rEASONS i THREW THE BURGER AWAY::::

1-WE HAD A BURGER FROM cream last week Wednesday
2- We had an even bigger burger from Sparkle last week Friday.
3. I had bannana bread for my snack at 0930.
4-I went for the burger at 0130 (4hrs later not bad)
5-I really enjoyed the half of the burger that I'd eaten.
6_

side note: I had those burgers, but, I didn't really enjoy them like I'd wanted to because the fries and the burger were cold once I'd start eating. This was different because I could eat all the food while it was hot. SAVING THE FOOD AND THEN WARMING IT UP LATER WOULD HAVE

7-warmed up food doesn't taste as good.
8-I need to go back to eating my regular breakfast
9-I don't want to be controlled by the food
10- By throwing the food away, I'm still in control of it.
11-It wasn't tasting good anymore.
12-I really didn't want to pack that food all the way back home

Somebody asked me if I had gained weight. The funny thing about that was that I was just thinking to myself that losing weight has to be a PERSONAL journey. Ajourney that is only all about the person that is trying to lose the weight. I had been thinking along those lines becasue once you lose a good amount of the weight it's not exciting anymore. Nobody is asking questions or giving comments. It's just old hat. The only person thinking about it is the person that is going through it. That person is constantly thinking about it. You are trying to figure out where you are at, where you are going and even sometimes where you came from. YOu wonder what people are saying about you, you wonder what you feel about yourself.

See, I have decided that I am at a pretty good weight. I mean I am smaller than I have ever been in my adult life. That is really saying something. I like being about to say that. I like the way I look, I like the way I fel. I ste out to see how the "other" half lived. I now know how they live. I like it. But, it's not as exciting as I thought it would be. I thought there would be more to it. More accolades. More people patting you on the back, more people congratulating you. (Even though I don't like all that, and I wouldn't even want that kind of attention, I still thought..). But it's not like that. It's just me fighting an invisible foe all the time. Not really anybody to talk to about it, not really much to say, but yet a lot going on. It really takes up a lot of my mental space to do this. I ask myself "am I ready to keep going" am I ready to quit"? "Is it worth it" "WHAT am I really doing""what was my goal," "what was my plan" what's the plan now" "is it time to coast" "do I push just as hard" "Is it still working"?

So many questions. NO answers. I want to type just determination, but is that what is keeping me going?

I like the way my body looks now. I like so cute in my clothes. But see that brings me to another issue.

Well, well, I was just thinking about smoking and I realized that the outcome of this smoking thing will be the same as what happened with smoking. Give it some time and soon nobody will give a damn about whether you lost weight or not. Nobody will even remember what you've been through. The truth is that it has already been a year and they probaly have forgotten already. The only thing that may jar their memory is if one of them thinks that they see a small gain or a huge loss. But other than that, nothing.


I realize that life is more than pounds lost or cigarettes not smoked. A lot more. But sometimes I get a little caught up. A little caught up worrying about things that really don't matter, or if they do matter they only matter to me. Sometimes I say "them" , but sometimes it's just me. Maybe what I am saying is that I really do crave the attention more than I care to admit. I hope not.

Why did I start doing this weight loss thing?

1-I wanted to do it for once in my life. 2-I wanted to see what it felt like to be the person that I knew I was destined to be. 3-I wanted to stop hiding from my authentic self. 4-My stomach had already shrunk due to sickness, so it was easy to just start working on cutting back. 5-I didn't want weight to be an issue with my transplant.

SUCCESS SABOTAGE

I really want to write about this topic because there are so many things happening to me and with me right now. Weight loss carries a lot of responsibility along with it. I've always known that and maybe that's some of the reason that I haved avoided trying to lose weight.

I am not comfortable with all these people wanting to share their opinions about me with me. I am stronger now and in a much better position to handle them but I am not comfotable with it.

Another thing I am not quite comfortable with is buying stuff for myself. I feel like I am taking something from my kids when I buy for myself. It's funny how I can only think of one sentence to type, but in my mind it is such a big issue.

