Well, there it is.
There’s the truth of the matter.
Two hundred and ten whopping, flopping, sopping pounds.
Not a bad weight if you’re a 6’9″ Amazonian, or a 6’1″ quarter back for a professional football team. But for a 5’6″ white girl in her mid-thirties?
It’s hell. Pure, horrid, stinkified HELL.
I’m at my highest weight EVER.
(Not counting the number that climbed and climbed during the nine months of my pregnancy. Now THAT was a whopper! But it was for two human beings, so I didn’t feel too, too bad about it.)
And now I’ve got a brand new year to face head-on.
A brand new year to feel the hope and possibility, pain and frustration, angst and impossibility of doing whatever I can to get that number down, down, down.
Back below 200, where it belongs.
Below 180, where I feel pretty fit and decently happy.
Below 170, where I haven’t been in ten years.
Dare I say, somewhere in the 150s?
No. I dare not. Not yet. It simply hurts too much to think about that kind of distance.
The calorie counting has begun. The re-commitment to a regular exercise regimen is in place. The mounting panic of any situation where there’s food not prepared by me is in full swing. My Weight Watchers weigh-in is imminent. That’s happening next Monday. I dread it. I loathe it. I want to spit on what I interpret as their falsely-empathetic faces.
They see numbers like mine all the time. I’m convinced they don’t remember how much it hurts, and how hard it is to force these numbers down to where they belong. I assume they assume anyone who’s not losing steadily is lying – going home and gorging on chips and fried chicken and heaps of macaroni and cheese, candy bars and donuts and rows and rows of store-bought cookies.
I don’t do this, but I DO eat too much. I can’t help it. I’m hungry all the time.
So my challenge is to learn how to deal with the constant, gnawing, insatiable hunger.
My challenge is to learn how to stop eating after I’ve consumed all my dang points, even though I want to scream and rip someone’s hair out because it’s only 4pm, and I NEED something to hold my over until I go to bed at 11:30.
Oh, joy, a new freakin’ year.