Ghosts From The Past

I randomly decided to read some of my old posts on Tumblr.  It was kind of funny to see how wide eyed and gung ho about low carb I was.  And also kind of sad.  It seems like I'm always struggling with my weight, and I'm always fighting with my body about the food I put into it. 

And here I am, 45 pounds heavier.  Yes, really.  I keep telling myself the weight is from the hormones of being pregnant and then being on Depo.  Maybe that's true, I don't know.  My cycle still isn't normal, seven months later.  But I also haven't been eating exactly that well, and I sure as heck haven't been exercising. 

I just feel so lost lately.  I have a wonderful life, a loving husband, a beautiful home, stimulating hobbies and family that mostly cares about me.  So why do I feel like I'm lost at sea, bobbing aimlessly? 

At least when I was low carb, I had something to be really passionate about.  It gave me purpose-- I was going to eat well and lose weight so I could be featured in one of those cool blogs.  It also gave me a tribe to connect to.  The low carb community is vast and usually pretty welcoming. 

But I feel like I know too much now.  The whole resistant starch thing and safe carbs and everything else has made it too hard for me to strictly follow that diet anymore. 

I wish I had something to be passionate about.  Or maybe I just don't have it in me to be passionate right now. 

I've been thinking a bit lately about kids, too.  I actually thought I was all over this stuff, so I don't know where this is all coming from.  It's sad to think I'll never had kids.  And surprising.  I feel like I haven't figured out what my life purpose is going to be yet.  When you have kids, it's like you have an automatic purpose; you raise them, send them off into the world, and if you die young, people will think, "Oh, well at least he left a legacy".  What do I have to show for myself?  I'm an introverted high-school dropout housewife who spends too much time watching Netflix and making art that no one will ever see. 

And I really hate being as big as I am.  I wish I could lose the weight, but it's not budging.  To be fair, I'm not trying very hard.  But I don't want to try really hard, either, because I usually go too far and end up doing some mental damage.  I'm so confused about life.  I wish I could just be happy with my body the way it is, but I'm just not.  I keep thinking that people are looking at me, thinking about how lazy and gluttonous I must be, and I know they're right.  I am lazy and I do overeat. 

What's the answer?  The part of my brain that likes happy endings is telling me, "Just get busy with your art/crafts/house repair work and you'll feel happier and you won't eat as much".  That's great advice, brain, but right now it just doesn't feel good enough. 

Resolution

I know it's a little late for this, but I suppose I've always been a bit of a procrastinator.  I don't generally believe that New Year's resolutions are a good idea; I think most people make the wrong resolutions for the wrong reasons. As someone who's almost 30, I can say I can't honestly remember ever making a sincere resolution in my life. 

I do want to make a resolution of sorts this year, though.  It's not weight related, even though I did put on some holiday pounds.  It's not money related, despite the fact that I spent a little too much on new gadgets recently.  And believe it or not, it's not even love related (Chad and I are still quite happy).  No, my resolution this year is much simpler, though perhaps a little harder for me to achieve than any of those other ones.

I resolve to do what I believe is best for me no matter what others think; and if I come up against someone who's trying to sway my beliefs, I'm going to thank them for their time and move on.  This has always been a big problem with me.  When it comes to my health or happiness, I let people influence what I think.  I feel embarrassed to challenge them when they tell me that my way isn't the right way, and I begin to believe that I must be wrong.  But just because what they say is right for them doesn't mean it's right for me.  There's only one person in this world that knows what's right for me, and that's me.

And besides, if I don't stick up for myself, I'm never going to be able to trust my own instincts. 

Happy New Year, everyone!  I know 2014 is going to be great.  I've been so touched with the number of people leaving comments recently asking for me to start posting again or just making sure I'm ok...  what a great group of readers I have!  Now that Christmas is over and I can focus on my garden and my diet again, I hope to start really posting more frequently.

Success and Failure

On Friday, I wrote a post saying that I was going to try not eating sugar and wheat for one day, and then if that worked, do it again the next day.  Well, unfortunately it didn't end up happening on Friday.  I can't even remember what I ate that was bad for me, but I know I ate it.  However, Saturday and Sunday were great!  I ate really good food and didn't have any sugar or wheat.  And I was feeling really good, too.  Eating clean really makes me feel so good physically.

