Finally, people DO read this

Thanks to the commenters and emailers. Nice to know there is a league of chunky brats out there who also have trouble in public bathroom stalls, airplane seats, and driving past taco bells.

No thanks to the skinny minnies who give me diet advice. I appreciate your comments, but you've been skinny your entire life, and going from size 6 to 4 isn't what I'm looking to do. I have no need for starving myself, I'd rather eat cabbage all day (and sit in an unventilated room).

Finally, I think I change the design of this daily, what do you think about it? Tell me your thoughts on the colors, etc. Give me something to work with here.

Maybe I don't have to Diet after all

From future sis - in - law:

solution to toilet seat dilemma... don't wipe. my grandma says that if you don't drip it's sanitary.

Hmmm... that solves one problem then.

Don't just sit there, comment dammit!

Really, it's no fun talking to myself.

Let me eat cake (or cookies)

Had to attend a meeting at an uppity federal building today, a meeting that ran through two of my meal times and provided lunch...

where they had cookies.

I did well though, ate the salad, my 2 oz of protein and a little pasta (hey it's allowed sometimes!), and was proud I had water to drink than over-sugary drinks...

I figured I didn't need a cookie, I did fine without it, it was probably gross anyhow, and I bet they didn't have chocolate chip.

They had chocolate chip.

So I ate one, big deal? I can be allowed a cookie dammit!

But then I saw that they had peanut butter cookies too...

Sigh.

By the way, Slush wrote me to say that she's delighted to be a star in my blog. Also that she may have mono right now, but it'll be worth it, if it means she can lose 60 lbs without working too hard.

How do I get mono?

I don't have the patience

This diet isn't actually so bad, once you get over the starving every two hours bit, and the asparagus-smelling pee... but I just don't have the patience to stick to it for months and months in order to lose what I want.

My expectations are too high.

Maybe instead of wanting to fit into an actual dress (as opposed to something resembling a potato sack with ruffles), perhaps I should aim for going back to the size I was two years ago. That would be about fifty pounds lighter than I am now. Actually... that's pretty high of a goal as well. How about, thirty pounds... do you think I can do that?

Argh... how about I just stay happy with the way I am now, sod the diet, and die happy like Thelma and Louise ('cept driving off the cliff partner would be a box of Krispy Kreme donuts).

I haven't told anyone at the office yet about my diet. I sneak in the mini-meal snacks while at my desk, which may mean eating some things cold, and quickly, but I find it easier than having to explain why I have grapefruit juice over the legal fees report (ignore it and it will go away is my motto).

Another reason why I hate to tell people about my diets, is that they always feel free to give me advice. I love advice, and welcome it usually... but when it comes to diets, I've done them all. I know what Weight Watchers teaches, I've seen Atkins do wonders (and what it does to my toilet), and that whole drown yourself in drinking water tip is tattooed across my forehead. I got that. Yet, everyday instead of just laughing at these pathetic little entries (which is the actual goal - to provide humor through my pain), I get email after email of diet tips.

It doesn't help getting diet tips from skinny people either. I don't want to hear about how they dropped from a size 8 to a size 4. Put on a size 22 and see what skinny looks to you then.

I do have one friend that I love speaking diets to. She's weight-challenged like myself, and takes on a more realistic approach to diets. I call her Slush, because well.. she's a bit of a lush and a... ahem, friendly girl. If ever a time occurs when both of us are dieting, communication between us is this:

Me: Hey Slush, how's it going? I did great this morning, I walked the dogs to the mailbox and back (aerobic exercise), only ate one piece of toast, and I'm not even hungry! How's your diet?

Slush: Ash, I'm in misery. I ate a whole cake last night. If we lived together again, you could've had the bowl of icing that never made it to the cake.

I want a personal trainer. A big muscly man who can't keep his hands off of me. That'll never happen, I'll settle for the pimply pizza delivery boy. Mmm pizza. Come over and we'll have some pizza.

By the way, how many calories in a fifth of vodka?

Slush and I made a pact a few months ago. We'd both start weight watchers, and in a year we'll weigh ourselves. For every pound I lost, she would owe me $2. For every pound she lost, I would owe her $2. If she lost more than 60, I'd take her to the Caribbean.

Two months later I hadn't even begun the diet, and she wrote this:

Ash, I ate half a cake last night, and the second half is looking good this morning. I feel like having chinese food. I was depressed, I needed food. I suck, I'll never diet successfully.

How many weight watchers points are in Bourbon?

Peanut Butter Will be my Downfall

I can feel it.

