*This is a long one. So, for those of you (including my little brother) who wish to “cut to the chase”, the weight total is at the bottom of this post.

Sanity has returned.

It’s amazing how quickly life (or part of it) can spin completely out of control. For me, as you all know from last week, it was my weight…well, not my weight, per se, but my obsession with my weight.

When I started Weight Watchers it was because I was finally ready to do this, lose weight, the right way, the healthy way. I didn’t want to ever end up in that yucky, ugly place again. You know, the Land of Eating Disorders, the Land of the Emotionally Screwed Up, the Land of Starvation. Take your pick…it’s all the same place. In that land, you weigh yourself every day, least twice a day. Sometimes three times. In that land, any time you “slip up” you have to beat yourself, internally or otherwise, over and over and over again. Sometimes the beating involves popping laxatives, sometimes throwing up, sometimes just thinking mean and ugly things about yourself. This a land where you are never happy. Not ever. You may appear happy. You may have moments of laughter and smiles. But the joy of a true life, a life ruled by honesty and integrity, never comes.

You would think the steady decline of the numbers on the scale would do it. And yes, there is this kind of euphoric feeling when you get on the scale and the number is lower, or when you go shopping and fit into a smaller size, but this feeling is ephemeral. I imagine it is a feeling akin to that experienced from a hit of some illicit drug. The problem is, like the high experienced from a drug, without another hit on the horizon, you are left in a state of withdrawal.

Well, no matter what you are doing to your body, it can only lose so much weight. Even starving it will only result in weight loss for so long. And like the addict who requires higher doses to experience the high, the more weight you lose, the more you need to lose to regain euphoria. Eventually, either one will kill you if they are left unchecked.

While I have no desire (in my lucid moments) to return to the Land of Starvation, somehow I found myself on the journey in that direction last week. You all know that I managed to stop in my tracks…but it was enough to really scare me.

Over the last week, I have though often about what it was that put me on that path. If I am going to stay away from that land, I need to figure these things out. I have had all of these little ideas, but I think I might have nailed down one sure thing that sends me into a tailspin. It’s my scale. When I started having “bad “days (days when I wasn’t tracking and knew I’d gone over my points), I started getting on the scale in the morning to make sure that I hadn’t gained weight. If I had, those feelings of inadequacy, of lacking control, of, well really, self-loathing (remember when I was so excited because self-loathing didn’t come when I gained .8 lbs that one week?) would immediately follow. If I hadn’t, I would think that I could get away with what I was doing.

But weight is a funny and fickle beast. It doesn’t react immediately. At least not chez moi. I could eat a whole pizza one day and not “feel” it for four. There’s a reason that Weight Watchers tells you outright that when you are trying to lose weight, you should only weigh yourself once a week. I really think, after much reflection, that the lack of weighing myself in the early weeks of my journey was a big part of my success…and my sanity.

Tonight’s lesson (yes, I weighed in and went to the meeting) was about the journey…patience and perseverance. Those of you who know me know that patience is a virtue that I do not possess. When I want something to happen, I want it to happen yesterday. Well, that’s just not the way it works with weight loss, or anything worth doing, for that matter.

I wish I could explain to you how helpful the meetings really are. There’s a certain camaraderie that exists when you have this group of people who come together for a common goal. It’s funny, working in a counseling center, I often admire the people in group therapy while simultaneously thinking, “I could never do that.” And I’m not going to say that WW is group therapy, but it is definitely a support group, and I love it. I love sharing. I love people sharing with me. Maybe I could do group therapy.

Our meeting leader asked us tonight to think of one thing, just one, that we were going to do to feel successful this week. Since I had already committed to meticulous tracking this week (which I did), I decided that I was going to give up my scale. Put it away…where it can’t tempt me or call to me. (Have you noticed how many inanimate objects speak to me?) That’s it. I have weighed myself twice a day every day this last week. Thankfully, I managed to get myself in the mind frame that, no matter what the scale said, I was going to just stick to my points and follow the program.

While that worked this week, I sat there today asking myself why it was that I felt being a masochist was necessary; why I felt that I deserved the kind of torture involved with daily (bi-daily, for that matter) weigh-ins. If I’m going to follow the program, regardless of what the scale says from day to day, why do I need to know what the scale says?

So, I am standing up right now to go bury the scale in the depths of my closet. While the room under the roof where I live is pretty small, the closet is not…but it is awkward, with a slanted ceiling, which means to get to the depths I have to crawl. I think that should do the trick.

Wow…that was hard. I feel like an alcoholic who just dumped out the last of my stash. Except that I didn’t. I still have the stash. It’s just stashed better. Okay…I’m feeling like I need to do more. My heart is racing. That is sad. A woman tonight, after I said that I was going to give up my scale, said that she started to feel anxious just at the thought of it. That’s how I’m feeling now. It’s one thing to put my scale in the closet, but to get rid of it entirely. I don’t know if I can do it. I’m thinking that’s what I need to do. If I am really going to learn how to eat and kill this demon (or at least domesticate him), that’s what I need to do.