I'll get new tennis (my rock-a-dots) soon. I am so excited about getting them. I have new scrubs to wear with them and everything. Come on Fed Ex get them to me. Hopefully by next Monday they will be here. I will try to save all my new outfits until then.


I am going to just PRAY HARDER. That's the only thing I can do when I feel like this. Nothing else makes sense. Trying to figure it out is fruitless. In fact, I don't want to figure it out, I just want to enjoy myself. I just want to live.


Goofynina died last week. She was only 40 years old. I do not look at her death as a sad thing, I look at it as a reason for me to get over all this stuff that is bothering me and get on with living. I look at as an indication of just how short life really is and how we should let go of the small stuff and jus tfocus on things that really matter to us.

I struggled this weekend. I also tried to feed the demon. Something inside would tell me that I would feel much better if I would just have the ....It didn't work. I went to Church's, Popeye's Chacho's, Kentucky, Wendy's and Sheryl's this weekend. None of it made me feel better. I ate cake, drank juice, drove around, put on clothes all in the name of food. NOthing worked. I felt mean as hell. I struggled. I'm still struggling. I guess this is just part of the process.

But tonight was a little different. I chose tuna as my lunch/dinner for work. I figured that even if I ate a lot(which is a bad way to look at it), the tuna would be a good choice because it is low in calories. I ate a small bag of chips with it. I didn't finish the chips, I save some for my lunch at home after I get off the machine. I toasted the bread for my sandwiches because I felt like that would be more satisfying. It was. I took one piece of bread and cut it in half and made a sandwich twice instead of having one sandwich with 2 peices of bread. I think that made me feel like I was getting more also. I still havemore than half of the tuna left. I am going to eat it today, but not for breakfast. For breakfast I am going to eat my toast and 1/2 of a weiner. The other day I had toast, 1/2 weiner, and 1/2 egg for breakfast. I think that was bout 70+35+35=140 cals. That was a good breakfast. Now if I have milk that increases the cals quite a bit. But if I could keep it down to half a cup that would be good. But honestly a 200 or300 cal breakfast aint bad. Especially since I won't have the egg every day.

Today I realize that I am busy worring about my own weight that I don't have time to worry about nobody elses'. My weight keeps me busy enough.

Am I just getting bored with this whole thing? I mean the scale hasn't moved form 95 in a while. But I didn't intend for it to. I made up my mind that I was working on the maintenance phase months ago. So, I really wasn't expecting any losses. Maybe in the back of my mind I was. Maybe I felt the losses would continue even without me trying.

Maybe my body just wants to get back to that larger size..... Maybe this is not normal for me to be this size. I mean I haven't been this size ever. Size 10? I still don't believe it and I havn't been right since.

Self-sabotage. It is real. I do do it. *Fear of success.* (crickets)

I got full after my tuna tonight though. I am thankful for that. I didn't think I knew how to get full anymore. I shouldn't say that. I got full today after I ate a thigh and half my fries and half a biscuit at Kentucky. I was totally satisfied.

I am soooo hungry. I haven't been this hungry in about a year. But here I sit today, thinking about what food I could eat and how fast I could eat it.

It's depressing me. I am having mood swings.

But I am just going to have to fight thru this one just like I did all the others. But for some reason, I feel like this one is different. Cravings to end all cravings. They are all the same, though, just different tactics that the devil is using to to get me to sabotage my commitment. Commitment, what a nice word. I am committed to this. Some times I lose sight of exactly what I am doing. Some times I wonder if I have already done what I set out to do.

See, part of the problem is that I have never been this sucessful before. I didn't see this one coming. Me, in a medium pair of pants and a large (with no x's) shirt. I feel like I have been sucker punched, in a good way, but punched all the same.

