Candies, Cookies and Cakes, Oh My.

I have been working on a project out in the main office of my company for the past week.  It is only my small office of 5 that is doing the weight loss challenge, so nobody in the main office cares about it.  And there is junk food everywhere.

About 2 feet from my desk is a shelf with a large bowl full of Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, Twix, Hershey’s Kisses, and snickers. Next to the bowl are three packages of fudge dipped cookies.  At one point someone walked by my desk and dropped off two tootsie rolls.  They keep a fridge stocked with soda.  We celebrated two birthdays during the week and for one we had carrot cake and for the other, and ice cream cake.

All I can say is THANK GOODNESS I gave up sugar.  Because if I hadn’t I would probably just keep walking over to the bowl all day and eat chocolate.  Instead, I had none of it.  And because I am not eating any of it… I don’t even really feel that deprived.  I’ve almost forgotten what cake tastes like at this point.

K and H update

Alright… those of you that have been following my blog may be wondering about that fact that I haven’t posted anything about either K or H lately.  You may remember that in my last post about them, I thought I may have permanently damaged my relationships (whatever form they may be in) with both of them.  Well.  Not so much.

The day after K apologized for making me feel bad and saying he would step back or step off or something, he emailed me several more apologies and then asked to make plans to hang out the following evening, in his neighborhood, because he is allergic to my cats.  So we did.  The day that we hung out, he texted me earlier on and asked if I was still planning on coming over that night.  I texted back and said, “are you planning on coming to pick me up?”  His answer was, “On Bart?” (For those of you not in the SF Bay Area, Bart stands for Bay Area Rapid Transit and is our rail system that goes all over the Bay Area.)

So I thought about how to answer that for a bit.  I didn’t want to take Bart to meet him.  I was over it enough at that point, that I wanted to be picked up at my apartment.  While I was contemplating my answer, he texted back saying he would come get me and asked for my address.  I wasn’t even “waiting” to answer on purpose… just trying to figure out what I was going to say, but the waiting worked because I got what I wanted.

We hung out and had a really fun time.  We talked about the old days and I saw his apartment, which was really cute.  Although I still like mine better. And he drove me home at the end of the evening.  Since then he has emailed or texted me at least once a day to find out how I am doing.  Which I have to say feels nice.  I know there is no real romantic potential here, but it’s nice to have a friend and feel more appreciated. 

As far as H goes.  He was totally fine after that first few minutes after he read the blog that pissed him off.  He just had his feelings hurt, but he got it.  And I think that there is a purpose for him in my life.

In some ways, he reminds me of the bastard I dated last year, yet for the most part he is honest with me and I still like him.  I enjoy hanging out with him.  I think seeing how he is from the outside, because although H is honest with me, I don’t think he is with everyone,  gives me a little insight into my relationship with the bastard from last year.

Again, I don’t think H outright lies, but he omits and lies by intention.  The difference was that the guy from last year outright lied.  So I think that by appreciating who he is as a person, I can perhaps start to understand a little who the guy from last year was.  And although he treated me poorly, there were a lot of things I clearly liked about him and maybe now I need to just forgive him, and leave that whole thing behind.

Wow. Advertisements.

I haven’t been watching too much tv lately. And when I do watch it, I generally am watching it on my DVR, so I fast forward through the commercials.  So it’s been a while since I have watched a lot of commercials.  I think when you see them all the time you get a little desensitized. 

I was home late afternoon on sunday watching repeats of “Dance Your Ass Off” where they get a bunch of fat people, they learn a dance performance each week and try to lose weight at the same time.  The lowest score each week gets sent home and the score is a combination of their performance and how much weight they have lost over the week.

It’s pretty funny.  I love watching the dancing, but what surprised the hell out of me was seeing all the commercials… they were all for food! Blizzards, candy, snacks… everything I am trying to avoid.  It almost seemed surreal. Talk about target marketing.

First Meet on Chemistry.com

I had my first “First Meet” tonight.  He was pretty cool.  I don’t think there is a looove connection.  But he was nice and I had a nice time talking to him.

We talked about online dating. And our lives.  He asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.  A very good question.  I wish someone would tell me the answer.

The weird thing was that we were in this coffee shop and this guy was set up playing blues… but not is such a nice way.  I don’t know if it was the acoustics in the room, or that he was turned up to loud, but it was truly cacophonous. Screechy and grating.  But we still had a nice time.  And after, he walked me the several blocks to BART.

It was definitely a good way to get my feet wet.

Cakes, cupcakes, cookies and danishes

Wow.  So I went out with my co-workers for coffee this morning (I actually had some Snow Leopard White Tea from Peets) and they wanted to stop at a bakery nearby to get pastries.  We walked in and it was all filled with so much delicious looking stuff.  There wasn’t anything in there that I didn’t want to eat.

