How to diet, yet remain fat

Today’s title is ripped off from fatcyclist’s blog, where I found a pretty interesting post with that title.

Fat C. wrote a post about various diets he had tried, how much weight he’d lost, and how much weight he regained when he went off the diet (hence the name of his blog I guess).

That’s very different than my experience of the past 3 years or so. Convinced that diets don’t work, I’ve tried instead to “change my lifestyle.” This has been partly successful – I’ve been able to make exercise (cardio and weights) a regular part of my life. We may part ways for a bit – but I know we are forever linked together. I cook at home on a regular basis, and we all eat a homemade lunch and breakfast. Sure, there are weeks where we may go out twice (gasp!), but that’s now the exception. I eat more fruits and vegetables, and overall I believe my diet is healthier.

BUT. But I do not eat few enough calories to lose weight consistently – or even to maintain the loss I’d achieved. I was thinking on the drive in this morning how much I hope that I haven’t gained weight this week because the number on the scale last week hurt my heart. I remember how frustrated I felt when I was stuck at 150.5, and how badly I wanted to see the 140s. And now I’d be happy if I could see 150.5 by the end of the year. But I go home and eat chips & salsa & beer because it’s the only thing I can do to make myself feel better right now. And I just want to sooth myself because my heart hurts and I can’t really talk to anyone (except here) and I’m thinking how tomorrow night I have to sit down and talk about this stuff with my husband. Stuff we’ve been avoiding all week and how I really don’t want to, but I’m a grown-up and we can’t ignore things that won’t just magically go away – they’ll eat at our relationship. But who enjoys cleaning infection out of a wound? It happens in relationships – its normal and you have issues and you deal with them and move on and that’s life but it sure isn’t the fun part of life. And it’ll feel so much better if I think about it with an order of jalepeno poppers from Sonic.

So my lifestyle is much healthier, but it isn’t a lifestyle that leads to weight loss and if I really want to lose weight maybe I need to think about the dreaded ‘d’ word.