One pound.....that's all.....

Yep.  That's reality now.  We just have to take it one pound at a time.  And right now in my head even THAT is not an easy task.   But I know it's where I have to be.

The last week has been difficult.  I went from the elation of the competition being over to a place of awkwardness and fear.  I went from eating very little processed food and fast food to almost every meal being junk.   And let me tell you - my body has rebelled.  It really DOESN'T want me to feed it crap, no matter HOW MUCH my head says it does.  I have had headaches and stomach aches and been horribly bloated.  The scary part of this is if I continue to eat the junk, my body will get used to it again and I won't feel this bad.   I can easily force my body to become immune to the unhealthy feelings and make me forget how bad I've felt over the last few days.   And for me (unlike Steph, whose conscience is much more pure than mine) I have no guilty emotional feelings about any of it.  My head is PERFECTLY fine with eating whatever.  In fact, it really, really wants to.  After all, I have nobody to answer to now.  Nobody to keep track of what the scale says.  Which, by the way, has changed quite dramatically over the past 6 days.  I'm blaming that partly on the bloating, partly on the fact that I'm using a different scale - but mostly because I don't want to have to face the fact that what I eat really, really matters.

This is an area where Steph and I differ greatly.  To her, food is fuel.  She eats because she's hungry.  Unfortunately that actually works AGAINST her at times because of her blood sugar issues.  It's important for all of us to keep our blood sugar stable, and in a perfect world everybody would eat a 150-200 calorie snack every 3 hours that consists of a mixture of carbs, protein and fat.  But it's doubly important for somebody with a diabetic background and type 1 diabetes rampant in the family to keep a close eye on that blood sugar.   So most of the time I actually have to TELL Steph to eat something. (Seriously, who does that?  I can guarantee you nobody has ever had to tell ME to eat!  LOL)

My point is, where Steph views food as fuel, I view food as fun.  And usually that fun food doesn't consist of oranges and celery and the like. So now that we both feel like crap I am having a much harder time letting go of my "fun" than she is.   I'm sure you've heard this before - and depending on where you are on the spectrum you either totally understand it or you don't get it at all - but it's very comparable to an alcoholic trying to come off a binge and dry up.   There are so many psychological and physiological factors that come in to play that are much more complicated than just changing the menu.

Sooooooo......here we go again. I will take up my sword and fight these demons again.  I have to keep in mind that there's a place I need to get to - a place where mornings aren't depressing when I'm looking in the closet, a place where photographs don't make me cringe and where stomach aches aren't a daily visitor.  And if I have to slay a few (more) dragons to get there, then I have to start swinging.  Because now I know I CAN - even if it's just one pound at a time.