chillin’ out maxin’ relaxin’ all cool.

Two things:

1. I accidentally starved myself yesterday. Here's how it happened: as usual, our grocery situation is dire. We have had exactly zero time for food shopping because boyfriend is taking his comprehensive exams today and our trip out of town this weekend did nothing to help our lack-of-time issues. I did bring food to work with me, but it was back-of-the-fridge scraps and I was more focused on my colossally awesome discovery of homemade sugar free vanilla iced coffee. I never took the time to eat yesterday and my hunger didn't come to my attention until after a jaunt in the pool [see point #2]. By the time we left the pool, I was ready to skin a person alive for a pound of flesh so we made the decision to skip the cooking process and go out to dinner instead. I had every intention of gorging myself on the biggest plate of pasta on the menu, but once we got to the restaurant I changed my mind when I saw the specials of the day. I chose the grilled cajun chicken sandwich with a cup of spicy tomato soup and it took every ounce of control to keep from inhaling my food whole.

I have to admit, it was a huge load off knowing that I went into that meal with the day's calorie intake hovering at exactly zero, but I hated the way it felt physically. I had to take special care to eat slowly, chew my food adequately, and enjoy the meal as opposed to just swallowing the food. Before I knew it, my soup cup was empty and my sandwich had vanished from the plate but I still had this horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. We had to run to the grocery store on the way home from dinner to grab a few items and I made a special stop at the bakery section for a slice of red velvet cake with the idea that a morsel of dessert would settle the feeling in my stomach. It didn't. I just felt gross, the starving feeling ever present but the sudden influx of food creating a glob that refused to move. It was hours before I could even consider having a drink of water out of fear that I would only upset my stomach situation.

Today, I can definitively say that I learned a very valuable lesson: eating regularly throughout the day is super duper important. I don't even have the benefit of saying that yesterday's mishap was an experiment in calorie cutting, it just happened by accident. But, I promise you this... it won't happen again.

2. It was a steamy 93 degrees in Iowa City, Iowa yesterday. It's June, this weather isn't unusual, so I don't know why I'm making it a point to bring it to your attention. The point is, it was perfect pool weather.

I came home from work and saw that boyfriend was in desperate need of distraction from his studies for today's pending exam [if for some reason you skipped reading point #1, you should go back and read that now. NOW.] so I floated the idea of going to the pool. For once, he was surprisingly receptive. Normally I have to pull teeth to get him to go with me but this time he eagerly pulled out his swim trunks and sun screen. He was worried that our complex's pool would be crawling with small children and annoying college students who refuse to take summer jobs and stink up our beautiful town even though classes aren't in session, but we went anyway. It came as a surprise to us both when we found the pool empty. EMPTY. A hot and sunny day in June at 4 in the afternoon and it was EMPTY. WTF. I hate people who can't appreciate good things.

Anyhow...

We had the pool to ourselves for the better part of an hour until two girls walked in. I didn't actually see them walk in, one minute we were alone and the next minute two girls we sitting on the edge of the pool getting their feet wet. It's a giant pet peeve of mine when girls go to the pool to tan because, well... pools are for pooling swimming. You can tan anywhere so stop polluting my pool area, mmkay? I was sending death stares their way from across the pool to let them know that I disapproved of their decision to 1) dress in bathing suits, 2) walk to the pool, 3) sit INCHES away from the pool and 4) NOT GET WET. Please, enlighten me. WHY BOTHER?! [PS - this shit really upsets me, fo' realz].

These girls were really cute, probably closer to my age, and they were having a conversation about how annoying college girls are, so naturally my hatred subsided and I eased up on their lack of pool etiquette. Then I took to admiring their bathing suits. One girl was naturally lean (bitch) and wore the cutest (CUTEST) black bikini. If was the bikini wearing type, I would own THAT suit... it was just too cute. The other girl was long and toned and had really pretty complexion for someone who fake bakes (eew), but she wore a one-piece and I could not figure out why. I remained fixated on her (yep, I totally did the across-the-pool-creeper-stare) trying to figure out why a tanned, toned, pretty girl like herself would opt for the one-piece when her less cute friend had the best bathing suit on the planet. Then she jumped in the pool. I watched as she stroked her way from wall to wall noticing something only a fat girl could appreciate: arm flab.