Today the hallway community table in the office had Ritz crackers with peanut butter on them. I told myself I didn't need them, I just had breakfast, I'm not hungry.

Later in the copy room I smelled peanut butter on someone's breath.

I walked back to my office, passing the peanut butter cracker table with my arm outreached...

they were gone.

Peanut butter breath person is now on my sh. list.

Office Memos I wish I could send

To: All

Subject: Bathroom Warning

Just to warn you, I've had fruit for breakfast, and vegetables for lunch, and in about ten minutes I'm going to make the bathroom so unbelievably stinky that you may want to avoid it for the next hour. Thank you,

Me

To: All

Subject: Apology

I apologize for running up and down the hallway this morning. I'm on a diet that requires I drink every drop of water this building can hold, which makes me pee a lot, without much warning.

Thank you,

Me

Am I in Ethiopia?

Diet Day 1... Not so bad I don't think. It took a while the night before to prepare everything, but it came with the excitement of just thinking about fitting into clothes, public toilets, and the apples of people's eyes.

The difficult thing, however, is how to manage a normal day at work while eating every three hours (the main gist of this diet). I could run into the kitchen, grab something, run back to the office and try to hide it, but then I'd just look a little weird. I could explain that I'm going on another diet, but then I'll look like another failure in a few months when they see me eating the chinese buffet at lunchtime again.

And who can refuse donuts?

7:00AM Breakfast - Not so bad, I'm not hungry in the morning, but I woofed down the eggwhites with little problem. This ain't so bad...

10:00AM Morning Snack

Not be hungry? A little snack?!?? Two bites of chicken and half a grapefruit aren't what I thought would help me keep my stamina through the day. The egg whites and three bites of potato were fine this morning... but by 10am I'm STARVING. How do those children in Ethiopia do it?

10:12 AM

Okay, I can do this. Not that it's easy to eat half a grapefruit with a plastic spoon whilst trying to juggle memos phones and policy manuals, but I'm not starving African orphan anymore. In retrospect, I didn't even notice I hadn't eaten until 10 when my body just gave out immediately.

Husband said this is a diet for housewives and shut-ins. I don't know if I could stand being at home so close to real food and stick to grapefruit and two bites of chicken.

Grapefruit doesn't taste so bad, why did I hate it as a child?

10:13AM

Where's the sugar!?? Now that I'm not woofing it down, I can taste it. Maybe they put grapefruit on diets so that you don't eat at all.

How do you get grapefruit juice off of your keyboard?

10:32AM

Starving again... that other grapefruit halve promised for 3pm is looking good right now.

I thought I wouldn't be hungry? didn't they take notice that those doing this diet are those who get hungry lots, and need to eat lots? why didn't they call it the starvation diet?

11:34AM

Someone is out to get me.

I walked by the community table in the hallway and there was a box of chocolate covered granola bars... with chocolate chips.

I could've sworn that box sneered at me, and has been whispering my name since I passed it.

Hour and a half until Lunch... can I make it?

1PM Lunch- FINALLY, my dreams have come true, I can now eat the two bites of chicken, ton of asparagus and three bites of potato. This isn't so bad after all, as a matter of fact, I love asparagus.

1:10pm - I love asparagus when it's covered in cheese in a potato chip casserole... I'm so sick of it now, I can't manage. The chicken is eaten, the potato is gone... I'm receiving hallucinations of a huge chocolate covered donut making faces at me.

1:12PM - Sorted, lunch eaten, not hungry, and work is so busy I won't notice the rumbling tummy.

1:40PM - I'm hungry again. How many calories do cough drops have?

Last Day before I give in to the diet....

I want a donut.

Yesterday Pete (hubby) came home from work with a box of donuts given to him. They were gross, stale, filled with yucky jelly and way too sweet.

I ate two of them.

They were so sweet that I felt sick the rest of the day.

I want another.

Do you want to know what is better than pizza?


Cold Pizza... leftover.

We had pizza tonight. I bid farewell to umpteen slices of ham and pineapple, and meat-lovers on thin and crispy crust...

It was heaven.

Two days until diet begins and I'm beginning to panic.

Mum in law told hubby it'd be easier to say we're just eating healthy instead of diet, to ease our pain.

It's just that word "healthy" I cannot stand. It's never referred to me without "un" in front of it, and only brings negative thoughts to my mind...

Then again, so does diet.

How about "killing ourselves slowly" or "decided to go zen through pain"?

Yup, that's right... I'm starting a diet. No more excuses, no more cheating, no more chocolate (sigh), and no more keeping it quiet.

