Foraging into 50 - Addendum 1

So seriously? I thought this was going to be just a weight loss blog but my incontrovertible humor seems to be overtaking my desire to tell the world that I'm not really "fat" (except by the fashion industry standards who classify a Size 6 as a plus size. If that's the case, then I am the Oval Office times 3.

So tonight was somewhat of a disaster. There I went again having nothing to do with my hands except put food in same and raise to my mouth. but it wasn't as bad as it could have been. Let's see: piece of veggie quiche (cold, yum, without ketchup heavens to mergatroit), some steamed carrots, spinach, and coucous and a few bites of steamed cauliflower. no salt. I sloshed a few splashes of wasabi fat free dressing on everything on my plate as my son watched in horror because ALL my food was touching and i have a tendency to mix my food together just to see what it tastes like. I don't care. I LIKE my food touching. I LIKE when I mix my corn and mashed potatoes together and I LIKE slathering my steak with 1.59 walmart ketchup (or whatever the brand name is). I don't CARE what anyone thinks.

So that was my dinner tonight. But then of course there was ONE Portugese roll left and I split it with my son and I opted out of the butter for peanut butter. My logic? Protein is way better than than the butter.

Um, yah, right. Fat = fat no matter what.

but it was only a little peanut butter. It's not like i layered it on my half of the roll. And I drink milk with 99.9 percent of my meals (yes, even with Chinese food and lobster) so I finished my milk with my half of the roll.

And nothing else has gone into my mouth since 6 p.m.

So here I am at 9:40 pm i just finished watching Easy A, a great movie. But the best part is when the guy she likes drives up onto her lawn on a borrowed lawnmower holding up speakers that are blaring "DONT YOU FORGET ABOUT ME" a HUGE 80s hit. Now how come I could never find a guy to do that for me?

50 is a funky number. I am undecisive right now about whether to throw in the towel and look upon the last five decades as 50 years of having accomplished nada, zip, zero, and however other many languages you can say "nothing" in terms of a real career or a lasting marriage or long-term relationship that was actually healthy and meaningful and "normal" or I can spend the next five decades remembering that it's never too late to be what I might have been.

What might I have been? Thin. I was - when I was about 12 ha ha ha ha.

I mean don't get me wrong - I do care what I look like and I really cannot stand to look at myself naked because pregnancy was not my bag and losing 60 pounds in 3 months borderlined on dramatic weightloss but given that all I did was smoke pack after pack of cancer sticks and drink gallons and gallons of DD coffee and not eat, well, yah, I guess it was pretty dramatic. and even more dramatic is how half of it has  slithered back onto me like freakn' medusa's snakes on her head (is that like snakes on a plane?) and in the past year, I have been undergoing some weird shit inside and out that I am just not happy about and given that my mother has early dementia, my sister is a kook, my brother speaks to me once a year and my youngest sister lives in Australia and has NOT got eaten by a Great White, there isn't anyone I can really talk to about what's happening to me. I am mired in silence because I am horrified that my hair is thinning, (I am afraid to brush it), I don't sleep because I may as well be sleeping in a  bed of lava, my bathroom scale has become a land mine and the guy that I've been dating off and on and off and off and off and on and on and on and off and on and let's see what is it now? on I think -- for nearly seven years is in worse shape than I am.

So I am a little envious of moms in my town who are younger than me, THINNER than me and who have teens about to go off to college and husbands who are wealthy and they don't have to look at the prices in the grocery store (but probably wouldn't get on their knees and give their husbands a blow job even if a thousand dollar shopping spree to Macy's was offered to them in exchange for same)

jeez girls --  it's not really THAT big a deal.

I'm getting off track.

bottom line: I am almost 50, overweight, dealing with mind-boggling physical INTERRUPTIONS (what the fuck kind of word is menopause anyways? MEN O PAUSE. Yep, that about sums it up. Men will pause when a woman turns 50 and say gee, she looks like shit. Oh and did I mention I have a pre-teen kid who is beginning to experience puberty and who cheerfully informs me that he has hair on his balls?

And I wonder why I eat the way I do.

I would kill for a smoke right now.

Is it Day 2 yet?

Foraging Into 50 Years - A Single Mom's Journey to Self-Preservation & Losing Weight To Stay Alive - Day 1

50. Half a decade. Nine days till it's been 18,250 days since I've been on this planet.

It's looming like the mothership hovering over Devil's Tower in Close Encounters of The Third Kind.

LOOMING.

And it' "ear-roding EAR-roding" my sense of self-esteem, self-confidence and self-preservation.

