I fear social situations... I'm going to Reno this weekend and I usually bring Luna bars with me when I travel as "go to" food. They have many vitamins, soy protein and they are very yummy. But I can't live on them. I'm not worried about the notorious Reno buffet scene...there are always fruits and vegetables and I want to stay on program SO BADLY this weekend that I am planning my food in advance by blogging about it! Like they say in my Weight Watcher meetings, "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail". Harsh but true! Friday hangin' out with my sistah/pal Kathleen is my biggest unknown. She has already asked me in advance what I can eat, is planning a Mediterranean style hummusy feast...I e-mailed her to request Trader Joe's Eggplant Hummus since it's way lower in points for me...I'm saving up flex points during the week and planning a morning walk or jog on Saturday and Sunday. I checked the Fitzgerald's site and they don't have fitness facilities from what I can see...I'm just gonna have to get up early to beat the heat since weather.com says 95 degrees every day! I've been really busy catching up at work since I was off sick last week, and I've been slightly stressed with all the backlog of billing, computer dying on me, etc. But I've stayed on program throughout. I'm a pretty strong-willed woman. 2 whole days worth!

Late night Eating

What is up with me waking up at 3 am or 4 am and just wanting to head to the kitchen and eat? I'm not hungry. I'm not bored. I'm not celebrating anything. Why do I feel the need to comfort myself in the middle of the night with needless eating? I laid in bed Saturday night and thought of going to the cupboard and grabbing some cookies. I stared at the ceiling for half an hour talking myself out of it, and I did NOT succumb. But I have "sleep eaten" plenty of times in the past, and may do so again. WHY, god, WHY? I don't understand. I used to be afraid of the dark when I was little...[HELL, I had a night light into my teens, what am I saying?] Is food taking place of the night light? Is that my comfort? Rob and I have incompatible sleeping styles, and often sleep in separate quarters...could it be loneliness? It's a strange phenomenon. I'm stoked that I was able to talk myself out of it , and hope I continue to do so. I mean, if I have the food points coming, fine, whatever I'll have a snack once in a while and not flog myself over it. But I'd like to figure out what triggers that and how I can change the need to comfort myself with food in the wee small hours of the morning.

I googled "eating in the middle of the night" and found that there's a name for my late night food dilemma- it's actually called Night Eating Syndrome. This is a great article about it!



I eat too little during the day and too much in the evening. I know Oprah swears by her rule to not eat after 7:30 p.m. or somesuch...Should I gradually start gearing my food intake toward that goal?

I have a looooooooooong way to go spiritually and emotionally in many areas of my existence. As I wrote before, the mechanics of not eating or taking drugs or drinking and working exercise into my day has been rather easy. It's not difficult for me to just say no. Having lost weight first, it was that much easier to get sober. Behavior modification? Not a problem. But I have done very little in regard to developing my spirituality. I haven't worked at deeply examining my emotions and trying to heal. I know it doesn't make me a bad person, I just feel the desire to take myself, my evolution to another, deeper level. I guess I'll just stay open.

Now and Then
I'm so excited by this forum. Thanks for all the good wishes both public and private! We're all in this boat together. I'm just ready to trade the tugboat for a yacht at this point. The inspired ideas and thoughts of what to share and how to proceed make my head spin, and it's a good feeling to feel jump started again!

Just in case I forget how I used to was:

Then: weighed 346.8 Now: 213 and dropping
Then: Size 32 pants 4X top Now: Size 18 pants/ Medium top!
Then: Average normal food intake: 60 points a day (3,000 calories plus)
Now: 26 points a day 1300 calories
Then: Frequent stops at 7-11 for candy without looking at Nutritional Labels
Now: I can't remember the last time I ate anything without looking at the Nutritional Label first, and NEVER buy anything with more than 9 grams of fat in it.
Then: Couldn't walk to the corner without getting winded
Now: I get between 30 and 60 minutes of exercise at least 5 days a week

The next time my Inner Bitch chastizes me for being stagnant or treading water...I'm gonna have to beat her down. Or at least take her outside and give her a good talking to.