I probably could have eaten a whole cake to myself.  I totally felt like an alcoholic about to fall off the wagon.  That red velvet cake just looked so delicious.  I was walking along the display counter reading the names of all the delicious treats out loud.   One of my co-workers was like, if you really want something, just get it.  You’ll just have to take the points off. (I lose 5 points in our challenge for eating sugar since it was a food I gave up – I do get an extra point a day for giving it up though.)

So I didn’t get anything.  I am ahead in points right now and I am just competitive enough that I don’t want to lose that lead. So no sugar for me.  Especially considering my reaction today, I think it was definitely the right thing to give up.  I am a little PMSy, so that might be part of it.

It makes me a bit worried for when the challenge ends though.  Will I go crazy and eat the entire contents of a bakery?  I have an image of myself lying in a fetal position on the floor with remnants of my gluttony all around me with chocolate smeared all over my face.  GROSS! Okay, maybe keeping that image in my mind will prevent it.

Maybe the challenge will go on just long enough that I won’t resort back to wanting cake so much.

Chemistry.com

So I did it.  I bit the bullet last night and paid my fee to sign up for Chemistry.com.

I had taken the test and put up a skeleton profile a couple weeks ago.  I had gotten some requests from guys that were “interested” so after I paid my fee, I was able to look through all their profiles and indicate whether or not I was interested.  I went through and “archived” (removed from further communication) a couple who had put as their requirements of what they were looking for: slender/average/athletic under body type.  Helllooo! Did they not read my profile where I listed myself as big and beautiful?

I also had a list of potential “matches” that Chemistry.com had picked out for me.  I went through and frankly most of them had the slender/average/athletic listed.  I “archived” all of these too.  This is a good thing.

I got my first correspondence back already.  He’s older, as were almost all of the guys to contact me.  But he seems kind of interesting and nice enough.  I love the fact that we both listed sense of humor as being of the highest importance. So we will see how this goes.

Oh… and I never heard back from that guy on OkCupid. Oh well.  His loss.

Weight loss update

So, I have been doing Weight Loss Challenge #2 for a little over 3 weeks now, and I am down 14 pounds.  Not too shabby. It’s a drop in the bucket for how much I want to lose, but it’s a fantastic start. 

So how am I doing it?

1. I am keeping track of EVERYTHING I eat in the Lose It iPhone application.  This way I make sure I am never over in my calories.

2. I am making sure I eat fruit and veggies everyday and try to eat protein with every meal.  By doing this, I make sure that pretty much everything I put in my body has some benefits.  I am avoiding empty calories at all costs.  (Sometimes I miss cake, but it’s getting easier.)

3. I cut out refined sugar and alcohol.  Total empty calories.  And I am not using any fake sugar – except for a little stevia that is in my protein powder that I add to my smoothies. But at least stevia comes from a natural source.  Sucralose and Aspartame freak me out.

4. I am doing some form of exercise every day.  On work days, I walk 1.7 miles to and from work for a total of 3.4 miles a day.  On non work days I either walk about 4 miles to and around a reservoir that I live close too or I swim in my pool.  I also am trying to do the balance exercises on the exercise pods that I got to work on my core.

5. I weigh myself every day.  This gives me the motivation to continue every day.

So that’s pretty much it.  I feel like it is more a lifestyle change, than a diet and so far I am happy with the results.  I feel happier and I have more energy too.

Possibly…

So yesterday, I tore down pseudo-relationships left and right without really meaning too.  This may be a good thing and I can start fresh.  Starting fresh is such a pain in the ass though.  It’s hard meeting new people.  And the match sites are freaking me out just a little.

So, the ex booty call, K, was flirting with me via email again yesterday and towards the end of the day he said he wanted to get together that night if I didn’t have plans.  I said, “No plans, but I only got a couple hours sleep last night, so I am exhausted.  What are you doing tomorrow?”

He emailed me back and said, “I don’t have plans for tomorrow, yet.”

OMG that “yet” irked me.  It just blatantly feels like, yeah, I’ll hang out with you, if nothing better comes along.  And it brought me back to when we were in our early 20’s and hanging out (I’ve known him a long time, but we only started hanging out again last September, then I ended it in January).  When we were in out 20’s he always made me feel like he was only hanging with me if there was nothing better to do.  He always used the phrase “possibly” then.  It turned out he was secretly in love with one of my best friends, so yeah, I was probably correct on that assumption.

Anyway, after getting that email from K, I emailed back: “wow.  way to make me feel wanted, k! lol” (I added in the lol so try to keep it from being too serious.)  He got a little defensive and said he didn’t feel like he was being insensitive, so I emailed back: “haha! Actually… even when we were hanging out when we were in our 20’s you always made me feel like you would hang out with me only if nothing better came along.  I don’t know if you are like that with everyone, or of it is just me but that’s the attitude I get from you.”

