Weight Wars

Dear public, online diary,

today I thew up all over myself. It all started when I got the bright idea to enroll in a training camp for kickboxing. I overestimated my level of fitness and was quickly forced to call it quits early after I vomited outside in the dirt. Oddly, my first day went fine. I was tired and exhausted, but I was not having problems breathing. My second day was much harder, maybe my body hadn't had time to heal itself from last week. Or else it was the five cups of tea I had just before I went. I read somewhere that being over hydrated can be nearly as bad as being dehydrated. But maybe it was just some odd, anxiety fluke that made me burn out on the second day. Either way, I am going back but I am waiting until Wednesday or Thursday to return, and not just because I want  my body to heal; I also want to avoid the camp until I have overcome my humiliation.

Why would I do something like crash-binge exercise? Because I weigh 174 pounds at 5 feet, 2 inches and that puts me back into the obese category. Last year I was around 155 pounds. Now, one ex-boyfriend later, and a summer of sweet chocolate indulgence later, I weigh 20 pounds more. I did weigh 25 pounds more but I lost about 4 pounds since Friday, which might not be the healthiest thing in reality. I heard that 2 pounds per week is the high end of acceptable weight loss, not 4 pounds in 3 days.

Either way, I am tired of carrying all this extra weight. I am taking a lighter load in classes so this means that I have plenty of time to do push-ups, leg lifts, jump rope, and to play with my punching bag. I have waged a war on my own weight since the age of 22 or 23, when I started to gain weight due to a prescription drug named Zyprexa that I was put on during a bipolar episode.

I have watched my weight go up and down by as much as 60 pounds. At age 25 I was 135 pounds. At 28 I was 194 pounds. At 29 I was a 155 pounds. My life has become whittled down to nothing more than cryptic numbers jotted in my notepad--Monday, September 10th, 174 pounds, down 4 pounds, aged 30, 40 minutes of extreme exercise, 600 calories going into the work out, ate 1000 afterwords just to make the world stop spinning. Yes, I literally ate a 1000 calories. It is not as hard as it sounds. A simple combo meal from Wendys or Carl's Jr can set a person back by over 1000 calories! I am trying to remain on a 1200 calorie a day diet, but that should not happen on exercise days, as I learned the hard way. Little food in the belly after an extreme work out left me feeling woozy, dizzy, light-headed, weak, and on the verge of blacking out. I ran to the fast food joint and stuffed my mouth with salt, grease, and meat. No, not good, but it was just a quick fix to get me home without having to pull the car over to the side of the road in order to vomit.

I have decided that I cannot be happy unless I have a Master's degree, psychotropic medicine, pot brownies to soothe my migraines and anxiety, and a better body. Ideally, I would just always be happy without having to strive for anything, but that is not the way my mind operates.

Classes are going fine. I went on academic probation this semester because my graduate GPA dropped to a 2.8, which is well below the 3.0 minimum for Master's degree students. Luckily, I can raise my GPA this semester and take all the remaining courses for my program next semester.

By spring, 2014, I should be applying for my Master's graduation ceremony (and I will be more fit and skinnier).
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4 pounds lost in 4 days; 50 more to go

4 days ago I weighed 172. This made me sad. Last semester I weighed 152. This semester I took 2 martial arts classes twice a week, for a total of 4 hours. Regardless of how much I exercised, I still gained 10 pounds on top of the 10 pounds I gained over winter break. That's a total of 20 pounds since November.

This isn't my first extreme weight gain or weight loss adventure. I have been plagued by my weight since the psychiatrists put me on Zyprexa, an anti-psychotic with massive weight gain as a common side effect. I only made it worse by not modifying my pre-Zyprexa diet of junk food. Before Zyprexa I could eat what I felt like but afterwards, I had to learn the hard way that my body craved more food than I needed and needed twice the exercise due to the chemical effects of the pills I took.

My first semester returning to University in 2011 I gained so much weight I was 194 at my fattest. By mid-2012 I weighed 151 pounds. I lost over 40 pounds in a year by eating less than 2000 calories a day, moderate exercise, a lot of walking, and a semi-vegetarian diet (some fish, some chicken, a lot of half and half).

