Diet Diary

I have nothing to do except stress out about my weight. I am on academic probation for my Master's program and that makes my weight seem like the one part of my life that I can control---that is, IF I could control it.

After I work out for more than 40 minutes with my punching bag, I don't feel hungry. I feel weak and sleepy. The day after I work out, I tend to binge eat like I am having my last meal. It becomes a crushing hunger pang that won't leave me alone until I eat. What is worse, since I exercised to the point of exhaustion, I am sore and too weak to burn off the excess calories I inevitably binge eat the day afterwards.

Yesterday, I ate 600 calories until 4 pm, which is fine. However, around 5 pm, I became famished and panicked. I drove to a fast food joint and binge ate a medium sized combo meal for a whopping total of 1000 calories. Then, in the middle of the night, I woke up hungry and ate 5 small raw apricots. So much sugar and sodium! I really hate that the thought of grease and butter sends me into pleasurable conniptions.

Today, I have had 400 calories and it's nearly 2 pm. The thing is, 80 calories is in pure half and half creamer. Another 110 calories comes from the Red Bull Red Edition drink I had. I feel bloated and I am burping, despite eating 210 calories in actual food (80 calorie serving of Fiber One with small amount of 30 calorie Almond milk in the morning, a small serving of home-made lentil soup for lunch). I drink so much liquid that I get bloated and when I weight myself I weigh even more than I would expect based on my solid food intake. That makes me depressed....that makes me start thinking about french fries.

I am writing so that I can distract myself from the thought of cheap dollar nuggets at Wendys. I feel full, but I keep thinking about food. Grrr..Hopefully, I won't be so sore tonight and then I can exercise for 40 minutes and burn off some calories from the past two days...but then tomorrow how I will crave sugar and carbs!!

Gained 2 Pounds, Lost 3 in Past Week

Earlier this week I was 171 pounds. Yikes. Now, about a week later, I weighed myself and weighed 168. This is obese for my height. I am disgusted. Still, at least I am not 171 anymore. I have to give myself credit for each pound that comes off or else I will just cry and give up.

Since I gained 20+ pounds on my ex-boyfriend's fried salmon dinners, I have struggled even more with my weight. I shot from 148 pounds to 174 pounds. My average weight prior to having a boyfriend was 153-155. My low weight was 148 this past year. Now, my low weight for the past 5 months has been 164. GRRRR.

I cannot believe I let myself eat my ex-boyfriend's junk food. It was Arabic food--nothing but rice, potatoes, and either fried chicken or fried fish. We broke up last January. Since then I have been taking 2 martial arts classes for a total of 4 hours each week of hard core work outs. Weight lost? Maybe 5 pounds. On a good day.

I think my body is in a little bit of shock due to my weight fluctuations. Since 2011, I lost 40 to 46 pounds. Then, between October of 2012 to January of 2013, I gained 25 pounds. Then, from January 2013 to May 2013 I lost 5 to 10 pounds. Then, from May 2013 to June 2013, I gained 5 pounds. Then, this past week, I lost 3 pounds. Yo-yo dieting takes on new meaning for me. It is more like bungee-jumping dieting.

I ate 1250 calories yesterday. I walked for 1 hour twice yesterday. I fought my punching bag for 20 minutes yesterday. I really did take two cups of popped popcorn to my room for my midnight eating disorder time. I woke up in the early morning and ate all of it. Thankfully, I had already included those 200 calories into my caloric intake journal, so I was not eating too, too much.


1200 calories is my limit. I don't want to eat more than 1200 and I refuse to eat less. If I want to reduce how many calories are in my body, I will work out. I have to eat 1200 or else my body will go into more shock and I dread how my weight will shift and fluctuate after a starvation diet (I succumbed to a starvation diet about 5 years ago and was 131 pounds down oh, I don't know, maybe 50 pounds before the psychiatric hospital intervened, forced me onto weight gaining anti-psychotic pills, quarantined me in a locked room without the usual running and walking I  had been doing, and forced me to eat three times a day). So, lesson learned; no starvation diet. Only calorie restriction and excessive exercise.

Yesterday my snack was a raw roma tomato sliced with black pepper and a tablespoon of olive oil drizzled on it. I felt a little guilty about the olive oil, too. It was not half bad. I think that snack is a bit better than my previous tomato snack/lunch of tomato, olive oil, and chevre melted on top.

Today, more tomatoes, punching bag, and oatmeal. Wish me luck. My goal is to weigh 155 by the end of August.

Finals Over, Diet Begins

Every finals week I start to binge eat. I cannot stop. I will literally sleepwalk out of bed and rummage through the kitchen in the dark and stuff whatever there is into my mouth and crawl back into bed. I woke up once with little graham crackers packages littered all over and crumbs in my bed. Then, the guilt, the all-consuming remorse, the weight gain, the looming diet in my near future.

