MOONFLOW

or, "fall down, get up. a love story."

This Week of Weightloss (because now my life is divided artificially into Weeks in which I am working towards weighing less on one specific day – don’t think I don’t know how fucking weird that is) I had a day where I found myself, at two in the afternoon, having eaten something along the order of 18 points worth of Reeses miniature peanut butter cups. You know, those mouthfuls of chocolate that disappear so quickly that you have to pop another in your face almost immediately after sucking on the first? Those.

And I looked at the pile of wrappers that had accumulated in the trash and in the other trash can and in my pocket, as I went back and forth between the kitchen and the living room and the kitchen and back to the living room again, and I thought huh. Wonder what’s up with that? And I had another point or two worth of chocolate.

At the end of the day, I realized that I had spent more or less my entire day’s worth of points on peanut butter cups. I thought about how I felt about that. I didn’t feel so good about that. I didn’t feel so good, in fact. Man can not live on Diet Pepsi and peanut butter cups alone, no matter how hard she tries, or wants to. It turns out man needs things like protein, and maybe less sugar. Which is just crazy, if you ask me.

It had been months and months and months – it had been longer ago than I remember – since I had done anything like eat nothing but cake all day, or a box of cookies over the course of an afternoon, or a ham in the bathtub. Even before I was doing the weight watchers thing, it was a matter of a series of bad choices than a single unattractive long-range binge.

But here I was with a nearly empty bag of cups and the kind of feeling of shame that only can creep up on you when you are blasted with the kind of unpleasantly crisp and clear sense of self-awareness that carries around an 8 x 10 glossy that shows you exactly what it is you look like right that second.

I went to bed with half-promises in my head about doing better and having kashi for breakfast and Being the Best Me That I Can Be and when I woke up the next morning, I found out that there was a reason that I had been mindless mainlining chocolate, and that was because I am become a beautiful woman experiencing her natural moonflow time.

I hate my period. But at least I found a reason for the peanut butter cups.

At least that’s what I told myself. The link between chocolate and menstruation is a long-documented one, and sources can be found everywhere from stand up comedy routines to informal testimonies to Cathy cartoons that fill you with a sense of outwardly-directly loathing when you catch yourself reading them, to just general knowledge, you know? That’s what happens! When you are a woman! And because I am a woman, I finished off the bag, and I looked at it, and I gave up.

Because I had already damaged my body and my chances by loading up with so much crap and I had my period and I was crampy and gross and messy and bloated and unhappy and everything sucked and fucking hell, I deserved to eat whatever I wanted because I just do, okay, because life is hard and I wanted more peanut butter cups which are delicious and make things less hard because they just do, okay?

And thus, this hasn’t been such a great week, with the whole “on plan” thing. I didn’t have to do that. I know there are cravings associated with PMS and I am willing to assuage those cravings. I know there are mood things associated, and changes in my body that are less than pleasant, but why did I have to allow that to take me over completely? There was no reason to do that. And the usual release I experience when I relax and stop watching what I eat, when I let myself have anything I have a fancy for – that’s been tempered by a whole lot of upset and uncomfortableness. It’s like I’m trapped inside my body, banging my fists on a locked door and crying nooooooo!, all dramatic-like, and being ignored as terrible things go on without my consent or help.

Ridiculous.

So I’m not going to weigh in this week, because honestly, I know what I did and I know the results of what I did, and I don’t feel the need to confront them, head-on, like. And I’m going to go back to doing what worked and made me feel good, and I’m going to go back to doing my stupid exercise videos and I’m going to get back to where I was before and maybe not bring any more bags of peanut butter cups into the house. That might work okay, too.

fractions don't count

Despite being ever so good and pure all week, and the one perfect day of the weekend where I achieved a very excellent 18-point total (all whiskey), I have this morning found that I gained point six of a pound. It must have been all the bratwurst. Which is very salty. And whiskey is salty too. As is chocolate cake and bagels and greasy piles of eggs and crème brulees. Not exercising? Similarly salty. So this point six -- which doesn't count at all anyway, being a fraction of a pound -- is merely water weight.

Remember this very important weight loss tip from me to you: fractions of pounds only count when you are calculating your total weight loss. Otherwise, they are dumb and probably imaginary.

