13 - Bad Shirt

So in a mere 22 hours, barring any major delays, I will be sitting on a plane headed for Charlotte, North Carolina, where I'll then board a connecting flight to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We are excited--very, very excited. As a result this post is being done so fast and dirty that it won't even be seen by the editor. I can only offer a thousand apologies in advance for any misplaced commas and typos.

So Paul McKenna's book finally showed up on Tuesday last week. I spent three days eating only when I was hungry, eating what I wanted, eating consciously and stopping when satisfied. By Thursday I was too irritable to even go and see my therapist. My stomach felt off, I was headache-y, my blood sugar was on some sort of magic carpet ride, and I was feeling plain old pissed off from not being able to ingest something delicious to cope with every emotion coming my way. I haven't quite tackled the visualization techniques that he recommends yet but I did begin listening to his vaguely hypnotic CD at bedtime. Hopefully he's working some kind of mojo on me while I sleep. Despite his strictly forbidding you to weigh yourself before you've been doing the program for at least two weeks, I figured I wanted a little numerical encouragement before I headed south. Having to buy an even bigger tankini this year (over last year's) to accommodate my enlarged girth was making me feel a little blue (even if this tankini is smokin' hot). The funny part is that I worked to be disappointed. I pulled out the scale from its place of shame beneath my wardrobe only to find that the battery was dead so I couldn't get a reading. I made a special trip to the drug store to get a battery and laboured over getting it installed properly. It was with great confidence that I stepped up onto the scale. After ten days of having to actually cope with anxiety, boredom, and mild sadness, I haven't lost a pound. I was 230 the last time I weighed myself and I'm at exactly the same spot. Now I suppose something could be said for the fact that I haven't gained and I should be glad that I'm not hoovering down enough food for three other people in a day and thus avoiding that awful "my stomach hurts 'cause I'm so full" feeling. But c'mon! Do my efforts count for nothing?! So I hope that in time Paul McKenna will make me thin but clearly it won't be happening at the speed I would have preferred. Whatever happens, you'll be the first to know about it.

And as if the number on the scale wasn't depressing enough I have the vague impression that the teen-aged boy who gave up his seat to me on the bus last night might have done so thinking I was pregnant. I was wearing one of those empire waist line shirts that all fat women are supposed to wear; the ones that are supposed to hide our bellies. The problem, of course, is that not all fat women are shaped the same way, though plus size clothing makers would have you think so. I am one of those fat women whose weight sits at the top of her belly. So an empire waist line in most clothing, unless cut very specifically, makes me look pregnant. I thought I’d lucked out with this shirt though. It appears that I may have been wrong. Seriously, some days it’s best to not get out of bed at all.