Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Um, I'm still here...

Ok, so it's been a while. I don't know exactly whether that's good news or bad news. Mostly bad, I guess, if you're looking at this as a weight-loss blog. I'm still about the same as I have been all summer. 195.4 as of this morning at 7 a.m. I've been hovering between 192 and 199 since June. The good news is I haven't gained weight. The bad news is? Well, that's obvious, I guess.

I think life has gotten in the way the last few months, and unfortunately for me that life includes headaches. Bad ones - almost daily, punctuated every few days with a migraine. I've gone off the medication I was taking to prevent them, partly because I hate taking drugs and partly because one of them, Topamax, was making my hair fall out and causing other, even less savory, problems.

So now I'm taking some herbs and trying to eat an anti-headache diet. As far as I can tell at the moment, that means eliminating pretty much all food. No, I'm kidding. But it kind of feels like it. I'm exploring the wide world of gluten-free products, no dairy, and basically no condiments. It's awesome. But I'm going to try to keep a headache/food diary here to see if anything seems to set me off and record how I'm doing. So this blog might seem more like a headache blog than anything else for now. Sorry.

So, here's my last few days:

Sunday I ate 2% greek yogurt with pumpkin seeds and brown sugar; greek salad (includes feta in dressing, I think), bread, and pumpkin spice latte; quesadilla with cheddar cheese and sour cream. I had developed a slight headache by bedtime. Triggers? Possibly the yogurt, seeds, feta, coffee (caffeine), cheese, and sour cream.

Monday I woke up with a headache from the night before and took Excedrin. Had Total (contains wheat) and a banana for breakfast, plus coffee with 2% milk once at work. Lunch was another greek salad, also with feta in the dressing, as well as bread and a pumpkin spice latte. Headache returned within a couple hours of having lunch and got progressively worse. By dinner it was a migraine. Felt sorry for myself and took an imitrex before having whole wheat pasta with tomato sauce, spinach, and turkey kielbasa - and then a lot of chocolate and peanuts (heck, I took an imitrex, might as well eat the triggers). Triggers? Wheat in Total, banana, feta, bread).

Tuesday woke up without a headache. Had Total and 2% milk for breakfast. Minor headache returned by lunch. Had a salad with supposedly headache-free dressing but was too gross so ended up just eating cucumbers, boiled chx, a few tomatoes, egg, apple, wheat Wasa crackers. Took Alleve to address headache. Triggers? Wheat in Total, wheat in wasa crackers. Am determined to have a headache-trigger-free dinner!

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Addendum

By the way, the wedding was beautiful. Gorgeous venue, gorgeous bride, wonderful friends, good weather (though a bit hot for my taste). Of course, I'm not exactly thrilled with the photos, since they show exactly what I look like in the dress, but I always knew that would be the case.

Must...get...back...on...track!

I'm not gonna lie, I'm struggling, foodwise, right now. It's been The Summer Without a Measurable Loss for me. Unless you count the 5 pounds I've been losing and then regaining all summer. Right now I'm on the recent-gain end of the spectrum, weight in this morning (it being Tuesday, my weigh-in day) at 196 lbs. It's not tragic. I still weigh 45 pounds less than I did in January, I know exactly how the 5 lbs came on (helllooo, pasta and sugar!), and I know how to take it off. It's just getting myself to buckle down and do it already that seems to have me stymied at the moment.

It's easy to say that you will eat a healthy meal in the next go-round, especially when your stomach is bloated and still groaning from pesto pasta and these amazing apple pouches I discovered at Trader Joe's last night. (They're like mini apple pies, only with a sprinkling of cinnamon and sugar on top. I'm drooling just thinking about them). But then it comes down to it and you really, really want something unhealthy for lunch. Whether that's from boredom at work (does anyone find correcting grammar fun?), anxiety over something (hello, bridesmaid dress plus photos!), or sadness about something (hello, relationship troubles). I've been dealing with all of the above categories for a while now...hence the stress eating.

I guess I just have to try to take it a meal at a time. For now, I've got a big cobb salad for lunch. We'll see how full I am after.