He apologized three times – 2 times by email and once by text message, calling himself a dick and saying that I was a “good and sweet” person and he never meant to make me feel bad.  And that he would step back and to take care.

Wow Gertrude, way to ruin the moment!

This is probably a good thing though, because if I had hooked up with K, I think I would have regretted it after the fact.  And he’s allergic to my cats anyway!

Pseudo-relationship #1 out of the way.

On to #2:  H and I hung out just the two of us on Sunday evening and had a really great time.  We both opened up quite a bit about shit that was going on in out lives and I think both of us felt much closer as friends by the end.  The good feeling continued into the next day as we chatted via IM while we were both at work.

Then I sent him a link to the last blog post he was featured in, “Getting Personal” (I have been letting him read all the posts that he is in).  In this post, I compare him to my ex of last year, who was a creep.  And although I only meant the comparison as far as how he makes me feel when I am around him (good), I guess it wasn’t the most flattering portrayal.  And I think it pretty much hurt his feelings.   I think especially because the night before we really seemed to make a breakthrough in our friendship.  I had written the blog post on Saturday, before we hung out.  He got really cold to me after he read it.

So, maybe it’s not such a good idea to let H read my blog posts.  I am not showing them to anyone else in my life.  Well, that lives here and is a part of my everyday life anyway.  And the point is not to embarrass or humiliate anyone (except maybe myself),  but just to really get to the bottom of what I am feeling and to try to share in my healthy and not so healthy choices so that others that might identify can feel like they are not alone and see behavior that they might want to change from the outside.

And of course to entertain as well.  I love telling stories and I love that I can tell stories about things that have happened in my life.

So I feel kind of bad about hurting H’s feelings.  I think he is trying really hard to be a good person right now.  He’s been a friend to me and he has been so much more respectful and caring towards J, which makes me happy, because I love J. I don’t think his reading that post completely damaged our friendship, but it definitely dented it.  I’ll give him a few days to cool off and we’ll see how it goes from there.

Wow! I was on a streak yesterday!

Geek Love

Have you ever read the novel Geek Love?

Some books speak to you.  And this one did to me, in a way.  The protagonist is an albino dwarf who grew up in a traveling circus/freak show. So there is not a lot in common for me there.

However, it’s been a long time since I read it, (maybe it’s due for a re-read) but one of the themes of the book that I took away is that by being undesirable to men, women will work on other aspects of their personality and work harder to become a success and therefore be successful in all areas of their lives besides love.  Otherwise they just fall in love, get married and waste their life.

I remember thinking about this and thinking about the fact that as a fat girl, I often feel undesirable.  And although far from being a success, I have had many fantastic life experiences that I might not have had if I had been in a “happy” stable relationship all these years.  Because I don’t have the security of feeling completely loved or desired, I tend to try to find other things in life to make up for it.  And I have had a great time for the most part.

One of my friends used to tease me that I was going to end up the crazy aunt/cat lady but I would have some amazing stories to tell.

But I think that really, I am just looking for the love.  But if I find the love, will I get boring and stupid?

Reasons to be afraid to lose weight

I have just been chatting with one of my amazing friends who lives halfway around the world and we were talking about our own personal demons that preclude us from living our lives to our utmost.

My biggest one, as I have mentioned before, is that I pretty much blame everything that goes wrong in my life on being overweight.  As she put it when I told her that, “Ah… an easy scapegoat.”

And it is.  Society tells us that we need to be thin to be happy.  My dad told me no one would want to marry me if I was fat.

So… what happens if I lose the weight and I still have the same problems?  I mean, most likely I will.  I will still be the same person. With the same issues.  Well, I guess one less issue. But is it really going to change the way I feel inside?  I don’t really know.  I have never been thin as an adult.

Now, I started gaining weight when I hit puberty.  When my breasts started growing, I started getting attention that I didn’t really want.  I mean, I liked boys, but I was getting attention from MEN and it scared me.  There’s a little bit of abuse in there as well (from a non-family member, but scary non the less.) And I think the weight came on as a combination of genetics (everyone in my family has been fat at some point, but I am the only one who still is) and a way to protect myself by making myself undesirable.

Now, again, if I lose the weight am I going to freak out the first time a guy overly flirts with me in a bar when I am not interested.  I mean, frankly, it still happens now, even though I am fat.  I just forsee it becoming worse if I get thin.

Right now, I feel like my bulk will allow me to protect myself.  No one is going to fuck with you if you weigh more than them.

So, what happens if I lose the weight.  Will I realize I have nothing to blame for the failures in my life and will I feel unable to protect myself?

I still plan on losing the weight, so I guess at some point I will see.