But, Monday came and I was bad again.  I finally called up my mom and asked if we could go out and have coffee, since we hadn't really talked for a week.  I know everyone who commented on my drama filled posts about how badly my family treated me has said that I should just divorce my family, and I will admit that I wish I could.  But it's not easy for me.  I'm not dependent on them anymore; I'm an adult and I can stand on my own two feet.  The problem is that they're dependent on me.  I'm my mom's support system.  I'm her financial adviser, her marriage counselor, her sounding board, her crafting expert, her shoulder to cry on, her landlady (yes, we own the house she lives in), and the only sane sensible person she has in her life to keep her grounded.  It makes me want to cry to think of her going through the stuff she goes through alone.  So I can't divorce my family for the simple fact that I'm my mother's mother. 

Anyway, we talked.  Not a whole lot about the birthday incident, but normal everyday talking.  It was nice, comforting.  I had a breve latte, but couldn't resist the muffin in the case.  Ugh!  The funny thing is that the low carb muffins I had made over the weekend were way better than the carby one I ate at the coffee shop.  But I'm trying not to worry too much about it.  I got right back on the wagon and ate well the rest of the day. 

I'm going to have a hard time staying on the wagon the next few days though.  Chad's birthday is Saturday, except we're celebrating it tomorrow because I have a family reunion to go to on Saturday.  Chad's request for his birthday dessert was a giant chocolate cookie, and I know I'm going to be eating some of it.  I also know I'm probably going to indulge at the family reunion, since my family includes some amazing country chefs. 

September is such a hard month for me to stay healthy.  I had this problem last year, too.  There's just so much going on in September for us.  Three birthdays, our anniversary, and a family reunion, all nicely spaced out so we're eating bad things all through the month.  I can't wait til October comes.  The only time we're tempted to eat bad things is on Halloween, and then that's only one day. 

I think another thing keeping me from eating well is my mental state.  I'm sure some of you have noticed that I haven't been posting very much, and that's because I've been really pulled away from the world emotionally these last couple of weeks.  It's like I'm living in my head, and I just eat whatever I'm craving.  Sometimes I eat bad things hoping it'll make me feel better.  But what I really need is to jump back into life.  Get back into blogging, start reading my favorite low carb/paleo blogs, going for long walks, working on my garden, and not letting myself mope around so much.  I always go through a bout of the blues in the winter, but it's only fall! 

I do plan on writing more, even if it's just these long rambly personal posts.  If I keep at it, maybe I can get back into the rhythm I had going before, and I can start feeling normal again.

The Pitfalls of Real Life

My birthday was on Sunday.  I turned 29.  I usually am really depressed on my birthday, either because things went badly or because I start thinking about all the things I could have done over the last year but didn't get around to.  So this year, I decided I was going to try to have a good, happy birthday.  This is the last year I'll be in my 20s, after all, so I really wanted it to be a good one.

The weekend started really well.  Chad and I went to our local coffee shop, where the owner gave me my breve latte for free and Chad bought me a beautiful handmade beaded crochet bracelet I've been fawning over for months. 

Then we went out to eat with Chad's folks, and then they invited us back to their place to split a bottle of wine.  Afterwards, we went home and chilled out until Chad's good friends came over to visit (who are nerdy and smart and share the same sense of humor as Chad, so it's like having three Chads, which is fun).  We went out to eat at a hibachi restaurant, which was a new experience for me.  It was fun and extremely hilarious at moments.  We went out to a new bar after that, and then back home to talk nerdy stuff.

The next day, my birthday, Chad and I went out hiking at an awesome place called Jake's Rocks, which is a set of trails along a hilltop that has a lot of huge boulders and rocky outcrops, with two really nice lookouts that look over the reservoir and dam below.  We ate lunch in the woods, and then went home to shower.  By birthday was supposed to end in a happy family gathering.  My mom had made me a chocolate cheesecake and we were going to gather at her house.

