Cookies, donuts, and how life ain't fair.

I ran again yesterday at the gym. I ran 20 and walked 10. It went by in a flash - as I was just trying to get it over with - and I didn't even realize I'd done it once it was over.

The scale, which I've been avoiding getting on for the last couple days due to PMS, was UP big time this morning. Annoying, but could be any number of things. I'm having an okay week so far.

There was a time when WW wasn't this hard for me. It makes sense - when you first start out on a major weight loss effort, you can tell yourself time and again that it's a "lifestyle change" and that you can never go back to your old, mindless ways. But in those first few weeks/months, somewhere deep in your mind, as you're eating more fruit than you would have ever dared so much as look at in your old life, as you're drinking more water than you think your kidneys can process, as you're going to sleep a little bit hungry each night, you daydream about a day when you can return to eating whole pizzas by yourself and having bags of doritos as a snack. You know it's likely never going to be possible to fully live that way again - and who'd want to. It brought along a great deal of misery. But you still hold on to the possibility that you won't always feel like a rabbit munching away on his leafy greens and carrots, that you might someday again be able to eat a bowl of mac n' cheese on a rainy afternoon with the rest of society and not have to cut off an inch of hair to make up for it on the scale.

And that day DOES eventually come in some form or another. No, you can't eat a whole pizza or a container of general tso's chicken or whatever you want from McDonalds every day. But you eventually get to a place, after you've lost the weight and gained the good habits, where you feel like you can have a donut without feeling like you shouldn't. You know you've earned that donut. You've spent hours and hours, weeks, months, years even, of sweating, counting calories, saying no thank you to sweets during the holidays at work - you've earned a guilt-free donut from time to time.

After almost six years following this plan, I'm at that point with it - and have been for quite some time. I've earned a donut. I used to be FAT. VERY fat. I'm now normal. I can wear clothes that other people wear, I can fit in airplane seats, I can ride rollercoasters, I'm in a happy, healthy relationship with an attractive guy. And I worked hard to get to this place. I worked hard for years. I said no to things I wanted and went to the gym when I would have rather been any place else. I knew while I was losing the weight that if I wanted to maintain it, I'd eventually have to learn to live life without as much restriction as I used to lose it. But I also knew I couldn't get the weight off to begin with if I didn't restrict myself more than I would have if it were really the rest of "forever."

It's now very hard for me to be as restrictive as I used to be. I don't feel like I have some kind of "fat debt" to pay off anymore. When I was in the process of losing the weigh, people would ask me if it was hard to change my eating habits; I used to say, "I've spent years eating everything imaginable. I can stand a few years of eating a little less." It felt like penance almost for my sins. I ruined my body for a long time, I had to pay back a little bit to the health bank. And in turn, I'd get to be thin again. Under that structure, I think I've paid off that fat debt by now. I think I've avoided restaurants and "drinks" out with friends and parties with free food for long enough to have paid off that debt. And now I just want it to all balance out. I want to workout sometimes and eat well sometimes. And I want to do NOTHING sometimes and eat a donut sometimes.

But the one snag in that plan is that still want to lose 15 pounds.

And you can't lose pounds when you're maintaining your weight with the above-mentioned donut balance. Apparently I've yet to get this through my head.

Even though, I'd never been SUPER restrictive, EVER, as I lost my weight, I'd still been more restrictive than felt good at times. But I'm human. And I don't want to do that anymore. I did it for years. That's long enough. So we go this route. This route where I do what I want when I want and work sorta hard but not too hard the rest of the time and hope for the best. And I guess what that amounts to is losing 1 pound a month.

Fine.

Right?

Who knows. It has to be fine. Because it's what is.

That said, I had a bit of a mini-breakdown at the gym yesterday after my short workout. A fat-girl breakdown the likes of which I haven't experienced in quite some time.

I was standing in the locker room checking a text message and I realized I was across from a full-body mirror so I glanced up. Now, maybe it was a fat mirror, maybe I was standing in a really relaxed way (i.e. not sucking in at all), or maybe I was really bloated from my period (sorry boys) or from having just ran/drank a lot of water. But whatever it was, it was not a flattering imagine. And I got very upset. Disgusted almost. I looked around at the other girls in the locker room and felt so alone. They all looked perfect. I thought nothing about how unrealistic I was being or how hard it is to live in a town full of stick-thin models or how far I've come or how I know I look perfectly fine walking through my life day to day. Those positive thoughts, as near your mind as they may be in moments like those, cannot save you from feeling blue when it sneaks up on you like that. I looked in the mirror and I was filled with a familiar, old rage, a helplessness, a feeling of "it's so unfair!" and a feeling of worthlessness. I haven't felt that way in years. Intellectually, I remembered how different my life is now and how unhelpful those feelings are. I also remembered how when I was fat I would soothe those feelings by going straight to Wendys. I haven't done that in years either. But regardless it put a cramp in the rest of my evening. When I looked in the mirror I wanted to punch myself over and over or something else equally destructive for being such a failure. I just felt bad. It was fascinating.

And to think, I used to feel that way almost every second of the day. ..It's amazing to recall, really.

All I can do is to keep working on it. And also, almost more importantly, I have to try to remember that I am not my physical flaws. I can feel good about who I am and what I offer the world (and I do regularly feel good about that) without always feeling good about how I look in jeans.

But that's not an emotional healing that's going to come overnight. I've already come very far with that healing in six years. And the rest of the healing will probably be something I'm working on for the rest of my life. In the meantime, I'm going to eat fewer cookies and see what happens. Ugh.