Too Much Bread

Another weight-loss diary.

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My long hair balances out my chunky lower half. I need mass up here to mirror the mass down there. Short hair always makes me look dumpy. And oh, to have shoulders and a neck that look elegant when they're exposed.

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Wooooooooo

Yesterday was OFFICIAL WEIGH DAY. My weight was back down to 143. YES. YES YES YES YES YES YES YES.

Haven't posted in a day or two cus I've been DOING things. Going outdoors etc. Here's what I ate today:

Breakfast: Three milky coffees (three!) and a little bag o' dry roasted peanuts Lunch: Cup o' tea and a delicious chicken korma (home made) Dinner: More tea, hunks o' cheese, four plum tomatoes and a handful o' cashew nuts

I'm eating the cheese and cashew nuts right now. My eating schedule is a bit mad.

On Friday night I went to the movies and so popcorn was my dinner, and yes, I did have some sweet popcorn. But I rarely go to the movies, and also, I had half sweet and half salty. (YES they will put both in one bucket! WHO FREAKING KNEW.) And my friend helped me eat it. I deemed it a minor enough diet infraction to be acceptable.

Tomorrow I've got pub plans (booze is bad for diets) and then I'm leaving town to stay with TB for a week. I'm really hoping I can actually lose weight while I'm with him, we do tend to stuff our faces with chocolate and stuff. You know what couples are like. We're idiots.

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Blah blah sugar blah food

What I ate today:

Breakfast - honey & lemon drink, three crackers with cheese and coleslaw Lunch - milky tea, tortelloni with pesto (and cheese) Dinner - orange juice, flaked almonds

I've arranged this stuff into three meals but really it was two meals and a midnight snack. Still feeling good about everything. Starting to get suspicious about how good dieting feels. And I know I'll be able to stick to this when I go out of town next week, and when I go on holiday the week after that - it's just avoiding sugar, that's all it is. It's not knowing the exact constituents of everything I'm eating, it doesn't make restaurants a hell - I just won't have dessert. It's so simple.

But I always get suspicious when it feels easy.

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re: dresses and curves. you should look for dresses that have a 50s silhouette. fitted up top, in at the waist, and a full skirt. if you look at vintage/retro styles/pictures you'll see where you can walk that line between woman and girl.

Oh yeah, there are looks that work for me and all, I'm not saying that. But this blog is about finding motivation to lose weight, and being able to do the little-girl-lost look is one small reason. It's also an outlet for all the silly little things I miss out on or get annoyed by or lament, because I'm not thinner than I am. All the slender-thighed gazelle girls with loose plaits and long eyelashes - this is where I get to wail because I'm not one of them. 

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I can't look this adorable in a pretty flowery dress. I'm too curvey. When I have bodyhate, I think, I'd look like a gross elephant masquerading as a girl in that dress. When I have bodylove, I think, I'd look like a woman dressed up as a little girl in that dress. Not in the good way. Having these curves means I can't dress up as innocent very effectively. Sometimes I feel like an innocent child and I'd like to be able to look the way I feel. Is this a weird issue? Do others have this feeling?

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Question 18.

What food is your weakness?

Uh. Cheese? But then I don't consider cheese as a naughty forbidden food. Bread, I guess. Occasionally I'll get a slice of bread, squash it into a flat layer, then screw it up into a ball and peel the now-complex layers off slowly. This is related to dermatophagia I guess? I like foods with textures like that, layers, things you can play with. Baklava is the best, it has so many fragile layers. When I realised that bananas can be split lengthways into three, I shit a brick. 

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WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME loljk

I was too BUSY to post yesterday. I can't post EVERY day, internet. You're so demanding. You just take, and take, and you NEVER give ANYTHING BACK. HOW CAN I WIN WITH YOU anyway yeah I was 144 this morning so I am a suck-cess.

Yesterday's nosh:

Breakfast - milky coffee Lunch - salami & provolone sandwich, coffee Dinner - cheese & ham on crackers, honey & lemon drink Snacks - milky tea

Still doing well, feeling very positive - occasional slight urge to binge, but given that I pretty much have permission to do so as long as I don't eat sugar, I'm handling it fine. One more pound to lose and I'll be back at my low weight, at least according to this blog. Small goals, easily attained. 

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To look this good in tiny shorts and an oversized shirt. (To look this good in just one of my boyfriend's shirts.) And to have legs that socks do not roll down. How do the girls keep their socks up like this? I honestly don't know.

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Fry them in butter, it's amazing.

Three and a half pancakes packed away in my gut suitcase.

I like to mix up combinations of butter, sugar, maple syrup and lemon juice on my pancakes. Today I tried adding a little salt to one that only had maple syrup on it, and it was delicious. Next year: bacon. Here is what I have et today.

Breakfast - Milky coffee, aforementioned elaborate croissant sandwich Lunch - Milky coffee Dinner - Milky tea, three and a half pancakes Snacks - More tea, honey & lemon drink, cough sweets 

I ended up with a half pancake because I tried honey & lemon, and it was... unbelievably bad. I didn't want to waste the pancake, but then I realised that space in my stomach was a far scarcer resource than pancake batter. So out it went. I did well today. I've been doing well every day. Maybe that's because I know I won't have to go hungry.

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Pancake Day.

SO! 145 pounds today! GOOD. I am doing okay. Staying away from sugar (except when it's necessary for the horrible flu I have, such as honey & lemon and cough sweets) is working out.

