Aaaaaarrrrrrgh!!!!!!

After a week in which I exercised more and ate the same as the last two weeks, I HAVE GAINED BACK THREE POUNDS.

Since I am clearly doomed to being fat forever, I'm going to go eat several chocolate chip cookies while grinding up vegetables in the garbage disposal. Then I'm going to ask the trash collectors if I can watch while they smash my scale in the compactor.

10 Things: When I was skinny/Now that I'm fat

When I was skinny:

1. I actually owned a pair of size zero jeans.
2. If any of my clothes were a size 4 or above - it was to achieve that baggy boho look.
3. I couldn't give blood.
4. I never wore a bra.
5. I drank Dr Pepper all day long and never felt guilty about it
6. My bathing suit was a bikini
7. I ran track and cross country (badly, but still)
8. I never wore bracelets because they always fell off.
9. I wasn't ashamed to be seen naked.
10. I knew I would never be fat.

Now that I'm fat:

1. It's kind of hard to put on socks.
2. Old ladies hold open doors for me because I look pregnant.
3. I don't recognize my face and its chins in the mirror.
4. Extra large doesn't cut it anymore, and in some stores, not even XXL.
5. Chafing. I can't say more.
6. My bras are from Just My Size. But I'm still barely a B cup.
7. I'm actually a healthier eater than I was then, but it still adds up to fat
8. There are no decent looking clothes that fit this shape body. I wear t-shirts and elastic-waist, knit pants.
9. Shit. I dropped my cookie...
10. I've lost two pounds. For whatever that is worth.

And that other thing...

Yeah, so, I haven't actually started talking about the diet thing yet.

I am 38, soon to be 39, years old. I weigh approximately 197 pounds. I am 5'4" and I have really tiny wrists and ankles and nearly half of my body weight is fat. I wasn't always like this.

I was one of those skinny kids who never ate anything. Then I became a skinny teenager, and a skinny college student. I started to gain after college. Just a bit each year, nothing major. I had finally discovered food, but I still wasn't, you know, pathological about eating it. I was simply willing to eat more of it than I had been as a picky kid.

Then the first baby came. I can't even recall what my weight was when I went back to work after her birth, but I do clearly recall the woman who asked me when I was due. She had been a total bitch even before that, so I took great pleasure in getting really upset as I told her that my baby was already FOUR MONTHS OLD. Work was awful, and got worse each day, and eventually I responded to the stress by not eating. I got down to about 130 through sheer starvation, and I looked gooooooood.

Then I quit. Got a new job, one that let me sit at a desk instead of chasing after bitchy, rude customers all day. A desk that had ample room for snacks, and a padded chair that had ample room for my increasingly ample ass.

By the time I got pregnant with my second child, roughly 18 months later, I was about 165. The pregnancy was awful, and I developed a problem with my hip joints that made walking agonizing, and so I left work and stayed home for the last half of my daughter's gestation. I was about 200 pounds when she was born, and she was a 9-pounder herself.

I started dropping pounds during breastfeeding, but both those things were derailed by multiple bouts with mastitis and a bout with postpartum depression.

Between stopping breastfeeding and going on antidepressants, I gained back all the weight I lost after her birth.

I am fat, and I am miserable. My feet and my knees hurt when I walk. Nothing fits except stretch pants and t-shirts. I even need wide shoes now. I wheeze when I carry may baby girl up the steps, and I sweat profusely from the slightest effort. My belly has been stretched beyond its capacity to rebound, and it hangs from my torso, as do my breasts. I am uncomfortable and embarrassed and my blood pressure is rising, and god only knows what my cholesterol level is. I used to stop eating when I was stressed out about something, and now I turn to food for comfort.

I want to change, just like I want to learn to sew and I want to stop burping out loud all the time and I want to save money so we can take the kids to Disneyworld in a few years. But nothing good is ever easy, and all I can do is try.

And write about it on the internet so random strangers will email me misspelled insults!