Even now, I'm 24 pounds lighter than my worst weight. But that is equivalent to 50 pounds heavier than my weight at age 23: 118. Now, nearly thirty years old, I am fearful that I will go back to 194 pounds and that I'll never reach my goal of being 125-130 pounds.

I decided to really get serious. Yes, maybe it is because I have fallen behind in my computer programming class and I have a deep-seated insecurity about my grades to the point where body obsession is a preferred mode of escape, but whatever, I'm going to lose weight.

I started a 6:00 pm diet. By this I mean that I get to eat an entire meal after 6 pm. Why 6 pm? Because I tend to stress out at night and this is when I am at risk for binge eating and midnight snacking. I know nutritionists say that eating heavy foods at night makes you gain weight, but I have no self-control after 7 pm anyways, at least this way I may lose some weight by trimming down on my day-time calorie consumption.

Here's how I lost 4 pounds in 4 days

9 am: drink a Kellog's Special K protein shake (180 calories)
10:00-3:00 pm = classes on campus with only one hour break. Spend this one hour sipping on coffee (80 calories).
4:00 pm = getting hungry. Good thing I brought another Special K protein shake (180 calories)
5:00 pm = one last Americano from Starbucks with a lot of half and half and splenda (100 calories)
6:00 pm = time to feast. I am at 600 calories total for the day. I get to eat 600 calories for dinner, for a total of 1200 calories. This can be a moderate serving of pasta and maybe one slice of bread, a couple of home made tacos, a Subway sandwich, 2 slices of pizza, 1 jr cheeseburger from Wendys and 5 spicy chicken nuggets, or 2 tamales from the Mexican restaurant.

I did that for 4 days and I've lost 4 pounds. In fact, I think I ate like 1600 calories on one day and still lost a pound.

I am only doing this because I am in the obese range on the BMI. I would never suggest this 6 pm diet for anybody not in the obese range. For those who are in the obese range, I still wouldn't recommend this because it may be crash dieting and that is super dangerous. That being said, I want to lose weight. I will accept the fatigue, the headaches, the lethargy, the scattered concentration, and the stomach growling so long as I lose the weight.

I was going to delete this blog post right now, but I did promise to tell the truth on this blog, no matter how uncomfortable the truth might be. So here is the ugly truth---I am losing weight. I will live off Roma tomatoes, I will lose weight if I have to pump pure caffeine into my veins to keep myself from collapsing into a deep, hungry sleep, I will lose weight. I will.
HIGH WEIGHT= 194
CURRENT WEIGHT=168
GOAL WEIGHT=130
If I can't succeed in graduate school at least I'll leave a size 8.

Spring Break, Mental Health, & how I gained Weight

I am being transferred from an intensive out-care program to the county's relaxed mental health care system. I am not sure how I feel about this, as memories of this county facility still haunts me --- being sent away repeatedly and then finally getting to see one befuddled doctor who wrote the incorrect prescription and left me without medicine for a good 2 months (while I was floridly psychotic).

Hopefully, I can make all my doctor's appointments without fail, otherwise there might be a three month wait period.

Wish me luck, I'll need it if this new care program is like the last time I remember.

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Good news = I am president of a club and I actually did get our event approved.
Bad news = I had no spring break because I have been working on arrangements for the event.
More bad news=I did like 2 pages of a 15 page paper only. I still need to do my programming homework.
Good news = I had a cup of chai and I'm feeling good,
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Lately, I've been reading a lot of race relations articles and I am feeling a little queasy from thinking about how many anti-immigrant/anti-minority people are running around out there. I'll keep it to myself for now, since I don't feel like going off on some political rant.

Ah heck, I'll do it anyways. marriage =. Immigration reform. Break the glass ceiling. Down with neo-nazis. Up with Bill Maher. Okay, I'm done.