Things didn't really go well, though.  There was drama.  I'm always trying to hold everything together, and I tried then too.  But when, after my mom yelled at me for trying to help her with the dishes, my sister got mad and stormed out, and my mom and dad got into a bitter fight, I couldn't hold it together anymore and I ran out of the house sobbing.  It was just too much for me to handle.  I just feel like I'm always doing so much for everyone else.  I would hope, that for just one day, they would try to do something nice for me too.  But, as usual, I was the last person on their minds. 

Mom and dad did say they were sorry, and we tried to get back to the party, but I was deeply hurt.  Since then, I've been doing nothing but moping around and working on sewing projects, trying to bury my hurt feelings.  I know I should try to stop wallowing in self pity, but I don't want to forgive them yet.  The moment I forgive them, they're going to turn right around and hurt me again, or take advantage of my soft heart.  I honestly don't want anything to do with them.  Not any of them.  I'm not even sure if I want anything to do with people in general. 

For my own sake, though, I needed to write this all down.  Trying to bury my hurt only makes it worse.  I hope no one minds me rambling.  I just needed to write it down.  Really, I just needed to tell someone, even just the internet at large. 

I've been stress eating the last couple of days.  I took home a quarter of a cheesecake, and although Chad did have a small piece yesterday, I managed to eat the rest of it in two days.  I don't like feeling out of control like that, but I know I'm only going to gain back control when I face my emotions. 

But part of me just wants to keep moping.  If it wasn't for Chad's kindness these last few days, my faith in humanity probably would have suffered.  But he's been right there for me.  He even brought me breakfast in bed yesterday, and did all the dishes the night before.  I don't know where I'd be without him.

Maybe I won't force myself to get over it right away.  Maybe I need some time to mope first.  But I do want to get over it soon, so I can get back to living my full, happy life. 

Vacation, Pears, and Real Life

Hey guys!  I'm sorry I've been so quiet lately.  When Gwen from over at Sky n Surf asked if I was alright and said she missed me, it made me realize that I should probably stop being lazy and write something.  (Thanks, Gwen!)

Life has been kind of crazy.  Well first, for a week at the end of August, Chad and I went on vacation.  It was really nice to get away.  We rented a little cabin in the woods in PA and just relaxed.  We did some hiking, took some scenic drives, went to a few gift shops, stopped in at a winery, had a campfire every night (with s'mores!), and did a whole lot of just sitting around relaxing.  The weather didn't cooperate the whole time, but the cabin was cozy and we brought some good books with us.  It was a very nice, relaxing vacation.  And now here's some pictures.

Red Spotted Purple butterfly (can't decide why they call it that, but there you have it)

Some sort of cute tree frog.

Chad climbing up his favorite boulder.

Chad next to a little creek at the bottom of a huge hill we climbed.

Me next to the same creek!

Old nonworking fountain.

Pretty wooded trail.

Sunbeam in a part of the forest called the Forest Cathedral.

The trees in this forest are some of the oldest stands of trees in the eastern US.  They've been untouched for 400 years.

The trail was quite hilly.  We climbed up 1000+ feet and then had to come back down.

At the bottom was a pretty creek with at least a dozen bridges over it.

And here's the creek.

Here's the winery we went to.  It was very nice. 

The fires were always nice.  Relaxing, quite, warm, and it was fun to build them.

Inky cap mushrooms, so called because they start melting into black goo after a couple days.

Chipmunk!

Some sort of shelf fungus.

THE hugest millipede I've ever seen.  It was as thick as my pinky and twice as long.

As relaxing as the vacation was, though, things went crazy once we got home.  Just like an hour or two after we got home, my mom's car broke down and we had to go pick her up and help her get it taken care of.  Right before we left for vacation, I picked two pear trees (one in my neighbor's yard, and one in Chad's mom's yard), which yielded almost two bushels of pears.  If you're not familiar with how big a bushel is, imagine a 5 gallon bucket.  A bushel is just about two of those.  So I had a ton of pears (and it took several hours to pick them, but that was the easy part).  Since pears don't ripen on the tree and only ripen once picked, I like to pick them before we go on vacation so that when we get back, they're almost ripe and ready to process. 

