Do you smell that?

Do you?  It’s like… what…. what is that….  oh.  Oh wait.  I know what that is.  That, mes amis, is the stench of failed dieter.  Actually, I take that back.  It’s the lingering waft of stalled dieter, which has the potential to intensify into stench of failed dieter.  Big, fat, failed dieter.  I need a pep talk.  Here’s the year in review.  Could help.  Or it could drive me to a moaning, rocking place in my utility room, far from prying eyes and questions about whether I’ve gotten all my water in or had a bowel movement.  (they’re fairly invasive with the questions, these people)

1. Okay, ah, I think Suck It Sandra no longer works for the LAWL.  So that’s good.
2. I should be within 30 pounds of my goal weight right now and I’m within 90.  So that’s bad.
3. I have to make a skirt for this play I’m in at the end of January and most costume patterns only go up to 20, which I now wear.  So I’m closer to normal than I have been since college.  So that’s good.
4. I see my mother’s extended family once a year on christmas eve and not one person noticed enough weight loss to comment on it.  So that’s bad.
5. I lost 2 pounds over the christmas weekend, so that’s good.
6. But that’s largely thanks to the heinous migraine I had Dec. 23 and 24.  So that was very, very bad.
7. I am officially a “regular” at the gym now.  Which means my trainer will complain to me about all these newbies-come-lately who are only going to take up space for a couple of months and then be gone.  I’m a gym-bitcher!  I have arrived!  So that’s good!
8. I haven’t had acid reflux all year.  So that’s very good.
9. I haven’t had heart fib all year, except when taking massive doses of caffeine for migraines.  So that’s very, very good.
10. I sleep pretty well now.  So that’s excellent.
11. I flew this year and didn’t have to buy an extra seat.  So that’s great.
12. I have had many lovely, encouraging emails from supporters who follow my fat ass online, without whom I can pretty much guarantee you I would not still be on this diet.  So that is better than I can even tell you.

I think the ayes have it.  It has been a better year than a bad one.  New job.  Wrote a little.  Lost a little bit of weight.  Joined a gym.  Learned how to make pot roast.  Started meditating (which is actually very helpful with the dieting thing.  I highly recommend it.)  Big plans for the future kids.  BIG plans.

If you are thinking about losing weight as one of your new year’s resolutions, you aren’t alone.  I read an article that said weight loss and quitting smoking are the top two resolutions made each year.  And also, I’m here to tell you that you can do it.  And probably much better than me.  It may be slow.  I guaran-damn-tee you it will be sometimes painful (if you have very much to lose).  But it’s do-able.  I feel your pain.  I’m here to help.

And also, I’m here to fellowship (read: complain) about it.  But helping too!  I’m trying to be part of the solution and not the problem!  I am!

So a big, fat XXL thank you to everyone who has encouraged me this year.  Or, you know, laughed at something I wrote.  It doesn’t really take much to please me.  I’m easy.  Spread it around.  Bow chicka wow wow.  I am BACK in the saddle, I am UP from my pre-Thanksgiving weight, but I feel a migraine coming on from the friggin’ clouds that won’t go the hell away so another two pounds may start the new year off right!!

 

T minus 40 pounds and counting.

Holy shit!  I’ve lost 40 pounds!  I’m still fat, but I’ve lost 40 pounds!!! 

Naughty Naughty, loud and bawdy, t-t-t-t tease me….

I’ve been cheating.  On my diet.  Like….  cheating.  A lot.  If this were a marriage, the diet would be threatening to leave me and go back to live with its mother and I would be on my knees, drunk and crying holding flowers and wearing a dirty wifebeater, promising it will never happen again baby, don’t leave me, I need you, don’t make me cheat again, baby why you make me hurt’chu?

The thing that’s so hard about dieting during the holidays is vendor gifts.  I mean, I’ve put up with enough shit this year from enough of these chodes that they’d better be offering up some tokens of esteem and gratitude during this yuletide.  But why is it that I am getting all the foodstuffs while the men in the office are getting non-edible, fun gifts from the SAME VENDORS?  What, chicks only want food?  Is that it?  One vendor sent James and Brad those big buttons from the Staples commercials that say “Easy” on them.  James put his up in the hall so now everyone who walks past it pushes it and I have to hear the automated voice say “that was easy” every fifteen minutes.  I’m going to kill James, by the way.  It’s my new year’s resolution.  Seriously.  That guy?  GETTIN’ it.

Heh, it’d be pretty funny if I had an “Easy” button on my door.  I’d put it right under my name plate.

I stayed away from two christmas parties this weekend.  I’d like to claim a steely discipline but you know the truth is that I’m a Virgo homebody and sometimes I just don’t wanna put on hosiery.  Sometimes I just want to chill and sit on my couch and watch “you’ll shoot your eye out!” and turn off all the lights and look at my christmas tree.  I slept on the couch Saturday night so I could do just that.  So I thought I’d be safe staying home, avoiding party food.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!  Sometimes I’m so naïve I want to pinch my own cheeks.