My mantras at the beginning of this were: FOOD IS NOT MY FRIEND, FOOD IS NOT FOR ENTERTAINMENT. And there is no day that thisis more eveident than it is now. See, I have been eating when I wanted to and once the food is gone, I still don't feel lany different. I still feel exactly the same. My mind keeps telling me that something would be different if I ate this...or something would be different if I ae that. Not true, not true at all.

96.0,kg That's good real good. Good because the scale has been saying things like 97.0 and 97.3 lately. That really had me scared. A 2kg gain is a lot. 4pounds. Although I felt like it had a lot to do with TOM and the fact that it was the week of Xmas, I really didn't like feeling like I had gained that much weight in just a few days. The last time I'd gotten on the scale and was happy it said that I weighed 95.3kg. I didn't feel like it was a true weight, but I was glad to see that I was at least definately in the 95 kgs. Now I did miss a day of dialysis(Wed) and that contributed to the gain, but still.

So, yesterday morning, I decided that I had not been eating my 1-200 cal breakfast. I felt like I ate better when I started the day off with that breakfast. So, yesterday was my first day back on it. I did much better when I ate that way. I also went back to eating my snacks. In other words, breakfast, lunch, dinner and 2 snacks. Lots of water and some ice chips. That's how I did it.

I only have

I have not been eating good for a few days now. I have had a lot on my mind and I have been stressed out. Most of it had to do with me feeling inadequate about what I was able to do for my kids for Christmas. I would have liked to do more, but I couldn't. I just didn't have enough money and was no way to rectify that. I was broke. There was a promise of a credit card coming, but it got stolen and I had no plan b. But that's a whole nother post.

What is going on with me now is kind of a catch 22 situation. The catch 22 is that I am stressed and it is also that these are the holidays. Another monkey wrench in this plan is that it's TOM. But let's stick with the first two. Stress. I know that siince I have been stressed, I don't have saiety as I once was. I'm just not getting full like I had been before. The bad part about this is that this is causing more stress.


I don't know how to proceed. I feel like I should just ride this out. Go with it. Give in. Let it happen. See where it takes me. I feel like fighting it is the wrong thing to do. Fighting it causes me more stress and it seems to make the urges stronger. It seems to make me feel like I am being denied some basic human right which makes me mad. It also makes me feel poor. Poor like when I lived with Betty poor.

Eating makes me feel rich, like I have arrived. It makes me fell like they can't ever deny me again as long as I can go and pick up anything I choose to eat. No mater what I have been denied, as long as I can leave that place and go and have whatever I desired, the denial didn't happen.

So, this week when I think about my inability to purchase or provide things the way I wanted to, my next thought would be food. There was no consideration for what I had eaten, or how my stomach felt, just a need to replace those thoughts with food.

It seemed that as long as I was eating, I couldn't think about lack. It's like the food gave my brain some signal that everything was ok. It replaced that bad thought with a good feeling.

Yesterday, I had decided that it would be ok for me to eat McDonalds. I felt like it could be comforting and that it was ok to be comforted. I made up my mind that I would even have a apple pie. But it was xmas eve and they were closed. I almost cried. The tears formed in my eyes. That was bad. But what I did was replaced those thoughts with thoughts of another old favorite, convinience store hot dogs, chips, soda, and honey bun. Just like old times. The mixture. I have had a mixture like that in almost a year. But it was nothing to go right back to it. Nothing. Now to my own credit, I didn't eat it like I would have last year, all together. A bite of this and then a bite of the honey bun. I actually didn't even eat the bun, I gave it to D, but the fact that I bought it with the intention of eating it like I used to is a little unnerving. I did however eat the entire hot dog. It wasn't that good and I ate long after I should have stopped is what is bothering me about that. It was like I had no control. I haven't seen myself like this in a long time. I also haven't eaten in the car in a long time either. That's was when I really got concerned about the whole thing. I mean, I felt like I should have been able to contain myself until I was in a better position to eat. I just felt like Iwas an old dog with no control.

