I guess we can say I’ve lost my ball, but the chain is still wrapped around my neck. Well, more like my thighs/butt, upper arms, waist and especially my boobs.

And you’re all probably still very confused.

I’m talking about my weight, a topic which I usually avoid, but occasionally address when I feel like wallowing for a while.

See, I haven’t really mentioned it but over the past 3 months or so I’ve really been watching how I eat and I also started biking to and from work. Five days out of the week I count the calories I’m eating and try to stay between 1200-1300 a day.

And I’m a staunch bitch those five days.

The other two days I allow myself leeway and try to eat within reason, without counting.
But honestly, I usually let it get out of control. Or at least I was until finally, this past Thursday and Friday when I wasn’t counting, and also didn’t gain any weight back.

So cut to the chase, you’re probably screaming, man up and tell us how much you’ve lost!!

Well, the answer to that is about 32 pounds (14.55 kilo) and I’ve lost 2 clothing sizes.

How much more do I have to  lose to meet my goal and to be at a more or less healthy weight pre-breast reduction (haven’t mentioned this, but yes, I plan on getting my DDD’s reduced to C’s)? Well, another 20 pounds.

And I find that I’m constantly asking myself when I will finally be finished losing weight.

Really, it feels like the last 15 or so years of my life has been spent trying to lose weight. Be it from peer pressure, the desire to share clothes with all my size 2 friends in high school, or doctors telling me I was overweight (according to bell curves, which in my opinion, is bullshit, but it’s not like trips to nutritionists and dietitians for more accurate measurements is cheap). I played soccer 9 months of the year from the time I was 9 until I was 18, but I was always overweight.

I still am, and I probably always will be overweight, although I think 5-10 pounds over is acceptable. I just don’t want to be obese anymore. I want to shop in regular stores and I don’t want to cry when I look in the mirror. I want to actually see eating and food as something to enjoy, rather than an exercise in mathematics and guilt. Because yes, counting the calories works but it makes me neurotic and pushes me into such a concrete mindset that I actually get nauseous and lose my appetite if I can’t accurately calculate how many calories I’m eating. And if I’m put in a position where I lose track of my daily calories, I quickly spiral into massive overeating for the rest of the day because I feel defeated until bedtime.

It’s just that, I feel that anytime I stop counting, I stop losing. Or worse, start gaining.

I’m currently 197 pounds (89.6 kilos). It is the least I’ve weighed since I was about 23 years old. It’s not what I wanted to be for my wedding, but it’s 60% better than it was 6 months ago, when the only thing I hated about my dress was the body that was in it. Every time I feel discouraged or disgusted I keep in mind that I’ve gotten more than halfway towards something that used to feel impossible.

I just have to find the resolve to keep going till the end.

Well, I still have to lose 60 pounds before the wedding so I’ve been calorie counting and eating healthy again (I make exceptions on weekends…I started having dreams about chocolate fudge ice cream cake and waking up drooling so I figured I better give myself a break one or two days of the week). Breakfast has been consisting of cream of wheat with a tablespoon of jam or maple syrup (the real, fresh, Canadian kind…which we’re running out of quickly….waaah) but I’ll tell you, when I wake up and it’s already close to 80° in the house (we have no AC), the last thing I want to eat is hot cereal.

Hence my epiphany today while cycling past the supermarket: I’ll buy a box of Special K! Then I can still have a healthy, whole grain breakfast without raising the temperature in the room a degree or two. So I went and grabbed a box and glanced at the calories. Hrm…30 grams was a serving and a serving is 115 calories. Okay, well I use 35 grams of cream of wheat (that’s dry, pre-milk) and I’m always full, so 30 grams of Special K can’t be much different, right?

Until I got home and weighed out 30 grams of cereal.

Well, shit! No wonder people lose weight on the Special K diet…they only get 6 mouthfuls of cereal for the first two meals of the day. I mean, come on! I’m making sure that I only eat between 1200-1300 calories a day but to do that I need to feel full after breakfast and there’s no way that’s gonna happen with this cereal. Tomorrow I’m going back to the supermarket and buying a box of All Bran…sure it tastes like lightly sweetened wood chips, but at least it’s a decent amount of lightly sweetened woodchips!

