Positively Fed UP!

I'm so fucking fed up. Still, I feel underfed, literally and emotionally. It makes absolutely no sense to me how both Steph and I have reached a plateau so soon in our weight loss marathon. I don't even know if it qualifies as a plateau since we haven't lost a pound since the expected first week water weight loss. NOT ONE. How is it logical that two individuals weighing over 300 lbs *gasp* don't shed a single pound, following a strict 1500 calorie, low fat, carb-concsious, whole, unprocessed, organic as much as possible nutrition plan ? THREE weeks. Not one pound. No inches lost either. I don't get it. I really don't. I know we haven't been exercising as much as we should, but we still get in 3 weight lifting sessions a week, and 2-3 30 minute cardio sessions. (I counted shoveling snow last night as a cardio session, and believe me I feel it in my body this morning.)

From previous experience, the only eating plan that ever 'worked' for us was low-carb. And I mean strict Atkins style, combined with 5x/week exercise. Our weight loss was slow then, but steady at least. However, I believed that the reason this plan worked for us was because it kills most cravings. I had lost 50lbs (gained back all of it plus a couple extra.). Why did we stop doing that ? Well it was Christmas 2003, and we said : "Let's take a break for Christmas". I remember on Christmas eve chatting with my cousin's wife, who had recently lost 20lbs herself... She said :"It's sooooo HARD, isn't it?" After we left the party I turned to dh and said " I used to think that too, but it's really not hard at all on Atkins huh ? The lbs just seem to come off regularly." Then between Christmas and New Years I bought the South Beach Diet book to see what all the hype was about, then the Dr. Phil Plan... everyone was claiming : It's not the CARBS, it's the TYPE of carbs. Oooooooh! REJOICE! Let's eat controlled portions of high fiber whole wheat grains!

So I tried South Beach, I didn't lose anything at ALL! (Oh, maybe it's because my body is still in Atkins mode.) I tried Dr. Phil's Ultimate Weight Loss Solution. I even started an iVillage board for it and was the community leader. I started gaining instead of losing. [Insert rebellion binge period here.] In January 2004, my friend Nicole asked me to join Weight Watchers with her. I was so determined to do it this time. I never ate over my points, didn't eat my activity or flex points, and exercised TWO hours a night, 5x/week. I lost 23lbs in the course of 3 months. Then Nicole got pregnant. (Jacky, Chantal, Nicole were pregnant and Tina had recently had a baby girl.) I took it really hard. (Why oh why does everyone tell me that I'm too fat to recreate yet Nicole who's 3 inches shorter and 50lbs heavier than me has a 5 month old baby and is preggo again? Life is so unfair wah wah wah) I fell off the WW wagon and never went back. It was kind of hard on the wallet to pay 20$ a week for someone to tell you how much weight you've gained. So that's my weight loss failure biography for the past 4 years. If you really want to know, I can blog about it from the beginning sometime. I saw my very first dietician at 9 years old. But it's kind of pointless because you all know the ending of this story already :P

I really thought this time was it. I really feel like going out to eat tonight. Why eat spinach, chicken breasts and plain oatmeal to be hungry all the time if we're not losing ? Why ? Yesterday words I never thought I'd hear came out of Steph's mouth : "Maybe we should join the YMCA and go before work, at 5h30 in the morning". Steph the "life-is-not-worth-living-if-I-can't-have-pasta" pasta lover agreed this morning that we probably have to resume the strict low-carbing. One reason that could explain our extreme metabolic resistance is the insuline we are injecting two kinds at a time, twice a day because our bodies can't seem to process the 'good carbs' in low GI fruits and whole wheat grains. But we can't stop the insuline because we're too fat to process sugar. Insuline's job is to take blood sugar and convert it into fat. What a fucking catch 22. So there's another reason to cut delicious whole grains and fruits out of our diet. When we're consuming 20 grams of net carbs or less (net carbs = carbs - fiber), we don't need insuline.

