Calorie Nazi Status Report

I can pretty much sum this one up with one word: frustrated.

Right up until the day my cat died, I was perfectly on track. My weight loss was following the exact path predicted by The Nazi, and I was reporting every bite, every day.

My cat died on a Saturday morning. I gave myself a free pass for the weekend. I was just too distressed to give a damn about reporting my food.

Even with a free pass, I was still pretty cautious with what I ate. I did a lot more extra snacking - like an extra handful of peanuts mid-afternoon - and I even had a soda or two, but in general I did pretty well. I bought a package of cookies on a whim, and never even opened it. I couldn't help doing the math even though I wasn't officially tracking, and I ended up with maybe 2000 extra calories for the whole weekend. That's really not THAT bad.

But, somehow, it derailed everything.

When I weighed in on Monday, I had gained back 5 of the 7 pounds I'd lost. And it wasn't temporary water weight. I've spent the last month fighting the 5 goddamn pounds back off. Now the Nazi says my "projected weight" is 17 pounds higher than my goal for the year.

It takes 3500 extra calories to gain one pound. So, I know that it's not even physically possible to have gained that much back with that few extra calories. More frustration,.

I've been counting religiously, have even managed to squeeze a few workouts in here and there, and still have another half pound to lose to be back where I was a month ago.

I'm still counting and sometimes being hungry and always being frustrated I can't find more time to exercise. And with every day that passes I get more depressed and more angry and more frustrated that it's so. damn. slow. I've basically been at this size for going on 3 years now, and that is completely unacceptable. In fact, I've had to re-buy clothes in the bigger size I'd cleared out of my closet before the pregnancy, because even though I'm the same damn weight I've lost all my muscle tone and got physically bigger.

Yes, I could set more aggressive goals. And yes, I could probably live with being hungrier, (though I'd have to be even more cautious about migraines and my husband wouldn't want to live with me). And yes, I could skip that carefully measured and recorded dollop of low fat sour cream on my low fat chicken taco. If I decided I could accept having a few migraines a week, I could even get up at ridiculous o'clock to work out.

But this has always been about living a new way of life. And compromising my fragile health and giving up every single little comfort is no way to live. In the long run I know I'll be happier - and be able to maintain the loss - if I do it slowly, methodically and with an occasional (carefully weighed and recorded) cookie.

But for right now, I hate everything about it. I hate my body for its weakness. I hate my food scale. I hate my husband's refusal to be willing to eat the way I need to, and for making me provide foods that are hard for me to have around. I hate my health problems that make it so freaking hard to do this. And I hate myself for being too weak to do it better.