But really, I am grateful that I only gained a smidge – I knew I was not making the best Food Decisions (see the greasy pile of eggs, above) but tried to keep it balanced by eating a light dinner and thinking fluffy and agile thoughts. That is my other weight loss tip from me to you: fluffy and agile thoughts! Also, liposuction.

There was a part of me that was convinced that I had gained far more than that, with the Food Choices being not so great, and the lack of exercise, but also, I lost that weird buoyant mojo that had me prancing around and feeling good about myself. That brief and shining couple of days, where I could look at my ass in the mirror and think that I looked pretty okay – that has vanished, somehow, and I am feeling lumpier every day. I was thinking that maybe it was imaginary, what with being on a diet, but I knew I was fooling myself, what with not exactly being on a diet quite as much as I pretended I was on a diet. Hooray for holiday weekends!

So, to sum up: feeling lumpy, gained a little, will lose it all and more next week (I've got plans, and some of them involve lawn bowling -- which we all know is extremely aerobic), but that doesn't stop me from wanting to go home and lie down face-first in the pillows and feel extremely sorry for myself.

Maybe I'm just still hungover from Saturday. Which requires more peanut butter cups. Chomp.

dress for success

On Tuesday, the day I go get weighed and clap for everyone and gather into groups to share (though I frequently try to leave before we get to the sharing part of the festivities, because I do not so much play well with others), about an hour before I had to leave to make it to the meeting, I looked down at my lap and realized I was wearing jeans.

Jeans! I don't usually wear jeans. These are my new Hooray Jeans in which I look kind of sweet, and it was all well and good that I was dressed comfortably and attractively and did not actively hate my reflection every time I chanced upon it, but there was a problem. Jeans are heavy. Heavy fabric. Heavy fabric adds imaginary pounds! Imaginary pounds show up on the scale exactly just like regular non-imaginary ones, and once joined, the regular pounds and the imaginary pounds, they would make a number that I really didn't fucking want to see after a week of turning down cookies.

That's right, I turned down cookies. It sucked.

Anyway. So I considered my options. I could not go at all. But that would be wrong. Okay, I could go pantsless. But that would be wrong, too, in a much different way. I could take off my undergarments, thereby lessening the overall bulk and perhaps mitigating the effect of the jeans.

Or I could change into the dress I had in the bag at my feet. The very clingy, very low-cut, somewhat short black one that I had worn one night when I went out with Guy, which I ended up leaving laying on his floor, which he thoughtfully (along with the fishnets) had washed and folded and given back to me to take home, urging me to consider possibly maybe wearing the outfit again soon. Because, you know, it's nice to get dressed up!

So I had a totally inappropriate dress which weighed, by virtue, funnily enough, of its severe inappropriateness for Tuesday at noon at work, much less than the jeans and blouse I was wearing. But there was a ten minute walk over to the building where the meeting is, and it was kind of cold out, and I didn't want to go parading across campus in hooker-wear and a pair of sneakers, because that? Is just a little bit sad. Also, I'd look like a faculty member on a Walk of Shame from a kid's dorm room. Which now that I think about it, is kind of awesome.

A plan! An excellent plan would be to carry the dress with me to the weigh-in! And then I could change in the building there, pop onto the scale, and change back out, and no one would even notice my brief appearance as a Las Vegas lounge act! I was a genius!

And I didn't feel at all like a freak, wearing an evening gown in front of a room full of nice middle-aged nuns. Or when I came back to the meeting, having changed back into my jeans, and another member asked me, very puzzled, "Did you – change?"

The Plan worked, however, and I posted a charming 1.4 pound loss, bringing me to a total of 5 point, uh, something. It is funny how those points of pounds are so important to me, and yet, I keep forgetting what they are exactly.

There was a brief moment of disappointment when I realized that I had been expecting – after having a really brilliant week of Excellent Choices and Good Decision-Making – to have lost at least three pounds, and to have dropped below the Scary No-Good number that gives me fucking hives. Instead, I came neatly to rest right on top of that number, round and perfect and full of ugly.

Next week, though, I will lose, and even if it is a point one of a pound, I will be below that number, and that is something to huzzah about. If I make it through the fourth of july weekend.