Back in the saddle again.

Thank you, Shannon, for inspiring me to get back into journaling!

I was thinking of taking things in a new direction, but am not sure how far that will go.

I love the idea of having a weight loss/diet blog, but am not sure how personal to get with it. (As in--what it's like to be overweight, and how that makes me even more hungry to attain my goal weight [see what I did there? HUNGRY?!! I AM AWESOME]...frustrations and cheating on diets and being lazy and all those things we don't like to talk about.)

It's one thing to be on plan every day and burning 1500 calories more than I ate, and walking in place for two hours and feeling strong and awesome, and getting that thrill from stepping on the scale and seeing a loss...but quite another to talk about the bad stuff. And maybe, just maybe, a blog will keep me a little more accountable for my actions.

I'm not saying that going forward, this blog will be exclusively about my Weight Loss Journey (gag). I am far too obsessed with a zillion other things. I do hope, though, to regularly keep journaling as an update on how I'm doing on the Healthy front.

I haven't been strictly On Plan for...many weeks. Really, since I started taking Paxil. As much as I do like that medication, its effect (that I don't worry about things so much) hasn't made dieting/exercise easy. Because I do best when I am ANAL. I measure everything out to the gram, for serious. I keep track of every calorie burned (Thanks, GoWear Fit device!), I use every spare moment at work to exercise, and I don't go to bed unless I've reached my target calorie burn. And when I follow this routine, I shed the weight quickly and effectively.

But, with Paxil...I don't care! Companion pretzels at Schnucks at 320 calories each? Why not?! Tax Crunch Baskin Robbins ice cream with hot fudge? What the hell, it won't kill me! (until it does.) McD's drive-through in the morning when I have a growly tummy? I DON'T CARE, I JUST WANT IT!

Part of this process is, I know, being in denial. As a fact, I know that I am probably addicted to food. But I don't think I TRULY FEEL that way. People who are addicted to food are 400 pounds, right? They can't go a day without scarfing a dozen doughnuts! They eat their weight at Golden Corral! They drink six cans of soda a day and a full bag of chips! (On a related note, though--this is probably why I will never, ever allow myself to go to Golden Corral.)

I know I need to accept, and ADDRESS, the problem. This is really difficult. I can't even call it 'my problem,' because I'm ashamed. It's so taboo. Yet...I have no trouble copping to my OTHER issues...social anxiety, anal-retentiveness, a tendency to be a pack-rat, etc. Maybe because it's easier to have a sense of humor about them? "No, I won't go to your party because I don't like people." I don't mind saying that. I turn it into a joke. But it's hard to say "I make extremely poor decisions when it comes to food, and I gain a lot of weight because of it." It makes me look out of control. Me, anal-retentive Gen, who needs to only put certain glasses in a designated row in the dishwasher, who uses only a certain type of bookmark, who CRAVES control. Why can't I control THIS?


So....

I hope this continues. I hope I can keep an open dialogue with myself, and anyone who's still around to read this. I want to keep going.

Today has been okay, so far. I have a new Schnucks soup for lunch, and have eaten a yogurt for breakfast and half of my cottage cheese/pickled egg concoction for a morning snack. (Did I mention I also have a sour tooth, in addition to the sweet tooth?) Calories burned thus far: 225 over resting rate. My goal for the next little while is to burn 1000 over resting rate, which is usually 100 calories an hour.