Well, I've never had so many pears before.  It was an amazing year for pears, and this is the first year I've picked my neighbor's yard.  So for literally a whole week, I did just about nothing but work on pears.  Peeled, cored, cut up, cooked, canned.  I made canned pear halves in extra light syrup, pear sauce, pear jelly, pear preserves, pear salsa, and pear conserve.  I ended up with something like 24 quarts of canned pears, and like 10 pounds of pear trimmings in my compost pile.

Happy pear.

Two bushels of pears turned into 24 quarts of canned goods.  Also, my MIL made me that quilt!

So after the week of pear hell, I seriously haven't wanted to do anything at all.  Sleep mostly, video games, some reading, and when I'm up to it, doing the cleaning that never got done.  After a week of recuperating, I'm feeling much better. 

I've been having trouble getting back into the swing of the low carb way of life.  Chad and I didn't go overboard on our vacation.  We tended to eat very smart low carb meals, but we did splurge like every day.  There was always s'mores at night around the fire, and there was ice cream a couple of times.  It's especially going to be difficult getting back into the sugar free lifestyle because September is our month of celebration.  We've already had one birthday party (my 5 year old nephew), and my birthday is Sunday.  Then there's our anniversary, and then Chad's birthday.  And my niece is about ready to have her baby, so there will probably be another birthday in September soon.  Ugh.

So I think I caught you all up on just about everything going on in my life lately.  I hope I can get back into the swing of writing regularly.  I'd hate to lose you guys :)

Keeping Perspective

Mark Sisson, in his Weekend Link Love, posted a link to a very interesting blog post that asks the question What's the point? 

The author starts the essay by quoting Lewis Thomas, and the quote really spoke to me.

As a people, we have become obsessed with Health. There is something fundamentally, radically unhealthy about all this. We do not seem to be seeking more exuberance in living as much as staving off failure, putting off dying. We have lost all confidence in the human body. 

 The emphasis is mine, because I think that sentiment is so important.  It's very true, at least from what I've seen.  The majority of people who are obsessed with health seem to be trying to put off death, and especially to forgo aging.  You can't pick up a health magazine without seeing an article about how exercise and healthy eating can make you look years younger. 

I think it's great that we in the paleo/primal/low carb communities are reaching for better health and a stronger body, but I think a lot of people are becoming obsessive with it.  There's almost a desperate need to lose weight, gain muscle, eat and exercise perfectly, and keep complete control over their body.  And when they see someone who isn't behaving perfectly like they themselves are, they think less of that person. 

That obsessive behavior has always seemed somewhat disturbing to me.  In some people, it's almost to the point where I'd want to call it an eating disorder.  But can you call a hyper-focus on eating well an eating disorder? 

Most disturbing to me, I think, is that food and exercise seem to be some people's entire lives.  They think about food all day long, and if they're not thinking about food, they're thinking about exercise.  And I don't mean to say people like Mark Sisson, Jimmy Moore, or Tom Naughton are obsessed about food and exercise; there's a big difference between being passionate about nutrition and wanting to spread that passion to other people, and being so obsessed about your body that you can't think about anything other than food and exercise. 

I know first hand what this kind of obsession is like, which I think makes it easier for me to see it in others.  For 5 or 6 months, back when I was on a low-calorie vegetarian diet, I was hardcore obsessed about my body.  I spent every waking hour thinking about food, weighing everything I ate, obsessively dividing out meals, trying to figure out how many calories I had left in the day, trying to get enough protein (a hard thing to do for a vegetarian; I got 50-60g on a good day, but usually more like 20-30g), and tracking all the exercise I did so I could make sure I was in a calorie deficit. 

It was exhilarating.  I felt totally in control of my body for the first time ever.  I was dropping pounds and getting active, and I felt like if I just kept controlling my body and giving it only what I thought it needed, I could finally get skinny and beautiful.  But the body is a hard thing to control when you don't have the right information.  Eventually, after ramping up my exercise to a point where my knees were starting to hurt, and cutting back my calories to 1300 a day (which is a level that left me truly starving), my body said "enough!".  I got appendicitis, which totally left me without any resolved after the operation, and I went back to eating a lot more and exercising hardly ever. 