I love to throw the blame, so I'm blaming all those other people who didn't know about my diets those other times. It's their fault for not knowing about it, so that I could eat fast food and fluffy foods in front of them without guilt. I could cheat to my heart's content and the only judge was me (did I mention I'm no good at judging?).

So here we go.. diet 2004 - and I'm dragging you down with me.
I haven't dieted probably in the last year for some very good reasons...
1. Lazy
2. Who can bothered?
3. Diet food forces too much toilet time

But this time I'm serious, I have to lose it, well not all of it, that would be unrealistic, but some of it, perhaps just a little bit so that I can zip my jeans without having to lie down on the bed, and maybe so that I won't have to unzip them during the day or when i'm eating.

Reasons to diet now:
- Brother in law is getting married to a very good college friend of mine. Since they live in england (husband is from England), world of skinny fit people, I will definitely stick out like a sore thumb. My hopes are to just stick out like an all right thumb, perhaps one that is shiny with cute nail polish... and a hat, I must get a hat for this wedding.

- Toilet seats are too small, since they won't increase the size, I must decrease the capacity of my rear that touches the seat.

- Public toilets are too small. Honestly, how is a fat person expected to properly wipe themselves? We need leg room for legs and knees to flail while our arms flail around trying to reach parts of ourselves that are virtually unreachable for the human arm.

- Free booze - It's simple, cute girls are skinny, and skinny girls get free booze from guys at bars. Not that I go to many bars these days, and not that I'd really have the chance to get free booze off of any guy other than my husband... but it's nice to know that if i wanted to - i could.

- To be able to shop at nameless expensive name brand clothing store. All I can wear there are the men's clothing size XXL, which is all right if I were rooting for the other team, or a movie star wanting to go incognito to Starbucks or the adult stores...

- To get fitter so that I can play footie with my husband. No not THAT kind of footie you cheeky monkeys! He's English, so footie means soccer, and it's hard enough for him to find a soccerball here in the States, much less have someone to kick it around with.

- To make people jealous. Okay, I admit it, I AM materialistic and selfish. I want to go back to my high school hometown and prance around my lack of rear and no longer sagging bits and have nobody recognize me.

- To have fun at amusement parks, and other places that entertain the general public. The last time I tried to ride a rollercoaster, it was in England, and wasn't even a rollercoaster, but a carnival ride with loosened bolts and all over wobbliness. They wouldn't let me ride because the seatbelt was just short of buckling me in safely. I want to ride life-threatening wobbly rides and not be embarrassed in public.

- To eat fast food and in public restaurants. I absolutely hate going out to eat (except for that whole eating part, I love that!). I feel like everyone is looking at me holding up a sign reading "And you wonder why you're fat?" No, I know why I'm fat, and I know it's not good for me, but I'm trying to make myself happy by eating stuff I like, thank you very much.

- To fit into an airplane seat comfortably. My thighs aren't supposed to roll under the bar and into the seats next to me, are they?
- So my husband can pick me up and carry me over the threshold. We haven't had a chance to do this yet, since we're too poor to live on our own.. but one day it will happen, and I don't want to have to carry him!

Well, I was supposed to begin my diet this week... Go shopping on Monday, cook Monday evening, begin Tuesday. Not quite what happened. Monday we were too busy, and instead of going to the grocery store, we stopped to get some fried chicken and brought it home. Shopping rescheduled for the next weekend.

One problem I'm already having, is bulking up before the diet, as if I need to gain the extra weight so that I'll lose more. It's not a logical way to think, a bit irrational.. but that's what happens. Okay what really happens is that I panic, decide that it will be my last time in forever that I'll be able to eat certain things, so I go a little overboard. This week, hubby and I ingested:

-two boxes of Chocolate Chip Cookies
-A pizza
-A chinese buffet
-A chocolate cake and two cartons of ice cream, and two bottles of magic shell
-a six pack of cokes (me), a six pack of beer (hubby)
-a Mcdonald's happy meal
-two subway sandwiches (on different occasions)
-Beans on toast with cheese
-one snickers bar
-two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
-a lot more junk food that I purposely failed to remember, just so I wouldn't feel guilty about it

I'm not sure why I feel that I must eat everything that I hardly do, just because it won't be allowed on the diet. I'm only lucky that I haven't broken down and bought donuts yet. I love donuts, but never buy them and usually do not eat them, because they're often given away at the office or church - places where skinny people inhabit. I find it difficult to eat fattening foods with skinny people around.

Perhaps instead of a diet, I should just hire a skinny person to live in my kitchen.

Coming soon... give me a chance already! Sheesh!