point of being in abdominal pain, eating to the point of getting sick.  Part of it was pms, and I've noticed that for the few days preceding my monthly cycle I'm am absolutely ravenous.  But I didn't even try to reign it in, I just ran with it and ate and ate.

Hunger is a part of losing weight.  A nutritionist would probably want my head on a platter for that statement, but I spent a decade never being hungry, never even having the chance to get hunger, constantly eating my stomach had a chance to empty out.  So, for me, I need to learn that it's okay to be a little hungry, need to accept it as just a feeling alerting me to a problem, like knee pain signaling me to take a rest.  It's not an emotional thing, it's a physical thing.  So I let myself get hungry to learn to separate emotion from physiology.  Like right now, I'm a little hungry, but I'll make dinner in a little over an hour and I can certainly live until then.  It's okay to be hungry and look forward to the next meal, I don't need to eat immediately, especially since I know that if I eat now I'll still eat a full dinner and be over full.

And that brings me back to the past few days, I've been eating - constantly.  Between meals and then large indulgent restaurant entrees and then even more indulgent even snacks.  Most of which I wasn't hungry for.  Some of which didn't even taste good.  Certainly none of which was worth the regaining of weight that it caused.  And I don't really know why.  Other than sabotage, but still why?

In a couple weeks I'll be six months into my new body and I'd like to be half way into my weight loss goal by then.  Which would have been easy if not for this last few days.  And unfortunately I've learned that while I can gain 4 pounds in 4 days, it takes a couple weeks to lose them again.  So I've now got 6 pounds to lose in the 2 weeks before my half anniversary.  Holy shit, I think it just occurred to me.  I was thirsty.  Maybe that's why.  I wasn't drinking my iced tea like usual and I've been drinking a lot of coffee.  I was super dehydrated when I was sick, my lips felt like sandpaper.  I usually drink lots of water when I work out, but I hadn't worked out for over a week because of being sick.  Put that on top of pms and I feel like I'm hungry all the time.  That doesn't explain why I kept going well after being full though.  Or does it, if I was giving my body something other than what it craved, then filling it up with the wrong thing still wouldn't really satisfy the craving, would it?  Like using a pen on plastic -  you can write your name 1000 times, but it's not going to matter until you grab a sharpie and write it.  I kept eating trying to get what I needed, but food wasn't what I needed.  Water was.  Hmmm... I guess I'll try that next time.  Ugghh, so many internal battles to fight every time I want to eat.  Oh well, probably not everyone has to do it, but not everyone spent a decade being 100 pounds overweight either.  I'm not going to get into how angry I am at myself for wasting my entire 20s being fat.  I'm not wasting any more.

I did buy a pair of size 16 jeans at Eddie Bauer last night, and the are a little loose.  I looked for a 14 but they didn't have any on the sale rack.  Kids are up, no more self indulgence.