Chronicles of a Late Bloomer

Starting weight: 335.8
This week’s average: 320.5
Change this month: +8.8
Overall change: -15.3
Next milestone: 20 pounds gone (again)

Here’s how the damage ended up. I can’t really write anything more than this today, except to acknowledge this: One of my daily weigh-ins at the end of March was 309. This weekend, I maxed out at 322. The “average weight” game is supposed to ease the blow of that kind of fluctuation somewhat (and, as you can see, it does — to the tune of 4-5 pounds, in this case) but still. These are realities and it is time for me to face them.

I have continued to track my daily weight and average it for the past month, in spite of wishing that April would just die a horrible death and be done with it. I am an emotional eater, and I do pretty well when my stress level rides between 60% and 80%, but I have not yet built up alternative coping mechanisms for when my stress skyrockets past that point. This month:

1. I have faced the possibility of breaking up.
   
2. I have traveled to my parents’ house for a visit.
   
3. I have gotten behind on work to a degree proportional to the visit home.
   
4. I have attended more than a dozen job interviews.
   
5. I have survived a serious health scare.
   
6. I have managed my family’s feelings about a gay brother who just came out.
   
7. I have learned that my current roommate will be moving out and, without a definitive answer about jobs or locations, I am back in the business of finding a new roommate.
   
8. I have hospitalized 2 of my clients for suicidal threats.
   
9. I have braved some serious financial difficulties.
   
10. I have begun to consider serious future plans, including PhD applications, licensure, and moving. A big move. Like, a state-to-state move. Again.

Ironically, we could have stopped at number one and still capped out my 80% stress threshold, so you can see where things got out of whack for me.

Part of this whole project is about getting to know and understand my body better. How does she respond to illness? To stress? To happiness? What happens to her during my monthly cycle? How does she respond when I have good days or bad days?¹

Here’s what I’m learning.

• My body’s “natural” weight when I’m bingeing is around 340 pounds.
  
• My body’s “natural weight” when I’m not bingeing (but not really restricting my food and not exercising) is around 315 pounds.
  
• My body (or my mind? or both?) has some sort of plateau around 300 pounds that is hard to break through.
  
• My body does not seem to respond well to sugars, due in large part to the diagnosis of PCOS that I’ve had for over a decade.
  
• My body gains around 3-5 pounds each month during pms, then releases it plus a few more pounds if I can more or less stay on track throughout.

As a final thought, I’ll mention that the late-blooming orchid is still full of billowy flowers, which show no sign of so much as wilting. In the meantime, another of the orchids from the front window is sending out an arm full of buds.

This metaphor — of starting over with fresh starts and building on previous lessons in the meantime — is not lost on me.

1. By this, I mean emotionally good/bad days, and not good/bad eating days, since I don’t assign value judgments to foods. [↩]

Despite what they say, you can go home again. And again, and again, and again… in all the good ways and the bad. I’ve been struggling through the month of April. Warning signs have included: bingeing, isolating, complaining about constant overwhelm, obsessively planning for the future (instead of living in the moment), anxiety attacks, falling behind on obligations, a general sense of fatigue or malaise, money woes, a world overtaken by clutter, and — did I mention? — BINGEING.

I had a great time at home with my family. I thoroughly enjoyed my night out with the girls. I relaxed, I got hit on, I came home to a puppy so smooshable that you’d get a stomach-ache. Life isn’t so bad, when you think about it.

But signs of trouble exist elsewhere: (1) I have continued to pursue my current health scare with my doctor. (2) I have had multiple interviews for new jobs and will probably have one or more offers next week, yet still feel that I may want to stay with my current employment because (3) I have decided to pursue my PhD applications sooner than later. (4) I may have to move from my current home and that always stresses me out. (5) My brother recently came out to my parents and I have been working overtime to manage everyone’s emotions about that.

On top of everything, and probably most importantly, (6) my wonderful relationship with Record Store Romeo may be slowly winding to an end. I don’t know for sure about this, but two nights before I boarded the plane for home, we had our first, “Maybe we should just break up” talk. For now, things are sort of back to normal, but we both feel, to varying degrees, that we are living on borrowed time.

In fact, in therapy yesterday, we pinpointed this as the source of all the frantic, frenetic and destructive energy. I seem to be shoring myself up against what I anticipate will be the most difficult loss of my adult life to this point. In doing so, I have fallen back on my most familiar coping mechanisms: (1) numbing the pain with food, (2) obsessively, compulsively planning contingencies for all of the Great Unknowns of my immediate and far-off future, and (3) making ridiculous amounts of numbered and bulleted lists. Sorry.

I always gain some weight when I go home, but I have gained a total of 10 pounds in April. I am feeling it. I imagine people see me as a gigantic slug, which is funny because I’m still 15-20 pounds lighter than when I first jumped back on the health bandwagon this year, and at that time I didn’t think too much about it. Still, 10 pounds. Insert inappropriate cursewords here, in all permutations of maternity, blasphemy, and bodily functions.

What’s interesting to me is that as you wander through BlogLand, you pick up hints of similar slumps in others. Many of you are handling it better than I, with your fancy good attitudes and reasonable emotional reactions and logical thinking. OH THE LOGIC. Y’all are killing me. I’m not ready for logic. I’m still wallowing in everything, and not entirely sure how to get from here to there.

Dear April, you kind of suck. GO AWAY.

I’m eating a salad, okay? SHUT UP.

Tomorrow, I ditch all of this stress and frustration for a pseudo Spring Break in the mountains. It’ll be nice to see my family, celebrate my brother’s graduation, and work in half-a-day of lounging.

On top of everything, though (and, this is where you should be truly jealous), it looks like I’ll get to meet Rachel and Meta for dinner and debauchery! I’m a lucky girl.

Before I go, I have to go for more lab/blood work due to certain suspicious elevated something-something levels that showed up last time. I’m trying not to freak out too much about the fact that the doctor used the words “lupus” and “rheumatoid” and”neurologist” and “temporal arteritis.” Instead, I will just be excited about my vacation and let the rest of the pieces fall where they may.

Then, I’ll arrange them when I get home.

Starting weight: 335.8
Last week: 313.5
This week: 311.7
Change this week: -1.8
Overall change: -24.1
Next milestone: 25 pounds gone

I don’t want to get too excited here, but one of my morning weigh-ins¹ this week was well into the 300-plus-single-digit range. I’ve been over 300 pounds since I was 18 or so, and the lowest I ever got was during my 2004 Weight Watchers attempt when I reached 304.2 pounds and then crept back up to 340. I’ve never crossed the 300-pound threshhold in my adult life and I’m looking forward to that.

300-plus-single-digit is sort of exciting because it brings that goal into focus, along with a few others. Like, I’m annoyed that my Next Milestone goal has been “25 pounds gone” for so long. Soon, it will be mine.

1. Keep in mind that I weigh daily but only report a weekly average. [↩]