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On my weight
OMG. I gained weight while taking two hours of martial arts twice a week! Four hours per week for nothing! Nothing! I now am at the heaviest I have been since I first modified my diet intake 2 years ago; 171 pounds. Yes, it's technically in the obese range. Yes, I hate my body (except for my boobs which have returned to a plump, seductive G cup). Yes, I gained a whopping 20 pounds in under 5 months. I don't know what to do. The more I think about my weight the more despondent I get and the more I want to comfort eat. I ate a doughnut today. I hate myself for eating that doughnut. The long walk to the doughnut store and back home only burned off a quarter of the calories I consumed in doughnut. I ate half my dinner today, but I didn't use my stationary bike or my punching bag as exercise, so I feel bloated and disgusting. My dinner was a couple of tablespoons of white rice and some nopales my mom made. My lunch was that doughnut. For breakfast I had a bowl of oatmeal with a bunch of fresh blueberries. Then, right after breakfast, my mom came home from taking the elderly neighbor lady to the grocery store. The elderly lady, in her naive kindness, bought my mom a tray of mini cupcakes. I literally doubled over when I saw them. My kryptonite. This is the reason why I don't buy any chips, baked goods, ice cream, or frozen pizzas. I have issues with moderation. I cannot eat a little handful of chips, or just 1 mini cupcake. I will literally flee the kitchen and hide in my room, without the treat. Then, for hours, I will think about the treat. Eventually, I break down, sneak into the kitchen, grab the entire bag/carton/tray of treats and secretly eat in my bedroom. This is the reason why I always buy roma tomatoes, cheese, and tea instead. When there are no sugary, sodium-laced, greasy alternatives, I eat quite healthy. But when a naively kind neighbor lady buys us mini cupcakes, I crumble after an hour of pouting on my bed and trying to distract myself by watching BBC documentaries on the internet. Yes, I ate 3 mini-cupcakes, and then I couldn't stop myself. I walked to the doughnut store and bought a coffee and a doughnut. I came home. 2 more mini-cupcakes. I despise mini-cupcakes. They must be walked into the jungle and left for the pumas. Down with mini-sprinkle cupcakes!!

I like my boobs. They are plump. They are the only part of my body I am fond of. I will now end this little blog entry by writing a positive, self-affirming statement about my fattened up body. My boobs are awesome. Guys always stare at my boobs. Sometimes, women stare at my boobs, too. Sometimes I think I must have spilled something on my blouse and people are just wondering what the stain is, which is why they are staring so intensely for so long, but then I look down and nope, just my boobs. Then, there is this awkward moment when both of us are standing there staring down at my boobs. I think I am kind of flattered. Still, it's like, what, am I wearing a dirty shirt? Are my nipples popping out? Is there like a stain that looks like a milk leak or something??

Return of the Love Handles

I finally jumped on the bathroom scale. My worst fear came true. Despite two hours of martial arts practice twice a week, I have somehow gained 6 more pounds. I think this might be because I am so famished after stumbling out of the two hour ordeal that I rush towards the student union’s food court and stuff myself with junk food.

Currently, I am 15 pounds heavier than I was last semester.  I was 152 in the fall. Now my fat is really making me hate my body. I train hard during class and I keep up a routine of kickboxing over the weekend, but to no avail. I am the heaviest I have been in two years. Every time I get a glimpse of myself in the reflection of a car window or in the mirror, I think, oh no, what happened?

Drastic actions must be taken. I must eliminate fast food from my diet and vow to flee from the sight of chow mein bowls topped with delicious, tangy, juicy, orange chicken. I must yield to the blandness of salad and the repetition of roma tomato sandwiches with pesto sauce smeared on it instead of ranch.

I will lose this weight I’ve gained and then some. My shrink says that I should not feel guilty when I eat food, but I do. The sight of it sends me into delighted conniptions. After that, however, comes the moment when I realize I just lost some of my daily allotted calories.

I am eating two cut up roma tomatoes with a half inch cube of chevre smeared on top of the tomato to add some flavor. I dribbled some olive oil on it (not even half a tablespoon), and ground some black pepper all over in the hopes that I could somehow trick my body into thinking I was eating a double-decker hamburger with extra cheese and layers of chipotle sauce.  

Earlier today I had (surprise) a roma tomato sandwich with pesto sauce and cubes of fresh avocado. I love it, but I was fantasizing about a handsome, charming man or a pretty, charming woman, holding a tray of pizza slices drenched in full-fat ranch. Delicious, greasy, chewy, cheesy pizza—gulp.

