I had forgotten how hard low-carb shopping can be, and how much more expensive.  It seems like a lot of the low-carb products that were popular at the height of the low-carb craze have mostly disappeared.  But still, I think I was able to make some good choices over the weekend, and finally managed to earn my white star back.

 I find myself keeping a snack drawer at work to keep from being ravenously hungry by the time I get home at 7pm; it is usually stocked with things like almonds and jerky, although with the stresses of the last week, bags of Starburst jellybeans took over.  Ugh!  Now I have some South Beach peanut bars in there.  But I really need to come up with reasonable snack choices.

The day after my last post I got on the scale and it said 380.  380.

OK, I said to myself.. It’s just water, it’ll be gone by morning.  It wasn’t.  I did something I normally wouldn’t do, adding an extra water pill (hydrochlorathiazide) to my morning medications for two days.  Still nothing.  By the end of the week I’m sitting at 379.

I am getting so tired of this. 

I know this is supposed to happen, look at it long term, I was losing to fast, my body’s correcting itself, drink more water.  And I’ll try.  But I am just so sick of it all.

 I have been trying to deny it for a while, but I am slipping into a major depression.  (This subject embarrasses and humiliates me but maybe getting it in the open will help.)  I started taking Wellbutrin last year and for the most part it helped, but a combination of work, physical, and personal factors have all come together lately to deliver a severe blow to any feelings of self-worth I may have had.  I have caught myself saying, out loud, “I hate my life” several times a day.  I don’t even think about it, it just comes out.

I am sure none of his is making it any easier to lose weight, and my failure in that just adds to the depression cycle. At 40 I am essentially a complete failure.I find myself sending more and more messages to friends (just everyday messages, nothing dramatic) and press Refresh repeatedly just to have no answer come. I feel left behind, unwanted and alone.

Maybe I’m just having a mid-life crisis of some sort… I don’t know.

I have a spreadsheet at home I use to track my progress and project out into the future.  I have my goal date for 352 set for May 1.  The spreadsheet says I’ll actually be 357 on that day.

So at this point I am 20 pounds to mini-goal, more than half way there.  But with the two weeks I’ve lost being stuck in the low 370’s, I now have to lose 2.3 pounds a week to reach my goal.  I try to keep all my goal dates and weights below 2 pounds a week.

For the last month I’ve managed over 4 pounds a week losss, but the computer insists that is slowing down to a projected 1.7 pounds a week, slowing down from there untill I bottom out in the mid-280’s in mid-2012.

You know, if 285 was as low as I ever got… I’d be perfectly happy with that.  It’d still be a 100 pound loss.  The lowest I’ve been in 15 years is 291 after a year of low-carb, but I don’t know if those last 9 pounds count, as I got really bad food poisoning just before I hit 300 and dropped 9 pounds in two days.

It’s odd the way perspective works.  On the way up, 291 was horrifically fat.  On the way down, 291 is wonderful.  I certainly looked better at 291 going down than I did at 250 going up.

I think the point of this blog is that I am a serious geek. LOL

But is 174 even realistic?  I have topped out over 400 pounds; how far over I will never know.  So to reach my goal I will have to lose over 200 pounds, more than half my body weight.  This is going to have reprecussions in the form of loose excess skin and (hopefully) some excess muscle mass from my body being used to carrying all that weight.  So even if I get rid of the right amount of fat, won’t I still be 30-40 pounds heavier than what my BMI says I should be?  Am I still “overweight” if the extra weight is skin and not fat?

I guess, if I have a question or point to this, is how can those of us trying to lose a LOT of weight reduce the loose skin issue?  I’m thinking for people like me, with most of the weight in the midsection, maybe some sort ogf girdle to allow the skin to have a chance to contract without having to fight gravity at the same time?

 So I now have a red 10-pound star.  I assume it’s all water weight, and I’m trying not to get excited about it.  BuddySlim is helping, complaining at me that I’m losing weight too fast now.  Yeah, like what am I supposed to do, chow down on some Snickers bars to stop it?  I don’t think so.

 I am at 380 this morning, which is about a 15 pound loss since I returned to BuddySlim, even though it only shows up as 6 pounds on the ticker.

At this point I am not even really dieting.  I’m doing two things: Drinking more water, and eating more for breakfast and lunch and less for dinner.  It really seems to be helping.

Actually, saying I’m not dieting is a little inaccurate.  I’m not followng a plan, but lunch is more likely to be a 6″ turkey sub at Subway rather than the chicken enchilada with cheese sauce, beans and chips at the Mexican place.  Not a diet, just a different choice.  I’m just as full after the 6″ sub but I have a sneaky suspicion it has fewer calories than the cheese-sauce-covered enchilada.