There were almonds in the house, you see.  And the thing about almonds is A) they’re fattening and B) you have no idea how many you’ve eaten until you’ve eaten a metric ton.  I’m allowed to eat some to fulfill my daily fat requirement, but get this, I’m allowed seven.  Seven almonds.  Again.  If I could eat seven of ANYTHING, I wouldn’t have a weight problem now would I, LA Weight Loss?   So I had to toss those.  And throw away half a jar of peanut butter.  I had to!  I was eating too much!  I suppose it says something for me that I can bring myself to throw stuff away and not dig through the trash for it later, but still.  I’m like a porn addict.  Only for certain foods instead of sex.  Peanut butter that’s really chunky.  Almonds that are unsalted (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).  Goat cheese, yeah!  Do it, dairy products!!  You know what I like!!!

You know what I mean?  Who’s with me?   Oh.  Oh I see.  You have no addictions.  Nothing makes you want to snack unceasingly.  There’s not one single thing you can’t do in moderation.  Is that what I’m hearing?

Fine.  I’m off to try to get rid of the rest of the best goddamned cookies I’ve ever eaten.  Gift from a vendor.  Sittin’ here on my desk laughing at me.  Taunting me.  Whores.

It’s the mooooost difficult tiiiiime of the yeeeeear….

Where was I?  Oh yeah.  Bitching and moaning about my fat-but-exponentially-improving ass.  I was going to send photos of myself for this year’s christmas cards but I’m still too fat so we’ll try again for next year.  When I will be dressed like this.  I am happy to report that when I went this weekend to buy my christmas tree, the guy who came over to untie and shave it up for me said, “how ‘bout I knock ten bucks off that for ya’?” and winked.  Yes, he was old.  No, I couldn’t have been the first person to whom he made that offer.  But I have a feeling that would not have happened a year ago when I was still XXXL, instead of my current, svelte XL.  Saturday night I took my mother to see Tuna Christmas at TPAC.  Don’t judge!  I know, it sounds hillbilly, and there were plenty of those there.  I actually saw a woman in sweatpants and a fur coat, my hand to God!  But I’m here to tell you the guys who do this show are hi-larious.  Or maybe it’s just that as an actor (however amateur) myself, I marvel at their skill.  Anyway, as we stood in the lobby waiting for the doors to open, we played “see that girl over there?  Is she fatter than me?”  OH yes.  People DO play that game.  And my mom would look and say, “why, lord no!”  Of course I’m always sure to pick people who I know damn well are much larger than myself.  But, you know, sometimes it’s hard to tell.  You never see yourself as others do.  I got a little too confident though.  As one woman struggled down the aisle and into her narrow seat in the theatre, I asked again, “Oo!  Oo!  How about that one!”  And mom said, “well, she is now.”  Wait, what?  What do you mean “now”?  You mean I used to be that big?  Cause y’all, wow.  She was… wow.  And mom said, “well, you were gettin’ pretty big there.”  Woo.  Caught it just in the nick of time, apparently.

And also, just a request, please don’t wear spandex jeans.  Anywhere.  Any weight.  Thanks.

The Criggers’ cookie painting party was this weekend.  If you recall from last year’s party, this is the one where I can’t just avoid the food table.  They have waiters walking around with trays of food and shoving them in your face every fifteen freaking seconds.  And I’m not made of stone.  Or willpower, as we’ve discovered.  I’m still working off my Thanksgiving weight, and I am not proud of that, as I had the lofty goal of showing up Suck-it Sandra at the LAWL by losing down to a certain weight by the end of the year.  I can say with almost 100% assurance of accuracy (and shame) that this goal will not be met.  However.  I think the important thing here is that it is the holiday season and I am still going to the gym.  And I am still watching what I eat.  And I have completely shed my “oh well I’ve blown it for the week might as well start again Monday” crapitude.  And that, my friends and supporters, is huge.  HUGE.  Do you hear me?  It’s big.  I mean, sure I bought a salad today, ate the accompanying sunflower seeds and one crouton, took one bite of salad and then threw the rest away because I couldn’t choke it down.  But I could have gone to McDonald’s for lunch instead.  Right?  Right.

Also this weekend was the Neuhoff christmas party which was, fortunately, so crowded that once I ate what was on my plate from round one, I was too lazy and claustrophobic to force my way back through the rabble to the food table for seconds.  Naughty?  Yes.  But only slightly.  It was more of a misdemeanor, as opposed to the food felonies of my past.  So I’ve drunk all the hot chocolate, I’m done with the parties, for the most part (read: I’m looking for ways to get out of the rest) and with Christmas and New Year’s Eve looming large in the future, I’m back in the gym and stocked up on the diet bars.

And starving my ass off, FYI.  Sunflower seeds just don’t fill you up like you’d hope they might.

 

T minus still-working-off-the-Thanksgiving-weight-so-give-me-a-break and counting.