Grad school is going well. I have nothing terribly important to say about the experience or the stress. It is stressful, but what is more stressful is that ominous black screen on my bathroom scale, staring at me from the corner of the room, haunting me and really pissing me off.

Yum. I think this might be my fourth tomato of the day. If only water came in fat-free, sugar-free chipotle, burger flavor. :)

My Bathroom Scale Sneaked into my Bedroom

My bathroom scale sneaked into my bedroom this month. It now sits in front of my reading chair, like a bizarre ottoman. Sometimes I even rest my feet on it while I read this spy thriller, "At Risk." In order to get to my reading chair I have to step over the scale. Usually, I wind up sitting on my chair, thinking about my weight. I could take about how  weight is another corset for modern women, or how people discriminate against people who are overweight but I will not (at least not right now).

Right now, I would like to devote a little entry to the topic of why I want to lose weight. I want to look like Marilyn Monroe. End of blog, lol.

I still remember that day in the psychiatric facility, three years ago and 25 pounds ago. My social worker was telling me about my axis. Axis 1 is like one diagnosis, Axis 2 is another diagnosis. In medical jargon, it is essentially "things that are horribly wrong with you in a tidy little list." My axis said I was schizo-affective. Then, horribly, he said my other axis was clinical obesity. I knew I was overweight. I was about 184 pounds and only 5 feet, 2 inches, but obese? I thought obese was for women who could only wear mumus and whose arms were the width of my thighs. I know better know, but back then it was a terrible shock. Not only was I crazy, I was fat as well.

Two to three years later I am still schizo-affective. However, I am only clinically overweight now and not obese. I have lost 25 pounds since that initial diagnosis. My weight yesterday was 159 pounds, down from 184, which was not even the "peak" of my weight (my first semester of University I packed on pounds during finals week). I can never go back to not exercising for a minimum of 20 minutes daily, plus one hour walks, or I will gain everything back. I can also never return to eating 2,000 calories or more a day, ever. My body adjusted to getting 1800, then 1600, now 1300 calories a day. To shove in 2,000 calories would probably lead to significant amounts of weight gain. I will just get used to limiting my caloric intake. Cut fast food consumption. Cut what fast food I do eat into halves and eat only half. My staples are no longer home-cooked chicken and sandwiches. Now, my main staples are sauteed zucchini, cucumber sprayed with olive oil and flavored with Splenda packets, plain yogurt with Splenda packets, boiled and sauteed cauliflower with cumin, cayenne, and coriander spices, cereal, oatmeal, and tomato with roasted bell pepper and cheese sandwiches. When I eat fast food I either make sure I have had less than 2,000 calories for the day, or I feel really guilty and decrease my calories for the following day.

Maybe you can tell, I have not eaten breakfast yet, which is why I am rambling on about food. I am planning on having half a packet of instant oatmeal. Only half a packet because I will be baby-sitting my elderly grandmother for half of today, which means no taking hour long walks and doing morning exercise on my stationary bike. Maybe for a snack, a peach. Then for another snack, red-leaf chard lettuce mixed with mandarin oranges and a low calorie spritzer. Then lunch....dreading having to choose something for lunch. Then, a cucumber with olive oil and splenda. I like splenda on my cucumber because it makes the cucumber taste like fruit.

My goal for this summer is to lose 20 pounds. I will likely only lose 5 pounds, but whatever, at least I set a goal for myself. So if you ever stop by this little blog and see like four entries in a row of random meals, listed like some kind of restaurant menu, that is because I am concentrating my energy on losing more weight. 159 is less than 184, but not by that much. I want to reach 139 pounds. No wait, I will reach 139 pounds.

On Weight Loss, Breasts, and Curvy Women

I was watching a youtube video yesterday by a woman who lost a lot of weight and is now very, very slim. She talked to her audience about the shrinking breast size that comes with weight loss. She went from a D cup to an A cup! She then told her audience, "I'm better this way, because I am healthier. Men aren't worth being fat."  Ouch, I thought. I do not want to be fat anymore, but neither do I want to be an A cup. Am I doomed to being one or the other?