This is how things happen in my life. To get a little spiritual on you (something I don’t do very often via the internet), this is exactly how the Lord works in my life. Unfortunately, because the good things are often the hard things and the hard things are often the scary things…these epiphanies (aka “promptings”) often involve varying levels of nausea and anxiety. Excuse me while I put my scale in the trunk of my car (and vomit). And then tomorrow, Madame Scale is heading into the storage unit where she will remain until I’m ready to maintain.

I’m scared and excited all at the same time. I think this is another step on the path to freedom from the crazies that live in my head.

Oh…and I lost .6 lbs, for a total of 23.6 lbs. I have nothing negative to say about it. I’m not disappointed. I’m not super excited. I just feel good. And healthy. And happy. It’s been a good week.

So, I know this is a bit delayed, but I’ve had lots going on. In any case, here we are, 11 weeks into this, and I have hit a wall. Things have been so good and I really and truly believed that I was not going to struggle with eating disorder issues anymore. But then I had a couple of not great weeks. I still lost 1 lb over those two weeks, but I definitely wasn’t eating what I should have been eating. And that’s when things began to get hard emotionally. I had some pretty high expectations for last week. I was ready to recommit. That was the plan.

The thing is, when planning, sometimes I think only about what I want and not what is realistic. Realistically, losing weight last week would have been extremely difficult. I was going to be traveling, I had two other dinners planned with friends on top of the trip. And once things started to go downhill, I just lost all control, which is a weird form of control in and of itself. I know that sounds strange, but it’s true. I get to this place (and it’s been a while, which is why this week was so hard for me) where I basically say “eff you” to my body and my lame-o metabolism. I think, “Fine, if you’re not going to cooperate, I’m not going to cooperate.”

Since my food intake and exercise levels are totally within my control, whereas my metabolism, body shape, etc. are not (not totally, anyway), I have two ways of taking control. One is to not eat and exercise obsessively. The other is to eat everything in sight and stop exercising. Both are unhealthy. Both end with me being miserable, either because I can’t maintain the one and end up gaining back anything I lose, or because I gain weight and feel horrible about how lazy I am.

Well, I was out of control in D.C. I won’t go into the gory details, but the worst part was at the airport on the way home. I had two hours to sit there, and all kinds of food options. I wish I could describe to those of you who have never struggled with this what it feels like to think about food constantly; to think about what you should eat, what you shouldn’t it, what you already ate, what you are going to eat. It is miserable. And the worst part is, I am aware of what’s going on. I am aware that it’s not healthy. I am aware that I am not really hungry. I am aware that I am going to be really angry at myself after I make certain choices. I know all of this, and yet, when I get to a certain point, I just can’t stop.

So, there was some serious binge eating going on. Thankfully, there was no purging, laxatives or otherwise, but I still felt miserable. I got home and thought, “Okay, tomorrow will be better.” But I hadn’t forgiven myself. I was still so mad that I had lost control. So while it’s nice to think, “tomorrow will be better”, if you can’t let go of yesterday or today, you can’t really get to tomorrow. Tomorrow was not better. And then it was Wednesday morning.

I was not in a good place. My week had been so busy that I had yet to run even once, which only adds to the depressed feelings. While I don’t necessarily love to run (and sometimes I really and truly hate it), I definitely like the endorphins. I woke up Wednesday morning (after choosing to snooze my alarm and not run, once again) and decided that, since I couldn’t handle going to my meeting having not lost any weight, I needed to just starve myself Wednesday and Thursday.

Thankfully, I am healthy enough now (emotionally) that I let that thought sit for about a minute before deciding that I did not really want to do that. And that is when I decided that, if going to my meeting was going to cause me this much stress, that I did not need to go. And that is how I ended up not going to my meeting.

I weighed myself, so I know where I’m at (on my scale) and I gained about 3 lbs. While I’m not fine with that, I have been working on forgiving myself so that I can move on and so far (you know, yesterday), this week has been better.

I have figured a few things out. I realized that I really do have to calculate everything I eat into points and do it realistically and then write it down. Part of what I was doing was overestimating point values. I know that sounds weird. Most people underestimate. However, when I don’t know a point value, I just guestimate and I want to be safe, so I overshoot. Well, then I know that I’ve overshot, so I allow myself to fudge a little here and there. And, apparently, the “here and there” add up to more than the overestimations. Seriously, don’t try and understand why my head works the way it does. I’ve lived with myself for 29 years and still don’t get it. But, at least I’ve learned how it works, so I can manage it.

I am feeling pretty good. It was a good reminder that, really, eating disorders never do leave you. I think, after 8 weeks, I was lulled into this sense of security. The truth is, I will probably be fighting this battle the rest of my life. And I’m okay with that. It’s better than lots of other things lots of other people have to deal with. I just need to remember that such is the case. It’s in the moments when I feel so strong that I am the most vulnerable, because it is in those moments that I forget how hard I have had to work to get to where I am.

So, as for weight loss, it didn’t happen this week, but I am choosing to not make that official, because I can do that.