Scale Addiction

Well I'm back from the trip to Oregon. It was wet.

The Travel Scale took on the personality of a friend who isn't really your friend at all. First of all, I followed program religiously and it said I gained two pounds. Then I would get on and off of it and it changed its mind about me every time. Stupid Travel Scale.

Travelling on this restricted diet is really really hard. I slipped with wine (but it was Oregon! It was Willamette Valley! It was wine!) but that's pretty much it. When I got home, the Good Scale gave me a little weight loss as my prize.

I am not sure about this HCG stuff. I'm not sure if what I have is a bunch of mumbo jumbo or not. But I am sure of one thing. I have done a couple of hard things in my life (graduate school, step parenting, anxiety) and I decided that I am not going to be victim to this fat. Fuck that. I feel like it holds me hostage or something. And that's pretty weird because unless I am completely wrong, this is under my control.

Well, perhaps not entirely in my control. I am aware that Big Agriculture is just like Big Pharma and Big Banking and Big Tobacco. They do not act in my or your best interest. Indeed, I know as well as anyone that salt and sugar and fat tell the brain to go in to that delicious orgasmic state that you get when you eat a really fabulous donut. I know that fast food joints are interested in you coming back to their restaurant and not really interested in you being healthy. California apparently has a new law that they have to put the Actual Calorie Count next to every single fast food item. There is a mexican pseudo fast food place in my state that is based in California. Before I started this diet, I went into that restaurant and I looked at the new labels that listed the calories of the things that I thought were healthy. I learned that every single plate was 1000 calories or more. The skinniest thing, the "Healthmex Burrito" was 500 calories. Fish tacos, the salads, they all were 1000 calorie plates.

Armed with this, I have started reading labels. How come everything has "high fructose corn syrup" in it? Because the corn industry is king in this country I guess. I'm not eating that crap anymore. No one can make me.

But dammit. Those cognitive habits have been laid down early and will take many many runs, including this one, to re-wire. (You'd think I'd know this).

In any event, my brain that never seems to stop has become fixated on the scale as evidence I am "doing this right." My sister who reads this blog Curious Sister (CS) reminded me that if you eat something salty or don't go to the bathroom, um, all the way - it's a pound. And that I need to chill out.

Still, the "good" (read: Non Travel Scale) scale knows I hop on it time and time again. Perhaps they need to make a scale that says "What are you doing back here again?" and "Getting on me over and over will not change the fact that you are fat." Except that even the Good Scale keeps giving me different readings when I step on it. Not as bad as the Bad Travel Scale, but still... and so I hop on and off. I hold my arms above my head, then hop off. Then hop on and put them to my sides. Then I put them in the form of a prayer, as if that will somehow make the scale magically say "Congratulations! You can throw away those size 18 pants and looky! Here are some sexy size 8's!"

Perhaps I am an impatient person. But maybe that's unfair too. I did stick with things like this marriage, parenthood, grad school, my practice, most of my friends, and so forth. Perhaps I need to just watch this process unfold.

The scale btw read 206.2 this morning. I'll take it.