I started my one-week low-carb diet on Friday (today is Sunday) and it’s going fine. One week of anything is generally pretty easy to manage, since you know it isn’t forever. Last night the hubby and I went on a date night to our favorite steak place and I enjoyed a delicious bacon-wrapped filet mignon. Who needs bread when there’s filet mignon on the menu?

The trickiest part of low-carb, for me, has always been eating right at work. It isn’t impossible, by any means, it’s just hard to always have meats, cheeses, and fresh veggies on hand when you don’t have a fridge. But again, it’s only for a week this time so I’m sure I can make it work.

In other exciting news, Macy’s was having a sale yesterday and I picked up a NutriBullet for $100. I never got on the juice craze so this is my first individual-sized blender. I’m kind of excited to see what I can do with it. I’m actually looking forward to having protein shakes on a regular basis. I have a feeling that will change after my liquid diet starts on Friday, but for now I think it sounds convenient and easy.

The only other news that’s fit to print today are my starting statistics. Since this is (theoretically) the largest I will ever be again, I took this opportunity to weigh and measure and take photos. You can check them out on the Stats page.

Here’s to 5 more days of bacon, cheese, and broccoli!

A few days ago I met with my nutritionist and she outlined my food plan for the foreseeable future. I still haven’t really grasped how things are about to change. It hasn’t sunk in at all.

On Friday, which is 2 weeks before surgery, I’ll begin a low-carb diet, something I’m very familiar with. I’ll be low-carb for one week before starting the pre-op liquid diet. Because I carry the majority of my weight in my thighs and bum, I only have to do the liquid diet for one week as opposed to two or three. My doctor is prescribing Unjury protein powder during that week.

I have three days left before I start low-carb. One of the vlogs I watched recently talked about food funerals. The woman had food funerals for McDonald’s and pizza, and ice-cream, and all these other foods that she wouldn’t be able to have leading up to and following her surgery.

I know that we all approach these types of things differently. In the past, when I have known I would be starting Weight Watchers, or Keto, or any other diet, I have also had food funerals. I have binged on foods or quantities that were not going to be options after my “start date”. I realize now, however, that these moments of panicked indulgence were only reinforcing my unhealthy relationship with food.

How can I hope to be successful and develop a new, healthy approach to eating that will stay with me for the rest of my life, if I’m still treating Chipotle, Goldfish crackers, and pizza like forbidden fruit, to obsess over and mourn when no longer available?

Over the next few days I will have “bad” foods. I’m sure of it. There is a dark chocolate bar in the cupboard that has my name on it. But I am vowing to myself, right this moment, to not be crazy. I will enjoy reasonably sized portions of the foods I am fond of, with the understanding that I will be able to enjoy them again some day, just in smaller and even more reasonably sized portions. I will not view my upcoming low-carb and liquid diets as a death sentence for all of my favorite foods. I will not mourn them.

I am determined for my new normal to include a healthier relationship with food and there is no reason that can’t start right now.

A little over 4 months ago I wrote about burying my head in the sand and indulging. I just re-read the post for the first time since then and it ends on such a positive note. I talk about how, even though I go through phases of making poor choices, my stretches of good behavior are increasingly longer and more frequent. I talk about how I always pick myself up and try again (cue Pink song, “Try“).

Fast forward 4 months and this is the longest slump I have ever been in. I think that over the course of the past 8 months I have had perhaps 5 good days, if that. I really don’t even try anymore. I have gained 50 pounds in the last 8 months. Fifty. My clothes don’t fit, I feel terrible, my breathing is labored, it’s a struggle to walk. I genuinely don’t know how it happened. Well, of course I know HOW it happened- I quit paying attention and restricting myself and instead I just ate whatever I wanted. It’s the why that I’m unclear on.

Why did I give up? Why did I stop trying? What happened in my head that it suddenly felt insurmountable and I felt like it was no longer worth the effort or the struggle? Why did I let myself become this person again? This apathetic, obese, overindulgent, unhappy version of myself? This isn’t me. I have spent the last 5 years fending off this person, holding her at bay with my workout routines and food scale and weight loss apps. I didn’t think I would ever become her again and yet…

7 years ago I reached my highest weight. At 5’6″ I weighed 327 pounds. That number is burned into my brain like a brand on cattle. 327. I don’t know why that was the number that made me pull my head out of the sand, but that week I joined Weight Watchers (for probably the 8th time). That time, though, it helped. I lost 30 pounds and kept it off for awhile. Over the past 7 years I have roller-coastered down to 255, back up to 312, and down to 260, back up to 280, and then down to 245 (the weight I was at last March). But, like I said, I gained 50 of it back again.

It’s so exhausting. So incredibly mentally exhausting. And embarrassing.

This afternoon, in the privacy of my hotel room, I ate a bunch of junk food. I ate it because I could, not because I wanted to, or because I enjoyed it. I don’t think I even did enjoy it. I certainly don’t recall eating it. One moment I had a bunch of junk food, the next moment I did not. After years of trying so hard to keep control and feeling guilty whenever I slipped, there’s almost a euphoria in this self-destructive state of indifference. Like a kid in a candy shop, I suppose. Only eventually the kid in the candy shop runs out of nickels and/or his mom comes to get him. I don’t have those limitations. I have the money and the freedom to keep this up indefinitely. That’s the scary part. Without the motivation and drive I lost 8 months ago, what’s to stop me from making 327 a non-significant number, as my highest weight climbs higher still?

And so here I am, once again, feeling in my head and my heart that this has to stop, while knowing that I have been here so many times before. How many times have I written in a blog post, or a journal, “this ends today.” Or, “Starting tomorrow!” Or, “Never again.” And yet…