Why? Because I am overweight and I have a son who needs me to be healthy because I'm all he has. And about 40 billion other reasons that will bore people to death because everyone will say "yup, been there, done that. Movin' forward."

But let me tell you about being overweight (althought I am sure bazillions of women will read this and go, yup, check, have that, see that, ewww that).

I am 5-7. I weigh 191 pounds. There, I said it. And I don't give a shit anymore who reads that and says OMG PAULA IS A FREAKING MOOSE!

Bite me.

The Spanx hide the weight really well. And given that I have this amazing center of gravity below my 40Cs and above my thighs, that is the center of all the weight. That's the only reason I remain upright.

I can, however, still see my feet. I've never not been able to. I suppose that counts for something.

But after a three-month 60 pound weight loss during the summer of 2010 which left me even more sagging that I had been prior, I put 30 pounds of it back on in one year. Whether it was my age kicking in, my hormones being totally fucked up or that I moved into a new home and got comfortable because my son and I were safe from the monsters who nearly killed us in 2010, I don't know.

But last night was a wake up call. Something happened - well, Facebook revealed one its secrets in such a completely random coincidential manner - and this "secret" threw me for a loop. Jesus, it's one thing with the ring. It's another thing about the white pants.

And I spent the night assessing and re-assessing years gone by, the last six in particular that I've been the ultimate "giver" and finally decided that the next 50 years belong to me and I am going to become a taker.

But in a good way. I'm taking my dignity (what's left of it) and going to attempt to channel it upwards into what I hope to be a future of good health, sound mind (well, maybe because people already tell me I am certifiably off my rocker and I LAUGH because it's a compliment to me) and a body that when I look at it in the future, I would go "ewww, I'm gross" or have to stretch out my arms in front of me so that the tractor tires on my back will even out when I am bent over and getting screwed from behind, and I won't have to put a pillow under me when I am in same position because the rolls on my back are being evened out from my arms being stretched out in front of me but leaving my hanging sagging belly fat to dance to its own tune.

You get the ewwww picture. But really? Overweight women are truly creative when it comes to manuevering to a position to cause less jiggle, less tire action, etc. I'm tired of doing that. I want to focus solely on my self and not be bombarded with negative thoughts about how I look from behind, or the front, or sideways or from a distance.

And this is just about being naked. Wait till I write about me and clothes. The above-mentioned brings out the eww factor in me. I hate being naked. I hate taking a bath, I hate taking a shower. It has nothing to do with being clean because I'm a freak when it comes to that.

I just hate the way my body looks, what it has become and the fact I have to "hide" it from the world because it's the bane of my existence, the harpoon in my side 24/7/365.

I can blame it a bit on pregnancy from 12 years ago because I was horrified beyond all comprehension when I stepped back and looked at myself after I had my son. I could not believe what happened to my body. And it's been downhill ever since.

I hit rock bottom last night. That "secret" on Facebook just made me shake my head and go, that's it. I'm done. Time to get off my ass.

I'm not going to "diet" but I am going to change the way I eat. I am a stress smoker but I stopped that about 10 days ish ago. Cold turkey. Done it before a million times. But each time I look at my son, I have to convince myself that I can't smoke - at all.

And no smoking means more hunger and more hunger means emotional eating. Been there done that, too.

That's gotta stop.

Writing keeps my hands busy. It passes time that I otherwise would be foraging for food in my kitchen and eating for no apparent reason at all.

It doesn't change overnight. It's a mindset first. I have to want to change. I can't float along like a bottle on the ocean with a note it that says "rescue me" and hope someone finds it and does same.

That's for fairy tale fanatics.

This is real life, real time, right now.

50 is NOT an even number unless you divde it by 5 and get 10 and that's an even number.

10 pounds at a time. 10 pounds for each year I've been alive.

50 pounds to shed on this soon-to-be 50 year old single parent.

So maybe the sags might be more saggy but the rolls will remain on the bread shelves at the supermarket and not on me anymore. My legs are actually nice and my tattooed butt isn't too bad.

Duct tape (ohhh they have colored duct tape now) will most definitely help. But damn, I bet it will hurt peeling it off. Instead breast lift ha ha ha ha ha. OUCH.

Seriously: Humor and laughter have gotten me through the worst of times. So I LAUGH in the face of of the enormous task ahead of me (removing five albatrosses hanging around my neck) and regaining my self-esteem and self-esteem so that the next 50 years will be productive, healthy happy ones for me and for my son because really when push comes to shove - nothing else matters to me as a mom.

Movin' forward ......