Be real.

Remember that time when I said I was going to make an effort at both blogging and weight loss?

Oops?

From 2007-2008 I lost about 50 pounds. I had quit my job to go back to school for my Masters in something I loved, and I was excelling and involved in school and gaining internship experiences and the world was my oyster. The economy tanked right around my graduation. I’ve been unemployed for almost nine months now. Unless you count eating my feelings as a job, then I’m Bill Mutherfucking Gates.

This stretch of unemployment has effected my psyche in incredibly negative ways you can’t even imagine. I’m trying to not make this a “listen to me whine about my emotions as an excuse for my eating habits” blog, but, well, listen to me whine about my emotions about how they affect my eating habits, won’t you?

It’s a vicious cycle. My horrid (which is to say, lack of an) emotional well-being keeps me beat down, insecure and hating myself, so I have no reason to want to treat myself properly. Those emotions feed on themselves and I find myself feeding…on everything.

Wouldn’t this be the time for you to get your ass in gear over something you can actually control, like how much you eat and how often you exercise, you ask? Well, if I was practical and emotionally rational then I wouldn’t be overweight in the first place, now would I? (side note: answering self-provoked questions with other sarcastic questions…ah, defense mechanisms, is there nothing you can’t deflect?)

In the last week I’ve polished off the rest of the chocolate stash I’ve had under my bed, but managed to keep myself away from buying more, at least. Have you ever known an alcoholic, or heard one talk about how the disease manifests itself in his/her life? Sometimes I feel like that, but with food. The secret stashes, the eating alone, the escapism from my problems with food, making excuses for the way I eat or living in a fantasy world and ignoring the truth as it stands right in front of me.

I’ve done Weight Watchers three separate times, so it’s not like I haven’t tried group meetings to manage my “addiction”. I don’t particularly like groups. I suppose Weight Watchers is good because it shames you into losing weight, as you have to be accountable to a stranger onto whom you project your feelings of judgment. Bitterness, thy name is 100in12.