I am 162, sometimes down to 159 pounds, but I am only 5'2" so this means I am borderline clinically obese, or very overweight. My breasts fit best in a bra that is a UK size 34FF in Panache bras, and 34G in other bras. Most of my weight winds up in my thighs, followed second by my butt, followed third by my gut. I wish there was a way to spot check these areas and avoid losing weight in my breasts, but this is not possible. When I was 15-21 years old I was about 112 pounds, 115 pounds at my heaviest, but my breasts were a small B cup. I always wanted big breasts. I envied women with pendulous breasts and curvy silhouettes.

Then I got what I wanted but with a steep price. At age 23 I had a major psychotic episode and I was hospitalized. The doctor prescribed me Zyprexa, an atypical antipsychotic with notorious weight gain side effects. It was designed to eliminate psychotic symptoms but it caused massive, immediate weight gain for as long as one takes it. Naturally, I got very fat. I reached 184-190 pounds, which is actually lucky for somebody on anti-psychotics, as many of these new drugs can cause people to become super obese.

My boobs got obese as well. They swelled with the rest of me; from a tiny B cup to a DD cup to a size that I could not find in my local stores. Either the cup didn't fit or the band was so wide in circumference that it would not stay in place, but rather hung around my hips like a hula hoop. Manufacturers assume that people with a medium band have medium breasts and people with larger breasts have a very wide torso. I would make due with a 36DD until that became too small in the cups. I started shopping online to get bigger sizes. I fit the cups of a 38DDD but the band was too big and I wound up getting too many back aches.

I have been regularly exercising since April of last year. I have begun to count my calories and restrict them to 1200-1400 calories daily (I use "Calorie Counter" made by fitness pal, a calorie counting app for android phones). By using a stationary bike, a rowing machine, free weights, taking a judo class, a dance class, and doing aerobics at home, I have lost about 25 pounds from a year ago when I weighed 184. Now around 161 pounds, my boobs lost about 2 inches, but they are still on the large side.

I am still in the process of losing weight. I will stop when I get back to 131 pounds. I lost a lot of weight two years ago, dropping from around 180 to 130 pounds in a matter of months, but I did this through unhealthy means (i.e. crash dieting) and I gained all the weight back and probably damaged my metabolic system during the time when I was crash dieting. I will not crash diet again and if you are crash dieting, please stop! There are healthy ways to lose weight, they just take a little longer to get to your goal.

Anyways, I really hope I am still top heavy when I get to my ideal weight. I have become very fond of being buxom. No, it is not just because that is what men like. I want to look like a woman I could be attracted to (I am a closet bisexual), and my dream woman looks more like Marilyn Monroe than Paris Hilton.

One time, funny story, I was walking to a grocery store and I caught sight of a woman with an amazing, hour-glass figure. Her thick hips swayed as she walked and her waist was surprisingly narrow. I was so taken by her physical appearance that I was walking with my head turned to look at her as she passed. Then suddenly--BANG! I walked right into a pole. I got a little bruise on my cheek from slamming into the pole. I will always remember that woman and her amazing curves, she is my ideal in terms of physical appearance. As for personality, I love, love, love this girl who used to be in my British literature class. She was a fellow linguistics major, studied Japanese, and was so brilliant that she aced all her tests in all her classes.

Sorry, I keep going off on tangents, but I am not editing this at all. Right now I am just typing into the blog without a thought as to flow or coherence. Well, if William Burroughs can do it, so can I! :)
Thanks for reading!

Finals Week on Campus

Some people go to a confessional booth to see a priest. I am not that religious. Instead, I come to cyberspace to spit out my secrets, hoping somebody somewhere will absolve me.

My mother would be so ashamed of me, keeping my life open like some kind of tart.

I should really be studying for finals right now. I will, I'm not that lazy. I've just written about 30 pages of research for my undergrad classes and I feel like I should take a breather, just until 9 tonight.

I have nothing dramatic to say, I quit with the melodrama last summer when I broke up with an insensitive male lover. Instead, I am going to talk about my life goals. Why? I dunno. If you're looking for something more daring, please read "Confessions of a Closet Schizophrenic" or "Confessions of a Closet Bisexual" that I wrote a few months back.

