175 lbs <78 lbs>

Exerpt from an e-mail to my health coach, just in case anyone out there needs to hear that they are not alone in their weight-loss challenges:

It was a BIG processing week this week. I spoke to my friend, who has weight management issues as well, and for awhile we were supporting each other with daily/weekly contact through e-mail and discussion group postings. She and her partner have split up recently and she has found herself re-living some terrible, crazy behaviors from a year ago. I shared my bagel whore story, and it opened up an opportunity for her to talk about and confront some very scary stuff.

I bring this up because listening to others often provides amazing perspective on our own challenges. Her issue was an overwhelming need to be eating in her car, on a long drive to a work site. This resulted in stops for French Fries. Then it became making excuses to leave the job site to go get junk food (potentially impacting her work). She said she could tell from the behaviors that it was truly addiction behavior - she was stopping at nothing, risking her work, in some cases her safety while driving, for that "fix" of junk food because she truly was in a place of "I will die if I don't have....." Wow. So glad that is not me.

On the other hand, I was not "strong" enough yesterday to actually do only Fruits/Veggies as planned at lunch. I probably ate 4-5 cups (two bowls full) of shredded cabbage, onion, carrot, mushrooms, spinach, water chestnuts, those crispy bean sprouts. I added only drizzles of hot oil - mostly soy, teriyaki, ginger and honey water sauces. I had eaten 3/4 of it, and my co-worker went back for another plate (hate all-you-can-eat places!).

I felt just as overwhelming a compulsion to not sit with an empty plate and watch him eat! I just couldn't do it. Did I stop and ask myself WHY I couldn't do it? Whether I would DIE if I had to watch him eat while I had no food...no, instead I went to the area with side-dishes, and got 1c of rice to soak up the sauce, and be "filler." Even though not 1/2 hour before, I had committed to ONLY Vegs, I still couldn't do it in-the-moment. Not that much different in behavior, only in scale.

I was so glad I could help my friend with support, and some of that is just talking through things to become more aware of them. I shared about how I am the same way with travel/transition and dealing with situations where I KNOW I don't want to be there. I ALWAYS have problems in those areas. So I drink shakes in my car, I carry fruit at all times, bars, water....I have a Ziploc bag full of teas and sweetener that I think has been in my backpack, traveling EVERYWHERE with me since 2001. I don't ever want to be desperate.

And I want to continue to see things like the fact that stress makes my stomach go all acidy and upset and my instinct is to soothe it (and the emotions) by getting relaxed - eating more, starchy, and nap-inducing food. And um, I feel like I *should* know this, but I honestly don't: What is the medically correct response to that situation (besides breathing and taking a walk to relieve the stress)?

My success was doing a HUGE food prep night last night, even though I was exhausted. Da hubby helped me cut up approximately 10c of oranges. I made a tuna salad with 2 hardboiled eggs, celery, relish, low cal mayo, mustard and a drizzle of nonfat honey mustard dressing. This got mixed in with 6c of raw spinach and put into 2 containers, one for lunch, one for dinner. I also made 6c of jicama/cuc salad with fresh mint and yogurt. This is all in the cooler, in my car, so that I KNOW I have wonderful SAFE food to break out of the environment and the "just one more" bad thing cycle. At the end of the night I was exhausted, but it will be SO worth it if I can use those things to control the calories.