Today ain't much better. I am not practicing control today either. I am just eating whenever I think of a combination that sounds good. I think I have opened 3 sodas in the last 4 hours. Noalthough I have not drank even one third of those sodas, I know that this behavior is out of control for me. Hell, it's terrible for anybody to behave this way.

ANd sleep, I have been sleep all day. I wake up long enough to go and find something to "taste" in the kitchen. Grazing. I had completely cut that out of my life. I see what it is doing to Lor, so why am I doing it to myself?

I have a thought and I act on it. I just can't believe this is me behaving this way. I know that it will be there tomorrow. I know what to do if it ain't. I just don't know why I am behaving this way.

Now I did say that I am going to enjoy my holidays, just like I did for Thanksgiving. I didn't beat up myself for that. So, why am I feeling so negative about eating this time. Is it because I am eating and on top of that I am having the blues? Is that why I feel so hopeless about it? Is that why I am afraid that I can't come out of it. Would it help if I allow myself to eat within reason and yet have a positive attitude?

How much of this has to do with me needing to stand up for mysel fand now wanting to sabatoge myself? How much of this is giving another person exactly what they want? How much of this is just playing right into that persons plans to get me to give up myself the same way I have for the last 20 years? How much of this is being afraid to get to the next level? How many times have I been here before? How many things have I failed to do because I get scared? Am I scared?

There are always going to issues.

This is my fork in the road. All of my life I have chosen to go the route with the good food. The route that has the big stomach, the extremely large breast, legs that rub together. I always chose the the fried chicken lane. For some reason it made me feel loved, safe, secure, steady, alive. It was always something that needed to be worked on. Even if I didn't actually work on it, it was on the to do list. So, what happens to the Baretta we all know and love if I conquer this? If she beats this? If I just choose not let it control me? What if I conquer it? I won't even know who she is and that is scary. How will I deal with problems if I can't eat them away?



There has been no thought of FOOD IS FOR FUEL, OR FOOD IS NOT FOR ENTERTAINMENT, OR FOOD IS NOT YOUR FRIEND. All of that has held no place



But I know that won't work because it won't ever end.

Today I weigh 97.4kg before dialysis. Whooohoo!!! The last time I weighed 97.4 it was after dialysis. So, if I am correct, that means I will weigh even less once I get off the machine. And to think that a couple of weeks a go I was worried that I was gaining weight and that I wouldn't be able to get my mind right again to lose it. Well, I am losing it again, but it has been a struggle. I have had to think about it, walk away from it, turn it down, make decisions about it, decide against it, decide to do it. It has taken all that I have had. It has been constantly on my mind, either in the form of thinking about how it affects me, or how it effects other people. I have found myself thinking about people who have had the surgery, and why I choose not to do it that way. I am thinking about people who join gyms. I am thinking about how thankful I am that I can get full off of a half of a tuna sandwich. I think about how much people graze. I try to remind myself not to graze.

I'm trying.


The good is that FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE I WAS ABLE TO FIT CLOTHES AT TARGET.

I LOOKED IN THE MIRROR AT MY BODY AND I LIKED WHAT I SAW!!!!

I LIKED IT SO MUCH THAT I WENT INTO THE LIVING ROOM AND SHOWED DH MY BODY WITH NOTHING BUT UNDIES ON!!!!!

HE WAS SO IMPRESSED, THAT HE ASKED ME TO COME BACK AND SHOW IT TO HIM AGAIN. (I have never shown him my body without any clothes on it.)

I WAS ABLE TO BUY TWO XL SHIRTS THAT FIT. (for 1 and 2 dollars)

I do like what I am seeing. I do like the way I am feeling.
I do have a positive outlook, meaning that I know that what I am doing is positive.
I know that it's worth it. I really believe that I can do it.

How is it that they have put me on a steroid? A steroid? Gaw!!!! yes, peeps, I am on a steroid regimine and it ain't good for me. For the last two weeks I have been desperately wanting to go back to eating sweets with my food. I really don't want to go back to eating that way because I feel that I ate more when I ate sweets with my regular food. I feel like it made the

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