The whole point of this long winded ramble, though, has to do with what my obsession with my diet did to the rest of my life.  I didn't have one.  I had a very hard time going out.  I couldn't eat unless I was the one that cooked the food, because then I could weigh, measure, and divide the meal to my exacting standards.  My conversations with others always seemed to be about food and nutrition, which I'm sure made me the life of the party.  I always seemed to be miserable.  I just thought that came with the territory. 

That's why I refuse to seriously cut my carbs or try to get into ketosis, or any method that would bring back that desire to take control of my body again.  I don't like being obsessed, and I really don't think it's healthy for my life.  The reason I love the way I eat now, which is low carb and whole foods based,  is because it's so lax.  I just need to avoid grains, sugar, starchy veggies, and most processed foods.  It's that simple.  I don't have to count anything, and I don't have to track how many calories I've burned during exercise.

I certainly don't think all paleo/primal/low carb people are obsessed with their diets.  This way of eating actually lends itself to a more relaxed relationship with food.  But I do know that there are those out there taking it to the extreme and doing more harm than they are good.  Just remember that your diet should never get in the way of your happiness (unless your happiness is dependent on sugar, in which case you'll just have to be unhappy until you adjust).  We shouldn't be so obsessed with staving off death that we forget to live. 

An Update and a Thanks

I want to thank everyone who commented on my blog yesterday, after I posted about how hard of a time I was having dealing with my family, and all the crazy cravings I was having because of the stress I was feeling.  It was really nice hearing from caring, thoughtful people. 

I sat down with myself this morning and wrote in my journal about my feelings, and I ended up deciding that the reason I got so upset was because it feels like I can't go to my family to talk to them about my feelings or my troubles.  The way it's always been is they come to me with their issues, because I'm the stable one, the one who can see things clearly, the one who listens without judgement.  But I don't want to always be that person for them.  I have my own life and my own issues to work through; I shouldn't have to be dealing with theirs all the time, too. 

I'm proud of myself for not giving into any of my sugar and wheat cravings, although I did eat a lot of other low carb things yesterday that maybe I shouldn't have.  And my mood lifted after Chad came home and he listened to me and held me in his arms.  All I needed was to be listened to and loved.

It's interesting, though, that when my mood went downhill, that's when my cravings got the worst.  I've never really believed those people who say that going low carb/paleo will rid you of all your cravings, because I have a long history of emotional eating and I know that many times people eat for reasons other than hunger.  However, I do know for a fact that I can't eat sugar or wheat the way I used to, even when I'm eating emotionally.  Even a little bit of sugar and wheat can make me feel pretty gross.  I get an almost immediate headache with sugar, and a yucky heavy feeling in my stomach with wheat. 

 I was much better today, by the way.  I woke up feeling refreshed, and I busied myself with a large canning project (three batches of peach jam for my mom and mom-in-law).  I taste tested the jam perhaps a little too frequently, but otherwise I stayed away from sugar and wheat, and actually ate very well today. 

And tomorrow will be another good day, of this I'm sure.

Keeping the Faith

Would you believe, at 28, I'm going to be a great-aunt soon?  Yeah, me either.  It came about through no fault of my own.  I didn't mean to be an aunt, let alone a great-aunt.  I didn't think I'd be a great anything for several years.  But here I am, about to be the third oldest generation in my family.

My niece is 19.  She was born when I was the sweet and innocent age of 9, so of course I immediately hated her for stealing my place in the family as the baby.  When she turned 10 or so, she and I actually started to get along.  Pretty soon, I actually enjoyed her company and brought out in her the nice, sweet side that no one else got to see.

When she got pregnant last winter, I was very disappointed.  She's not married to the father, and I'm not sure if she has any plans to be.  I guess I always thought she had so much potential, and knew that if she applied herself, she could do great things with her life.  But to see her go down the same path that her mom went down, that my mom went down, that all the other women in her life went down (except me), it saddens me.  Strapped with a baby, poor, in a bad relationship, with no ambition.

I guess that's why she and I haven't talked at all since I found out she was having a baby.  Actually, there's another secret reason I haven't talked to her, and this really makes me feel ashamed.  I'm really mad at her for getting pregnant before me.  Here I am trying everything I can to have a baby, and she has one without even trying. 