I completed all but one of my lower and upper division general education classes already. Next semester I have 2 linguistics classes, 2 foreign language classes, and 1 theory of dance class that fulfills the last of my general education requirements. Then I graduate. What I do after I graduate is unknown, as the job prospects are limited for somebody who only has a B.A. This economy isn't ideal, to say the least.

Saturday I am going to the campus library to study for hours. My friend will hopefully join me so we can rent one of those rooms with a whiteboard. Sunday I am going to the library to study. Monday I am going early so I can go to the library and study. Then I take my phonology final. Then I go back to studying a foreign language, a class which was going well until my grandfather died right before Thanksgiving. I have to memorize 20 sentences worth of dialogue, including spelling, in a non-romance language. After this, I should only have my Chinese final to prepare for.


There's this yahoo gossip column about some female student who went berserk in the library at another CSU (or was it UC?). She snapped over the loudness of somebody's breathing and started hollering all over the place. Man, I am glad I tend to isolate when I get stressed out or there might be some kind of viral video of me curling up in fetal position under a desk  in the library, muttering poorly enunciated Chinese words to no one.

Finals week sucks.

One student in my French 2B class last semester told me she had a breakdown every semester. She showed up for our project red-eyed and still puffy from sobbing. "I've been on a crying jag for a few hours," she admitted. She was in the graduate program for music. I gently asked her if she might consider an anti-depressant but she laughed me off. She's out there somewhere, having another nervous breakdown. I guess this is me having my break down.

When I have breakdowns I stuff them down by eating too much. That's probably why I gained the weight back I lost taking that martial arts class. I was 159 about 3 weeks ago, and now I'm 161. I tend to be an anxiety-eater. You know the type, the type that tries to be really pleasant and helpful to everyone but eats in binges until the stressful event passes. That was me last week. I didn't have enough Zoloft, my grandpa had just died, my grades were falling from A's to low B's, and it was about to be finals week. So I ate. I ate a hamburger from McDonalds---and I'm a vegetarian! I ate 230 calories worth of salty french fries with that stupid hamburger. In the middle of the night I went foraging for rice cakes. Yes, those are only like 50 calories for 2, but I ate like 6 or 8!

Today I tried to control my caloric intake by avoiding eating with my family and instead munching on 3 pieces of sushi for lunch. Then I saw my therapist, who gently goaded me to accept my life as it is now. She said it's okay to overeat on occasion, so long as it's only during finals week. But last finals week I ballooned up to 190 pounds and it took me from April to September to climb down to 160 pounds.

I feel that food is like the only thing keeping me from curling into a ball in bed and refusing to take my finals. Well, that and coffee....lots and lots of coffee. Like 8 cups of coffee a day. Therapist also said to cut back on the coffee. If only I could! It tastes so good with splenda and some half and half. Yes, I know, half and half won't help me lose weight, but I need my caffeine fix so I just delete a snack for the day and pour in some creamer without remorse.

Tonight I am going to write a list of all the Chinese characters we have learned over the semester and begin to copy them over and over and over again. Plus, I will read through the chapters in my phonology book. Then I will take an anti-anxiety drug and go to sleep. Ah, the pleasure of psychotropic medications. It's funny, people who are medicated get this rap for being unstable, but if anything we are so medicated we're the most stable in the room! Where one person starts yelling about people breathing too loud, I just take my medication early and nap away the stress. Is that healthy? Oh who cares, this is a Prozac Nation anyways (read the book, too!).

weight loss: 20 pounds in 4 months

Being bombarded with Carl's Jr. commercials and billboards promoting the latest beer brand makes weight loss an exercise in self-discipline. Everywhere I go, drink Coke, eat meat, buy Bud light, and always, always, it's being advertised by a size 0 model with huge breast implants and a winning smile. As if! There is no way that pretty model ate that burger in her hand, or drank that calorie-laden beer she holds. She probably is underweight, according to the BMI chart, and in no position to tell me how to eat healthy, let alone tell me to eat at a fast food joint or to buy beer.

