12 steps to losing weight II

Right after posting my 12 steps to weight loss I remembered that I had left out the most important food group...chocolate; yes chocolate has its own food group and the chocolate food group also covers all delicious sweets like donuts and cake.

When I'm trying to lose weight (as I now am) I have to keep all of the sweets (chocolate!!) out of my house or I will begin eating it and won't stop until it's all gone.

Personally I think it sucks that chocolate won't help me lose weight because chocolate is so damned good; however, once I begin eating even the smallest piece of chocolate, not only do I eat all the rest of the chocolate in my house, I will also eat everything sweet .

I also hate to binge! I wake up with a food hangover after I've binged, and b/c I loathe throwing up, I purge through excessive exercise, yet the fatter I get, the more difficult I find working out.

With this extra weight while I workout, I feel like an elephant dancing around by stomping one huge leg after another to the  music. As long as I can't see myself in the mirror, I can keep working out, but if I catch my fat self in the mirror I am horrified! And by horrified, I mean HORRIFIED!

Last week when I went to my doctor's appointment of course I had to have my weight taken; the office has this huge scale; it's like the kind of scale the vet puts dogs on; I felt like I was 'live stock' being weighed before slaughter.

I knew I was going to be weighed, so I made certain that I could easily take off any extra clothes and my shoes before standing on the 'cattle scale'. I think that lots of women do this but I'm not certain, I was so surprised to discover that I had lost 10 pounds...yay me...but also 'oh shit', I have another 50 pounds to go. Fifty pounds! That's about the size of a severely anorxic woman; I'm wearing a 50 lb anorexic around my stomach and hips! Crap!

As I am losing weight, I am also exploring reasons for having gained so much. I think I'm trying to construct my body, my self image, as a more 'protected me'. This idea has a much bigger story before it, but I'll write that later.

Most of us anorexics have very complicated rules for living; number one; all things in an anorexic's life must go as we have planned or KABOM. And by KABOOM I mean 'where are the Oreos".

When I'm binging I can't stop eating until the entire package of cookies (chocolate chip), or dark chocolate is gone, and by gone I mean heading right for my stomach and thighs. Sweets are like a poison to me.

On some level I envy alcoholics because their only way to get well is to stop drinking; not so for anorexics...we're addicted to food whether we're eating or not, but when we starve ourselves I believe that we are stuck in a Catch 22; meaning that unlike alcoholics who give up alcohol, anorexics must be around food, must eat food, must pay attention to food, and, for me, once I stop over eating I move right on to not eating at all. I don't have a proper food paradigm.

I'm going to try just smelling food from now on and let that be enough; no more eating...I wish.