If you Google "creeper stare," a whole bunch of Asian girls and some Minecraft shit comes up. What gives?

Let me explain to you why I found this shocking. One-piece girl (that's why I'm calling her) was seriously fit, maybe 5'7" and by my estimates weighing between 140-150. The stems on that girl were walking advertisements for elliptical machines everywhere. I know nature can be cruel, but there's no way she was born with toned legs and seriously flabby arms. Nope, this was the mark of some seriously rapid weight loss. Sure enough, as she climbed the ladder out of the pool I saw copious folds of loose, draping skin from the back of her thighs, arms, and midsection. Suddenly the one-piece made all the sense in the world.

Of course I couldn't just let this girl soak up the sun in peace. Nope, I creeper-stared from across the pool for the duration of our swim. She even had loose skin around her neck and I figured out that her fake tan was a desperate attempt to hide the effects that weight loss had had on her skin. The reason I found this girl so fascinating was because I've never seen anyone do the serious weight loss thing before. Not in person, anyhow. The Biggest Loser does a bang up job of glossing over the skin issues, the show doesn't offer even a fraction of an episode to cover the challenges of going out in public in a bathing suit; no, instead, they focus on polished before-and-after shots and let the contestants do their cheesy mascara-dripping Miss America bullshit as they play a voice-over of their confidence boosting, life changing journey blah blah blah. Believe me, it would be WONDERFUL knowing that a major TV channel is going to pick up the tab on my makeover and stock my closet with beautiful designer clothes in sizes that only have a single digit. That would seriously help the process in ways I can only begin to fathom. But instead, us normal folk have to go about it our own ways without trainers or beauty consultants, only seeing physicians infrequently for regular check-ups and almost never for vanity reasons such as laser treatments or skin removal.

That bitch Kate Gosselin was selfish and reckless with fertility treatments and she got a free tummy tuck and a reality show. I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to pay my gym membership when it comes due in August, but I promise not a single TV producer is going to lose sleep over it.

Seeing that girl yesterday brought up many of my fears and worries. I wished I could have swam to her end of the pool to tell her what a fuckin rock star she is and that I understand what it's like, but I decided to let her live her life like a normal girl instead of the life of a former fatty.

I couldn't sleep last night thinking about all the various scenarios that could play out in the next few months. What if I gain weight? What if I stop losing weight? Or worse, what if I lose more weight only to regret it later? It sounds stupid, I know. How could anyone ever regret losing weight? Skinny = better, everyone knows that. But there are some things you can't take back, no matter how hard you try. Like flabby arms. I worry that some day I'll have to employ a surgeon to fix my arm problem or forever be plagued with blemished wedding photos because I insisted on having a sleeveless dress.

I was tossing around in bed, numbers bouncing around in my empty head.
My weight: 226.
Total weight loss to date: 66 pounds.
Next goal: 220 pounds, 6 pounds to lose.
The last time I weighed that much/err... that little: October 2005.
The weight that I think I would be proud to say out loud: 175.
Number of pounds until final goal: 51.

I don't know what any of those numbers mean anymore. When I was at my heaviest, I thought 50 pounds lost was impossible; now that I've lost 66 pounds I think "that's not enough." A year ago I would have killed to weigh 226 but this weekend I was grabbing at my stomach hating how much flesh there was. I used to take pride in being a curvy, sexy size 18, but yesterday I seriously contemplated deleting my Facebook account to erase the traces of my former full-figured self. Suffice it to say, I think I'm having an identity crisis. It's not that I've become obsessed with how I look, this certainly isn't an issue of vanity, it's that I've had a huge shift in my lifestyle and thought process and it's altered every single aspect of my being. I just bought a load of clothes in March in a size smaller. At the time, everything was snug, some things didn't even fit, but I was determined to make myself fit the clothes. I've spent the better part of this week tugging at my clothes, trying to keep my panties and skirts from falling off my ass and my shirts from revealing the sliver of my anatomy that I prefer to keep private.

It's beyond just not knowing where I stand in the clothing rack spectrum. It's that I don't know what I look like, I have no concept of size, it's that my brain consciously knows I lost sixty-plus pounds but my unconscious brain is stuck at "fat." I have more weight to lose so obviously I can benefit from this kind of mentality, but I worry that I won't know when to stop when the time comes. I believe they call that anorexia. I have a lot on my mind these days.