I'm trying really hard to let these feelings of disappointment go.  I'm not a strongly religious person, but I am very spiritual, and I believe that God brings us to certain hard situations in life to teach us to be better people, and I'm certain this is one of those times.  So to kind of break the ice, I decided to make my niece and her baby some things, including a receiving blanket and this cute little bear.

When I showed it to Chad, he asked, "Making it for Baby D?" which is what we've been calling our future baby.  I said, "No, but I wish I was."  And that got me to thinking...  It's been really hard to keep my faith that we'll get pregnant as the months go by.  For the last 5 months or so, I've even been thinking in my head that it's just never going to happen.  I want to stay positive, but it feels so forced when I do and it ends up making me feel even sadder when I don't get pregnant that month.

But I wonder if making things for Baby D is a gentler way for me to keep my faith.  I love to craft, after all, and crafting things for our baby might instill a seed of belief in my heart that we will have a baby someday.  I guess I'll try it and see how it goes.

The Allure of Drama

Have any of you ever heard of Kimkins?  I never really did, to be honest.  I've known about low carb dieting for a long time, but I never even gave it a chance until last spring.  Until then, I was completely unaware of any of the goings-on in the LC world.  So somehow, by chance, I found myself reading about Kimkins for the very first time this weekend.  I stayed up way later than I should have last night reading about it, because it was just so fascinating.  Like a terrifying novel, only it's completely real.  All the people harmed in this story really got harmed.

It amazes me how interesting drama is.  I purposefully go out of my way to avoid drama in my personal life, and yet when I run across a story about wrong doings, mysterious happenings, and people getting lied to and hurt, I can't help wanting to stop and read everything I can about it.  I don't even read dramatic books or watch dramatic movies, and yet there I was last night, knee deep in 4-5 year old blogs, trying to read all the drama I could about this case.

For some reason, I think humans evolved to love drama.  You see it everywhere you go.  I dare you to turn on your television and try to find a show that isn't dramatic.  I've even seen shows where they try to make fishing or antiquing as dramatic as possible!  I don't know about you, but the last time I checked, the reason most people go fishing or antiquing is because it relaxes them.

There are people in my life that I know to be truly drama-addicted.  My sister, for instance, seems to be constantly in a bad situation.  She complains bitterly about how hard her life is, but she never stops to think about why she's in the place she's in.  If she did, she'd realize that almost every single bad thing in her life is self-inflicted.  I doubt she knows this is going on, but on some level, she's creating drama in her life because she's addicted to it.

Even though I know it's bad for me, I can't always stop myself from following certain real-life novels.  I find myself  attracted the whole Carbsane drama lately.  In certain ways, it reminds me a lot of Kimkins.  The situations are totally different (Kimkins was advocating extremely low calorie/low carb/low fat diets, where as Carbsane is going around bashing just about every LC/Paleo/Primal person on the internet), but the personalities of Heidi (Kimkins) and Evelyn (Carbsane) ....  they seem eerily similar.  Manipulative, secretive, uncaring about damage they're doing to the people who trust them, narcissistic, and very hateful to anyone who doesn't agree with them.

It's really sad to me that there's drama like this out in the world.  That hateful, dramatic people like Heidi and Evelyn can gather a following of trusting people who just don't question their tactics.  And even more sad is the fact that I can't peel my eyes away from the ensuing train wreck.  I find myself rooting for the "bad guys" to get caught and all the juicy details of their lies to be uncovered.  The world needs justice!

Maybe it does, but I don't think I want to be a part of that side of it.  I'm going to try letting go of the drama-filled blogs and focus more on being positive and uplifting in my own.  As it turns out, Gandhi didn't say this next quote despite the fact that everyone attributes it to him, but it's still a beautiful belief to live by:

Be the change you wish to see in the world.

And I plan to.

The Weight Thing

In case you didn't already know, I used to be fat.  Like, really fat.  Like, I was literally morbidly obese.  At 5'7, 275 pounds, my BMI was 43, which classed me as morbidly obese.  The worst part was that I was a sweet and naive 17 year old and I didn't understand how sick I was.

I did managed to lose weight, though.  Slowly, in steps, it came off.  Some came off when I fell in love with Chad and started treating myself better.  Then we started going out and being active together, and more came off.  I moved in with him and took over cooking almost all the meals, and more came off. 