Okay, now on to some Weekly Winners, more of which can be found on Lotus‘ blog.

Some Spring in Gent

Fun With Macro

A Daytrip to Lille, France

This one needs a quick explanation. There was some sort of language exhibition going on in Lille this weekend (which is rare in France) and we just found some irony in the typo above.

Besides that not much has happened lately. We went to visit CB’s friends in Zulte and some of his other college friends were there as well.  As always, it was very pleasant company despite the fact that half of the conversation escaped me most of the time. At this point I have almost no problem understanding standard Dutch with subtitles included. I can follow the news about 90% of the time with subtitling and I’d say probably 75% of the time without subtitling or on the radio. I can also follow some television shows in standard or mostly standard Dutch without subtitles fairly well such as one of my current favorites, Komen Eten (Come Eat).

When it comes to conversation, however, it’s a different story. If someone is talking directly to me I can usually figure out what they’re saying if they don’t use much slang or a heavy dialect. I have the easiest time understanding Cabanamom, Cabanasis and CB. One of CB’s friends, let’s call him Tim, also tries to make it a point to speak slowly if he sees I’m trying to follow which I appreciate more than he probably realizes.

As far as the rest of CB’s friends and his dad, I often have difficulties really understanding what’s going on. It’s usually a combination of the pace of the conversation, dialect, prior knowledge that I don’t have (inside jokes, names of other friends or family, etc.) and the fact that 2-3 conversations may be going on at once and none of them are directed at me. So when we’re in a group setting of more than 4 people I really can’t keep up with what’s going on. Despite that though, I had a really nice time like I usually do, and I’m looking forward to the next get together.

Also it seems that at least one couple of CB’s friends are considering coming to the wedding in Pittsburgh and last night there was a mention that another couple may consider it as well. I personally hope that at least one of the 2 couples can make it because I’d really love to see as many of CB’s friends and family there as possible. I felt horrible about the one-sidedness of the Pittsburgh affair only because in the US we tend to do things according to the groom’s family and friends and the bride’s family and friends. And if the groom has no friends and only 2 family member able to attend…well…it’d just be more obvious in an American affair than it would in a Belgian one.  In fact, as we’re learning, there are several differences between weddings here and there and we’ve struggled with some misunderstandings along the way.

I think I can fill you in on that a bit more tomorrow.

Well, despite the fact that I promised myself that that would be it, my permanent lifestyle change, it pretty much broke down in November. I don’t really feel the need to go into why because there are several reasons. But what it boils down to was that it was easier to stop paying attention to how I ate. And the more weight I saw piling back on the more upset I got and the more I ate. And now? Now I’m right back where I started.

Now, in case you haven’t heard, CB and I are getting married in May of next year. Which means I have 15 months until I have to look fabulous in a wedding gown. I weighed myself yesterday, got the food measuring scale out this morning and started tracking what I ate today using www.sparkpeople.com. And now, what I’m about to do is something I don’t think I’ve ever done directly on my blog.

I currently weigh 230 pounds (that’s 104.2 kilos).

My goal is to weigh 165 pounds for my wedding (74.8 kilos).

I’m leaving myself plenty of room for the occasional “aww dammit I just couldn’t pass up the chocolate cake” moments as well as plateaus and anything else that can crop up on the path to losing weight. I’m telling you this because this blog is something important to me and I get a lot of encouragement simply from the fact that you show up here to read what I have to write.

I’m hoping that by keeping you up to date on my progress that I’ll also be able to hold myself accountable easier; that my first “aww dammit I just couldn’t pass up the chocolate cake” moment is only one moment rather than a progressive sequence that eventually leads to chocolate cake for all of my meals. So once a week, probably Sundays or Mondays, I’ll let you know how it’s going. If I feel extra inspired I may even start up a little food journal page to help keep track, although the spark page works as long as I use it.

Thanks to all of you for reading and caring.