Ouch!

I have a few ouchies going on right now.

1. I had an amazing little backpacking adventure with Dan over the weekend and it just filled my soul with everything it had been missing but man my legs hurt!

2. I met with my personal trainer and she emailed me back some comments about my food journal. All I can say is either I am in denial or she looked at the past 2 weeks of my food journal to determine where I need to improve. She told me I need to drastically cut back on ice cream, french fries, Wendy's, cheese, and peanut butter. She told me I need to also cut back on my consumption of syrup, pizza, cheesecake, egg yolks, and bread. Ouch. Was she really looking at my food journal? MY food journal? Did she have the wrong person? In my humiliation I went back to see where she got all these foods from and low and behold, I had cheesecake at a bridal shower, Wendy's after a big hike, Wendy's jr. Frosty en route to Idaho, pizza for first time in 7 months, french fries on 2 date nights and a little bit of syrup on my whole grain pancakes about 5 times last month. It still hurt to see all those foods in my food journal and honestly it hurt my pride a little bit to have that little reality check.

Man, it all adds up so fast, especially when you get so fed up with life, disappointment, and lack of results so you have the quarterly "I don't give a crap" attitude and start eating all the foods you cut out of your diet in some attempt at rewarding yourself for the months of deprivation.

I am still taking a break from my scale obsession but I am not taking a break from my health. I am taking a break from my mental obsession with this weight loss thing but I am still working towards my goal. It is a very very tough balance, one that I am not good at balancing!

My trainer gave me a wonderful menu and a wonderful exercise program and she told me if I didn't see results in 6 weeks I had her permission to get lipo. I'm about to go forward with her program as my final attempt at weight loss before I seriously consider surgical intervention.

I told her that I know myself and I know that I struggle and am not perfect but I have exhausted my knowledge of weight loss which is actually pretty extensive. I have exhausted my knowledge of sifting through all the rules about eating and weight loss and I've probably read 15 books or so about the subject plus been successful at losing 60 pounds. I am out of ideas. I am out of knowing how to fine tune things but I also know that there are areas that are out of my realm of expertise and the source of my calories is one of them.

I know what healthy foods are but honestly there's a lot I probably don't know. This is a woman I trust and I'm taking her word for it that I consume too much fat from dairy and I eat too many french fries. This whole time I thought I was adding protein to my snack by having string cheese. Who knows, maybe there are dozens of little places in my diet like string cheese, protein bars, packaged foods, and too many indulgences that are wrecking my progress.

Through all my discouragement I just have to have faith that one day I will figure it out. One day I will find a solution to a problem that has haunted me my entire life. One day I will reach a healthy weight. It will be an uncomfortable transition for me to go back to following a more rigid way of eating instead of just counting calories, getting my veggies in, and balancing my food groups, but heck, I'm willing to try anything.

One more thought- I have to remind myself about 20 times a day that I don't have the same body I did 5 years ago. I am still confused by my body. I am still frustrated with my body. I am still totally annoyed at the lengths I have to go to in order to see progress. I am still learning about this body of mine and maybe what worked 5 years ago would never work now and it is so hard for me to have so much trial and error with this new body of mine that sometimes it just seems easier to quit. I just can't obsess about it and bang my head against the wall while screaming "why doesn't this or that work anymore?????" I might try 500 things and then finally find that 1 thing that works and when I do I pray I will have the discipline and determination to just accept it and move forward until I reach my goal.