The other good news is it's raining. Which would normally sound like bad news, but it's actually a very big exciting storm, which I enjoy :)

Thursday, September 4, 2008

The Dress Dilemma

I don't know how many of you out there have been in this situation (no, not exactly dire), but I had a dress dilemma yesterday. In fact, I'm still having it. For the wedding rehearsal/rehearsal dinner I'm going to tomorrow, I have a couple different dresses I could wear. One is kind of a crazy jungle print that is VERY low cut and more formal but shows off my back fat, arm fat and the largeness of my butt (and lest anyone think I am exaggerating, I am 5'6" and 190-something at the moment, so yes, I have back fat etc). The other, which I bought yesterday, is cotton, black, and a style that I have seen people wear around town. I.e., not too dressy. I bought some fun costume jewelry to go with it and dress it up, but it doesn't take away the fact that it is made out of cotton. And I'm going to a wedding in Napa. And the bride works in fashion. So not exactly a low-key affair.

The dilemma? I feel so much more comfortable in the black dress because it hides my various flaws and is actually flattering.(And it's a size 14, which is nice, because at this time eight months ago I was wearing a 20). I actually feel pretty in it, which doesn't happen that often, let me tell you. Since I'm going to be spending all of the next day wearing a dress that I don't feel comfortable in at all (the bridesmaid dress of my last post), I figure I might as well wear a dress that makes me feel confident the day/night before.

Does all this make me sound crazy? Probably. Sigh...I'll probably bring both and decide at the last minute.

On a different note, I actually feel like being healthy today for the first time in a while. A trip to visit the parents and the stress over this wedding has resulted in some serious emotional eating in the last couple of weeks. But today I seem to be a bit more zen about it and actually am looking forward to a salad at Cosi. That and getting my hair ripped out by a lady wielding a baton full of hot wax. Sounds like a fun lunchtime, no?

If anyone out there is reading this, just wanted to say hello. And thanks for reading. And if you've ever had a dress dilemma like mine, I'd love to hear your experiences!

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Woe is the Bridesmaid

I have to wear a bridesmaid dress in four days and counting. For most people, a bridesmaid dress is something to be worn at a friend/family member's behest and represents little more than (frequently) poor fashion sense or (possibly) a desire to make everyone else look worse than the bride.

I'm not sure which category my dress falls into, since the bride actually works in the fashion industry and will automatically look better than her bridesmaids in all of our couture gowns because she's about 110 pounds and 5'8". That said, she still managed to pick out a horrible bridesmaid dress. It's a babydoll dress that flares out in brown pleats from just below the bust. It probably looks bad on everyone (including all of the 5'2", 100-pound bridemaids), but on me it looks ridiculous. At 5'6" and 192 pounds, let's just say it doesn't exactly flatter.

And the thing with this dress is, it actually means a lot more to me than just being an ugly dress. Back in December when my friend first asked me to be her bridesmaid, I had just gotten off a drug that had made me gain a whopping 40 pounds in a year. I was an exceedingly uncomfortable and hefty 242 pounds and closing in on size 22 (US) clothes. And I desperately wanted to lose weight. I'd been through many attempts in the past (the most recent only a few months before - more on that later), but I could never get myself to stick with anything.

A bout of cluster headaches and an increasingly pressing migraine problem had convinced me that I needed to do "something," but for some reason, despite nearly chronic pain, I couldn't find the extra push I needed to get started. When the friend asked me to be in her wedding, the prospect of 250 people watching me lumber down the aisle in a size-22 Vera Wang gown (does she even make gowns that big?) was enough to prompt me to put down the chips and ice cream and start a gym routine.

That was about 7 months ago, and I've lost 50 pounds so far using a modified South Beach-based diet of my own creation. But I've only lost about 10 pounds since June, and while I know that's not bad, I can't deny I haven't been trying very hard. It's like, once I got back under the 200-pound mark, I lost my drive. And that's part of why I'm here. Hoping to find it again.

I say this having just gone to get my bridesmaid dress fitted and been so traumatized by the experience that I immediately went to the grocery store and bought a huge brownie (with sushi! It's healthy!) Honestly, the way the dress is designed, I feel like it looks like I haven't lost any weight at all. Obviously that's not true, but it's hard when this thing that served as the spark for this journey I've been on since the end of January turns out to be so disappointing. Ugh. Even the BF admitted it wasn't the most flattering cut, and he's alway the first to tell me I look great when I don't think I do.

Ok, enough of the whining for now. Not much I can do about it at this point. I just need to try and eat healthy for the next few days (but not starve!), enjoy the fact that the dress fits and is three sizes smaller than it would have been in January, enjoy what I'm sure will be a lovely wedding with wonderful friends, and get back into the swing of things next week.

If anyone out there is reading this, I promise not all the posts will be this whiny.

About Me

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Virginia, United States
I'm a 30-year-old girl just trying to figure it all out when it comes to life, love, and food.