You have to start somewhere. I'm hemming and hawing, teetering and tottering, playing with the same 10 pounds for the past three years. I'm a 42, almost 43- years-young woman defined by many wonderful qualities...but for this blog, however, I am an in process of being a reformed Fat Girl. I started my serious life-changing weight loss journey in September of 2000 at 346.8 pounds. I am currently at about 213, having lost nearly 135 pounds. That is, in tangible terms, 27 5 pound bags of sugar. Put that in your shopping cart and push it around.

Now, I don't discount that removing the 135 pound person who used to be attached to my body is a huge accomplishment. I've done it through the sensible Weight Watchers plan which suits my mind and personality, coupled with exercise. Since joining in 2000, I've gone from being unable to walk to the corner to walking 1-2 miles several times a week, working out with weight resistance/Pilates for 5 days a week. I lost most of the weight in 18 months-2 years. I hit a roadblock to loss when I had a cancer scare in 2002 and had an ovary removed (it was blessedly benign), lost a very dear friend in 2003 to a viciously aggressive bout of Breast Cancer, kicked a pot habit & stopped drinking in 2004 (clean and sober for almost 16 months now!) and became a vegetarian in 2005. So the reformation of my life has been moving right along thankyouverymuch. Still, harshly severe self-critic that I am, I can't help but feel stagnant in my weight loss efforts.

So as they say in my favorite episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer...Where do we go from here?

I am not without ideas. I have said it out loud many a time, but still haven't taken it quite to heart yet...the more weight you lose, the less you get to eat and the more you have to exercise. As many changes as I have made, I have to stop pussyfooting around. I haven't even talked about my relationship with food yet! The mechanics of eating and weight loss are easy to discuss. What can I say about my old buddy, my old pal who has been there for me for the ups, downs, ins and outs of my life? Food has been my comfort, my go-to guy, my friend, my party favor, my refuge...as far as I've come, I STILL find myself using food for all those things. I'm not entirely sure I know how to stop that behavior. I know I have it IN ME to stop, I just need to learn it.

It's not as though my life is lacking love and friendship. I have rich personal relationships...an incredibly suppportive husband of nearly 19 years, dear friends known for various lengths of time who have become my Family Of Choice who have seen me through all the changes I've made. I run my own business. I love music (rather obsessively, actually) and travel extensively to see the band I love (that would be Pearl Jam...97 shows since 1992,and counting). I am organized, fun-loving, silly, a decent writer and a pretty good singer. I have the foundation of a great life.

So WHY do I abuse food? And why is it so freaking hard to stop? How will I get off the hamster wheel and start getting somewhere?

I guess I'll use this forum to figure it all out. It's Saturday night, I'm just battling the last of a small bug (fever, sore throat, congestion) that I allowed to play havoc with my eating behavior. At first I was STOKED because my fever was so high and I was so wiped out I couldn't get out of bed to eat. That's kinda twisted that I was happy I had no appetite. Then, dear hubby came home wanting to be the fantastic human being that he is and went and bought me coconut sorbet bars (DAMN those were soothing comforting goodness) and soy chips (DAMN those...well, ditto)...and I was just too tired to fix food so I've been grazing since Wednesday. Finally spent my first whole day sitting up and semi-active, and just feel too lazy to do anything other than eat raisins, almonds, cereal with soy milk, and popcorn. Orville Redenbachers Mini Bags of Kettle Corn to be exact. And it's not as good unless it has a whole mess of Smart Spray Soy butter substitute on it. Buttery goodness. I mean HEY, none of those foods are too damaging in and of themselves, it's just the quantities I find myself consuming. I can binge on just about anything given the chance, and I was over my points for the day a few pags of Kettle Corn ago. I know over-indulging doesn't mean I'm a bad person. It is what it is. I just wish it wasn't, and not so often.

Oh yeah, and about the title of my blog....I have a twisted sense of humor, and I like it that way. When sharing my 135 pound weight loss, I usually say I'm a big loser...I've lost XXX pounds (varies between 130-135 for the past couple of years)...and I just saw 3 Beck shows, so it seemed appropriate. Soy Un Perdedor. And the url....well, Soundgarden fans will get it. Alright. Thus endeth Weight Loss Mind Spew #1.