Well, finals week is over. I failed pre-calculus. The professor posted a message online saying that it was very common to have to take his class twice. That did little to quell my feelings of failure. I had just gained about 3 pounds during finals week. To fail AND to gain weight. No. Bad. The rest of my classes were A's and B's, but that class dropped my cumulative GPA significantly. Now, it is summer, I am not working, I have a lot of free time, and my primary goal is to lose weight.

In 2011 I weighed 194 pounds and I was at my heaviest. In 2012 I weighed 155 pounds, having dropped around 40 pounds in a year. Then, I dated some guy who liked to fry all his dinners and he was always making me dinner---I gained 15 pounds. Then, we broke up and I felt completely dumb for letting him stuff me full of deep fried salmon just to be polite about his cooking. Never again, I vowed. I enrolled  in martial arts classes, but alas, I still gained weight over midterms and the dreaded week of finals. Now, at 167, I am back to being at the borderline between obese and very overweight on the BMI chart. 

At 167 pounds my pants fit, which is not good. I was starting to get used to the loose waistband and the need for a new wardrobe. I am determined to lose at least 20 pounds before the end of August. I did it before, I can do it now. 

My diet since I got out of class about a week ago has been dramatically altered from my high caloric finals-week-diet. Now, I drink a lot of tea and I wait until after 6 pm to have a normal sized meal. By "a lot of tea" I mean somewhere around 6 cups during the day and another 3 cups of green tea at night. I always put a bit of fat free half and half or almond milk in each cup, which does add calories, but that 10 calories per cup (or 100 calories per day) is equivalent to a small, single snack. I run on chai (tea). 

For example, today I had 3 cups of coffee, 1 cup of tea, 2 plain flour tortillas for breakfast, and a large diet Coke from McDonalds. It is 1:30 pm and I kind of feel full. I have no desire to eat more flour tortillas, even though my relative just finished making delicious home-made tortillas from scratch. 

Dieting is an old friend for me. I think to some extent it is healthy, but then again, maybe having 2 tortillas for breakfast isn't healthy and also those are pure carbohydrates. For lunch I will have a nice tomato and cheese sandwich on flat bread, followed by 5 cups of tea with fat free half and half. Maybe some shots of espresso after that...who knows? If you're trying to lose weight, see a doctor. I am not a doctor. I am just a desperate, unemployed graduate student with little money and little control over my life. I am only relaying this information because I want this blog to be as honest with the reader as I can be. I know that obsessing about weight is never good. I applaud those women who are free from the self-disgust I feel. I also know that I have body issues, food issues, and overall issues. This blog was started to show the real human behind mental illness (I am schizo-affective who gained a lot of weight taking the anti-psychotic drug Zyprexa). Now that it has been a year, I still want this blog to be honest, even if that means showing my ugly bits. 

To some people, summer is a time to relax. For me, it is the time when I exercise daily and limit my calories. Sometimes, summer also involves getting involved with some guy and maybe even smoking marijuana now and then. I would prefer not to smoke marijuana or get involved with some random guy for three months, but that has been my pattern for the past 3 years. Maybe I will sign up for classes at the dojo near my house. :) Cheers to summer, kickboxing, espresso, tea, and you!!

A Few Books On Body Image

"Women, Advertising, and Representation: Beyond Familiar Paradigms"; edited by Sue Abel, Marjan deBruin, and Anita Nowak.
I checked out this book this week and my favorite chapter so far is "Lara Croft in Ads", which deals with Lara Croft the video game heroine and her symbolic representation of the ideal woman.

http://www.amazon.com/Women-Advertising-Representation-Paradigms-Communication/dp/1572739274/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1311089242&sr=1-1

"The Body Myth: Adult Women and the Pressure To Be Perfect", by Margo Maine and Joe Kelly
http://www.amazon.com/Body-Myth-Adult-Pressure-Perfect/dp/0471691585/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1311089315&sr=1-1

Another excellent book, "The Body Myth" deals with the scientific truth behind diets, obesity, and health. This is highly important, as all the doctors I have seen are not keeping up with the current research and studies done on health and weight issues. Instead, they spout the usual doctor rhetoric: if you eat well and exercise you will fall into a healthy BMI range. Not true, especially for a former yo-yo dieter, and a disordered eating person with an abnormal glandular problem (thyroid and pituitary glands). The more you diet, the more likely you will become obese in the future. Sound scary? It's been documented in numerous studies.

"Hungry", by Crystal Renn
http://www.amazon.com/Hungry-Appetite-Ambition-Ultimate-Embrace/dp/1439101248/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1311089374&sr=1-1

I am buying this book when I get some cash! Crystal Renn is my favorite model, along with Ashley Graham (the top heavy Lane Bryant model), and I recommend watching her NightLine interview on youtube.