In 2010, I went on a low calorie diet, started running three days a week and lifting weights once or twice, and within five months, I had lost another 30-35 pounds.  By then, I was down to 185.  I wanted so badly to lose another 10 pounds so I could shout from the roof tops that, HEY WORLD, I'VE LOST 100 POUNDS!

But low calorie dieting is terrible.  I'm sure anyone who has tried it can understand what I'm talking about.  I was eating about 1500-1700 calories a day, and later once I'd lost 30 pounds, I shifted to 1300-1400 calories a day to try to lose more weight.  My goal was 160 pounds, which would just get me into the "normal" BMI range.

I was hungry all the time.  Like, hungry to my core.  I couldn't eat enough to satisfy the hunger I was feeling unless I ate over my calorie range.  I didn't shun fat, but I also knew that fat was 9 calories whereas carbs and protein were 4, so I tried to avoid it so I would be able to eat more food, because I was so hungry.  And being a vegetarian, it was remarkably hard to get enough protein.  On days where I was trying really hard, I'd eat about 60g of protein, but it was mostly from soy, low fat dairy, and wheat gluten.  

The worst part was the food obsession.  I would think about food every moment of the day.  I would carefully weigh each and every item.  I had to specially formulate recipes and carefully divide the results to make sure I was getting the right amount of calories.  I spent hours a day typing in the foods I'd eaten in Sparkpeople.com's food diary.  And at the end of the day, I would go and check how many calories I had left and try to get as much extra food as I could.  Food was my life.  I dreamed about it.  Meals were the centers of my day. 

That's why I loved the idea of low carb dieting so much, when I finally opened myself up to the science behind it.  I wanted to just eat what I wanted of low carb food, stay away from the higher carb items, and watch myself effortlessly get skinny.  I did lose some weight.  I was 195 pounds when I started, and managed to lose 10 pounds in a month, bringing me back to 185.  But I haven't really lost anything since then.

I know this system works, because I've seen what it's doing for Chad.  He was lean before we started, but he managed to lose about 20 pounds while also putting on muscle.  So I know it's not that this low carb idea is wrong.

Some days I struggle mentally with this.  Sometimes all I want to do is lose 20 more pounds and I think I'm willing to do anything I can to get there.  But then I remember actually being 175 at one point while low calorie dieting.  I had to starve myself to an incredibly uncomfortable level to get there, and then my will power just broke and I couldn't stop myself from putting those 10 pounds back on.  Maybe my body is trying to tell me that this is the weight I'm supposed to be at.  Losing 90 pounds in very respectable.  And I can't expect my body to work the same after being at 275, either.  I don't think it's actually capable of being very lean after that.

But that doesn't stop me from wanting to be skinny.  I know I've written in the past about how sick it is for us to want to be skinny, that we should be striving for health instead, but I can't help it.  I still want it.  I want to be one of those beautiful models who looks great in a bikini.

To what lengths am I willing to go to lose weight?  I've thought about trying nutritional ketosis, like Jimmy Moore.  I've thought about a low calorie low carb diet.  I've thought about cutting out dairy and eggs to see if that helps.

But I worry.  This doesn't seem safe.  Pushing my body to extreme lengths to lose weight that probably isn't causing me any problems.  I worry about nutritional ketosis.  There are people in the paleo crowd that claim that women need more natural carbs (from  fruit and veggies) for their fertility.  I worry about low calorie low carb diets, because Chad and I are trying to conceive.  What if I got pregnant and I didn't know it?  A low calorie diet doesn't just starve me; it starves the baby, too, and the first couple of weeks are when the nervous system are developing.  As for cutting out dairy and eggs?  What the heck would I eat if I couldn't eat dairy and cheese?

Some days I want so badly to be skinny.  So, so badly.  But most days I long for something simpler.  To be healthy.  That's the real goal here.  To feed my body.  To build up muscle I lost as a vegetarian.  To correct the harm I did on a low calorie diet.  To be whole.  To never be hungry to my core. 

I wonder if there's some in between road, where I can respect my body and  feed it what it needs, but at the same time start shedding the leftover bulge.  I just don't know.  I really don't know if it's a fight worth fighting.