I Totally Drank The (Sugar-Free) Kool-Aid January 31, 2009

I’m currently on my third week of Weight Watchers and I am totally and completely sold. The first week was the hardest, but more in a getting-used-to-everything way than a I’d-ransom-my-grandmother-for-a-cookie way. I’ve come to terms with constantly thinking about food. It isn’t obsession or fixation but rather an awareness that currently takes up a lot of my brain space.

When I attempted the South Beach diet, I did it by the book. I ate zero carbs or sugars for the first phase, used only SB-approved recipes, the whole nine yards. I think I followed it religiously for a little over two months and lost about 6 pounds. There wasn’t a day when I wasn’t hungry and craving all the things I wasn’t allowed to have. The Cheez-Its in my pantry mocked me and I dreamt of potato chips and toast and pizza.

I recently tried the Special K Challenge (a bowl for breakfast and lunch and then a sensible dinner) as well for nearly a month. Even during the first week, I was starving ALL THE TIME. I could not wait to make it to dinnertime, and probably sabotaged myself with after-work snacks. I lost, I think, three pounds over that month.

I’ve only been following WW for a little over two weeks, and there are serious differences from my other attempts. The big one is that I don’t feel deprived. I can have my toast and my chips and a sandwich for lunch and anything else I could possibly want. There are no food restrictions. I like that. The other is that really, I don’t get that hungry, but if I am hungry I can eat and that’s ok. As a matter of fact, it’s popcorn time right now.

As of my last weigh-in I’ve lost nearly 4 pounds. Wait, what’s that again?

I have lost weight without resorting to a diet of spinach and egg substitute; precisely-measured breakfast cereal for 66% of my daily meals; craving forbidden foodstuffs; or being a cranky bitch. That’s pretty impressive. Not only that, but I have lost more weight in less time and with significantly less angst.

I feel like I can totally do this.

The Fat Bandwagon January 12, 2009

I have a show coming up in about a month.  I really need to jump off the fat bandwagon, because I’m thinking I’m not going to fit into anything I own, costume-wise.

Actually, this is a good thing.  I was all set to start hitting WW meetings (henceforth known as “Fat Club”) last week, but life interefered and meeting #1 is delayed until this Thursday.  Now I have extra reason to make myself go, even if my buddy can not, because I need to fit into shiny sparkly bits and pieces of fabric!  Oh, and my not having a belly the consistency of cold tapioca might be nice for the audience as well.  One of the ladies in my dance class has been on WW for several months now, and she looks fantastic.  I hadn’t seen her for a while so the difference was very noticeable.  When I asked her if she’d been losing weight, her response was, “Oh my god this was so easy, I wouldn’t have been fat for so many years if I knew this was all I had to do!”  That’s a serious ringing endorsement if I’ve ever heard one.

So Thursday is D-Day.  Or F-Day.  Or the day of my first meeting.  Whatever.  I have real inspiration now, and I hope it keeps me going.

Why I’m Tired January 8, 2009

This is what most of my nights are like:

I’ve learned to not mind sleeping on the couch, so long as I have a pile o’ blankets.

Why Books-A-Million Sucks January 6, 2009

Remember that bookstore that I was angsting about?  Well now it’s truly all-out loathing.

After my entirely unsatisfactory attempt to try to return my books without letting my mom know (I don’t like telling people, “Thanks so much!  I’m going to take this back in a few days!”), I swallowed the bullet, screwed up my pride and bit my courage and asked for the gift receipts.  Without a receipt, my mom’s money was only going to waste, and that made me feel worse than bucking up and telling her that I was going to exchange her gifts to me.  That turned out to be pretty drama-free (there was simultaneous, unrelated massive drama that I can’t and won’t go into, it’s much too raw) and on New Year’s day I had a gift receipt in my hands.

Today I finally had time to swing over to Books-A-Million.  Yes, I’m naming the store.  I spotted Vaguely-Stoned Woman out wandering the floor, and the people manning the register were much friendlier today.  I got in line for my return, one of apparently many, and handed the cashier my receipt.   She looked at it, and pleasantly told me that since I didn’t have the original receipt, she would put the returned balance on a gift card.

Okaaaaay.

So it appears that  this bookstore will only allow merchandise transactions with an original receipt.  Fine.  However, an original gift receipt is not quite as valid as an original receipt with prices on it, and therefore can only be used towards store merchandise.  In essence, this business has made it so that once a purchase is made, there’s no way they can lose money.  The return policy sans receipt of  the lowest selling price in the last 6 months makes so much more sense now.  This bookstore is not in the business of (gasp!) selling books and magazines, they’re in the business of screwing over people who like to read any way they can.

I knew there was no use in arguing it.  Their return policy is written in terms of “an original receipt” and my defining a gift receipt as something else, they have free reign to do whatever they like.  I took the gift card because I had no choice, and the one thing I do not want is my mom’s gift to me to be useless, wasted money.  But at the same time, I am so livid about this store’s policies that thinking of buying anything from them is making me physically ill.  I wanted to return their merchandise so I could take my business elsewhere.  Now I can’t even do that.  In spite of myself, they have my mom’s money and there’s no way around it.

If I buy anything at Books-A-Million, I’m going to hate it and my mom’s gift will go to waste as surely as if I never returned the books in the first place.  If I buy nothing, the money is still wasted.  No matter what I do, I’ve managed to ruin a gift my mother chose for me, and it pisses me off nearly as much as it upsets me.  I hate crying because of someone else’s asshattery.