I did eat more than I meant to yesterday:

Breakfast - milky coffee, vegetables & cheese Lunch - more milky coffee Dinner - milky tea, potato & leek soup (add a bit of cheddar srsly it is delicieux) with toast Snacks - more milky tea, cup of honey & lemon (with brandy), leftover pilau rice, 1 square of very dark chocolate (90% cocoa), loads of cough sweets

Although, if I recategorised that dinner to a lunch, and claimed that the pilau rice and chocolate were my dinner, it's actually not a bad day. And I've decided, I mustn't beat myself up for eating if I really, really wanted to eat. And I did. And I stuck to my no sugar rules. That "vegetables & cheese" breakfast was supposed to be vegetable sticks with houmous, but I only noticed that the houmous had gone off after I'd sliced up all the vegetable sticks. So I just ate them with cheese.

Today is going pretty well. Made an elaborate croissant sandwich for breakfast: ham, cheese, red pepper and Philadelphia, and then I put the whole thing under the grill until the cheese melted - it was incredible. But, it's Pancake Day. There's no way I'm missing out on sugar and lemon on pancakes, on Pancake Day. It's like, my favourite holiday.

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Question 17.

Do you have an eating disorder?

No. I used to be a bit crazy when I dieted in the past, when my life was a lot more empty than it is now. When I lived on my own. I'd restrict down to 200 calories a day for a while, then I'd spend ten pounds on junk food and spend a day slowly eating it all - I never did the thousands of calories in half an hour semi-conscious binge thing, it was more about making sure I wouldn't have to go without eating for more than a second, all day. I'd buy enough food to last me twelve hours. And I'd plan it in advance, so I could make sure I collected some of every kind of food I'd been missing while I was restricting. I even ended up shoplifting binge food pretty often. There was one department store in my hometown that sold really expensive boxes of chocolates, and it had two entrances - I'd just pick up a box of chocolates, carry it upstairs, browse a little on the way out, and leave. Ridiculously easy. 

So maybe that was EDNOS. I just had nothing in my life - I'd finished school, I split up with my boyfriend and he ended up with all our friends, I had no job... I had nothing to think about except food, nothing to look forward to except skinny. But gradually I managed to put things in the other areas of my life - got a hobby, made friends through that, got a job, found a boyfriend - and now it's easy not to fall into those patterns. Partly because I have too much to lose, and partly, I just have too much SHIT TO DO. I can't spend an hour planning out tomorrow's meals and then working out how to shave off six calories here and four calories there. If I have a spare hour I'd rather be playing Nikopol.

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A fabulous dress/hat combo. I long for summer. Also thinness.

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Hunks.

Had a terrible nightmare last night that I was suddenly properly fat. And naked in front of my boyfriend's mother. Ugh.

Still 146 this morning. I just realised that the throat lozenges I've been eating are not sugar-free like I thought. In my defence I didn't buy these, my housemate fetched them for me. Which is sweet. I just wish I'd specified sugar-free. I've been packing them in after brushing my teeth at night thinking it's fine cus they have xylitol or whatever. God dammit.

Food yesterday was as follows:

Breakfast - two coffees with cream and a hunk of brie Lunch - milky tea and a hunk of cheddar (a pattern emerges)

Dinner - FREAKING HUGE roast dinner. Chicken, potatoes, mushrooms roasted in garlic butter, sprouts, carrots, peas.

I had fewer potatoes than usual, so, it was basically health food.

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Question 16.

When did you first decide to lose weight?

I think I was about 17 the first time I actually dieted? I went to Weight Watchers with my mother. I was 175 lbs when I started going; stopped when I got down to 160. Then I maintained for a year or two without caring about my weight before deciding to diet on my own at around 19. Got down to 135 at one point, that's the thinnest I've been in my twenties. I'm 146 now. It's depressing to think of how far I am from my LW. And how long I've been trying to get under 130. Bah. THIS TIME. I'M SURE.

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The whole baggy jumper tucked in at the waist thing? Yeah, can't do that. Too much gut. BUT IT LOOKS SO COOL.

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Sugar-free desserts

I've been doing some research. I might start posting simple ideas here. Stuff to do with fruit to make it less boring. And less cold. It's still really chilly in England.

Fried Banana Slices

1 ripe banana 1/2 oz butter 4 cardamom pods 1 cinnamon stick (or 1 tsp ground cinnamon)

Slice the banana as you would for cereal, fairly thickly. Heat butter, cardamom pods and cinnamon in a pan, until butter bubbles. Add banana slices. Fry for a minute or two on each side, until golden brown and slightly mushy.

Delicious on its own, or as a topping for Greek yoghurt.

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Sugar dun dun dun dun dun dun ah honey honey

146 this morning. Weight quickly gained can be quickly lost, right? Right?

Still on a vague low-carb kick - I think mostly, though, I just want to get rid of sugar from my diet. I gave up sugar for a year in my teens (braces) and got absurdly skinny. If I craved something sweet, I'd just eat fruit, or peanutbutter.

I just googled "sugar-free desserts" and found a forum post asking for sugar-free, flour-free, Splenda-free dessert ideas. Sounds ideal! Unfortunately, nearly all the replies suggest using stuff with artificial sweeteners or alternatives to flour. I'm not interested in searching for flax flour and I'm not interested in filling my diet with sweeteners - all of them have SOME harmful side-effects and I can tell the difference anyway. Or the repliers ask, does she eat honey, or maple syrup? I should clarify - when I say "I'm giving up sugar", I mean, I'm giving up everything with a sugar percentage above, let's say, 10%, except fruit. So not just the white stuff. Anything that's going to spike my blood sugar, rot my teeth, and taste predominantly sweet.