Mercola (mercola.com), who is a hero in my opinion, although he IS starting to try just a tad too hard to sell us products from his website, has said it all along : NO grains. He claims that some people can consume grains and fruit in moderation, but that people like me and Steph should eliminate all grains and eat fruit occasionally. (BUT FRUIT ARE SO GOOD!) I was watching a weight loss competition show on tv and it was the oldest woman of the group (I guessed around 45) who lost the most remarkable amount of weight, with the help of 2 trainers, chinese medicine and herbology. Her trainers, a man and wife who look like a bunch of muscles with a head plopped on top, said that Fruit is "Nature's Candy" and therefore we should really eat it in moderation. I remember the woman's expression when she said *gasp* Nnnno fffruit? I also remember her expression every week as numbers on the scale dwindled down to 135. Although I am still somewhat in complete denial about eliminating carb, I can't deny the gut instinct that makes me feel incredibly guilty every time I'm faced with a delicious plate of whole grains. A little nagging feeling similar to the little guilt pangs I feel when I leave work 15 minutes early when no one is around. A little guilt twinge that I assume is my body, somewhere underneath all the fat insulation trying to tell me that it's allergic to grains.

If I know all this ? Why am I not low-carbing right now ? Probably for the same reason I'm smoking cigarettes when it's a scientifically proven cause of cancer.

Smoke in my black lungs, carbs in my belly
Beaujolais on my lips and full fat creamed coffee
Fatty beef meat cuts tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things

It's no secret that the reason morbidly obese sedentary chain smokers like me are doing this to ourselves because of a self-esteem/worth problem. (This is my final excuse of the day, I swear.) It's really hard for an assertiveness lacking person like me to constantly have to defend my low-carbing choices to the people who don't understand and tell me that I'm ignorant for not choosing healthy carbs. [Side note : HAH! The mail just came in, and there was a Gym brochure in it. Is someone trying to send me a sign?]

Soooooo *breathe* I think that we have no choice. Saturday is grocery day, until then we'll use up our whole grains and fruit supplies, and that day will mark the beginning of a disgustingly tasteless low-carb trial period. I'm going to have no choice but to completely cut out computer time from my evenings, although I will miss chatting with my best friends terribly and we'll have to communicate via blogs or email. I can't spend time on the computer during the few hours of free time I have in the evenings. Not if I want to maintain a clean house, exercise and go to bed at a decent hour. (I've been running on 5 hour nights for a week now. Yikes.) If THIS doesn't work, then I give up and you can nickname me fat bastardette.

Okay well this blog entry is already ridiculously long, so why not talk about why I'm feeling emotionally underfed ? Well, I really hesitated to blog about this, because well, I would like everyone to think that I have at least some parts of my life under control. I don't want people to think that my marriage has flaws. I don't want people to think "They're happy today, but with what she said yesterday, surely they don't have a great marriage." But then again, I also would love for someone to tell me that I'm not alone, that they are feeling like me, and still have a happy marriage. I want someone to pray for my DH to wake the fuck up. Last but not least, my dh has time for nothing but World of Warcraft ever since he bought that damn game, therefore he couldn't care less about my blogging. He doesn't read this anymore.

I'm fed up with feeling like I have no man to take care of me. Don't get all feminist on my ass. I'm as independant as the next gal, (well maybe almost as..) But there is a reason why I'm not a lesbian. I'm tired of having to nag him to take care of our expensive things, like the uncovered snowblower that won't start because there is probably water in the gas tank. I'm tired of being the one who uses the powertools. I'm tired of taking care of the christmas lights every year. I was really resentful last night as I was shoveling snow while he was watching me from the window, all toasty inside. I'm tired of begging him to cut his stupid toenails. (I actually CUT his toenails for him lasts night. They were THAT annoying to me.)

[To be continued.... Chiro appt in 15 mins]