To make things worse, there is no salad bar at my University, meaning that my choices are extremely limited. After shying away from the campus Taco Bell, I went into the snack bar, passing the Panda Express and Subway along the way. Once inside the snack bar, I could choose between a chicken microwavable burrito, a brownie, a sugary muffin, or a bag of chips. I could have one of their many sodas, energy drinks, or a coffee. I settled on a bag of chips and a large coffee, trying to reason with my gurgling stomach that the coffee would sooth the hunger pangs.

Despite eating only an egg at midday and getting lots of exercise through rowing and walking, I felt guilty ripping open the bag of chips. I'm way overweight. I'm 168 right now at 5'1-5'2. Every tiny choice I make inflates my fat cells and increases my risk of diabetes and fat-clogged arteries. No, I don't have any health problems. I just had a blood test and physical last week, and to my surprise, my thyroid hormone levels have raised into the normal range. My blood pressure was fine, my pulse fine. Yet I'm fat, so fat. Only part of it is the psychotropic medications my psychiatrist has me on, and only part of it is the poor decisions I made several years ago, yo-yo dieting, starvation dieting, and eating junk food. I've been a mostly healthy vegetarian for the last 4 months now, and yet I've only lost about 15-20 pounds. That's only five pounds a month. So what gives?

Unfortunately, the decision to lose weight at any cost has left severe consequences now. Starvation diets slows the metabolism, something not easily remedied, even years later. Plus, you either give in to hunger or you die, and I'm not dead. Once you start eating regularly, your body stockpiles every precious calorie on the chance that a Victoria Secret model will send you on another starvation diet sometime in the future. It's not easy to lose weight now. A non-yo-yo dieter would have lost much more than I have in the same time frame and on the same diet. But enough whining, I have lost weight, I will continue to lose weight, and I will do so eating brain and body healthy foods every day.

One trick I've learned the past four months is to use Indian spices on all my vegetables, with double the cayenne pepper. Coriander, cumin, garam masala, turmeric, and cayenne pepper are all ways to make a vegetable delicious and these spices also raise your metabolism and make you feel fuller than you really are. My favorite meal has got to be a zucchini drenched in lemon juice, sauteed in olive oil with the above spices simmering, and with a dash of black pepper ground onto the zucchini in the last stages of cooking. It's so good I have to immediately stick all but a small portion into the fridge lest I return for seconds.

Another trick I've learned is to refrain from snacking after 7:30 pm, and instead drink green tea with no sugar and just a little bit of fat-free creamer. I know, half and half is terrible for a dieter, fat-free or not. But seriously, you will have to pry that carton of half and half out of my cold dead hands. I cannot stand tea or coffee without it. And if I don't get my coffee or chai, I will start rummaging through the fridge for something to snack on. So instead I drink chai and don't snack on anything.

I watched this documentary, on fat and it was a very eye-opening experience. In this documentary, we follow several people who have either lost weight or are trying to lose weight. We also get to hear from a specialist who studies the digestive tract. The data was surprising. The specialist says there are transmitters in the gut, like neuro-transmitters in the brain, except they're gut-transmitters. He claimed that the gut was like a second brain, I am not joking or exaggerating!

Here is the title. It is available on amazon dot com. FAT: What No One Is Telling You. (2007). PBS Home video.

So anyways, what really caught my eye was the plight of a formerly morbidly obese female comedian. Over the course of a number of years, she lost all her weight, except for some extra pounds that refuse to leave. She went from being mega morbidly obese to moderately overweight! How did she do it? She began to eat small portions of healthy food with little snacking. More incredibly, she exercises for hours each day, without fail! The video showed her slipping into one of those full body work-out suits that make you sweat a lot, and using multiple exercise machines, plus cardio and weight exercises.
'All this so I can be chubby,' she dead-pans.

What is this point of my relating all this to you? Regardless of how you got to weigh what you weigh: life circumstance, medications, metabolism, poor decisions, whatever, you know have a problem you have to deal with. No, it's not fair that people laugh and harass you, make you feel unworthy of love and respect, or that clothes are hard to come by because discrimination is so rampant, but a problem is still a problem that needs to be addressed. This film made me realize that like my homework, I must work harder than the rest just to get an A.

Wish me luck, with some hard work, I can drop another 20 pounds in the following months: then I'll just be a little plump!