The Relapse.

I have a confession to make:  I'm not perfect.  Shocking I know.  Underneath my resolve lies a flawed, fallible, imperfect being capable of making mistakes.  Many, many mistakes.  Someone recently told me something along the lines of the more she got to know me, the more she realized I was just as messed up at the rest of us.  Hooo boy, did she ever hit the nail on the head.  (Thanks, Kait).  So while my posts so far have been stories of triumph over adversity, I think it's time I tell you about the last year of my life since I dropped to 163lbs on the ketosis diet.

In a word: oops.  I fell off the proverbial wagon, and some times, I fell hard.  Here are the fatty fat fat things that happened starting the end of August and the end of my diet:

- A wedding

- 9 day trip eating our way down the eastern seaboard and back

- Boy's graduation weekend

- My birthday party/boy is home for a week before getting posted party

- (Canadian) thanksgiving x2

Oh yeah.  Gimmie that gravy baby.

So with all those food happy events for 2 months, I managed to (mostly) maintain my weight.  I say mostly because all my my new "skinny" clothes still fit.  Luckily living by myself meant that I could keep my house free of junk food and unhealthy things.  I still kept my fridge well stocked with good for you things, and did my best not to eat outside of the house.

However, one thing that I didn't manage to maintain was my resolve.  All of those stuff-you-face-fests lead to me down the road of oh just one more helping won't hurt, and oh I don't always eat desert so its ok this time, and the I'm not on any crazy diet any more so I can totally eat this now.  Before I knew if, I was making exceptions every single time I ate anywhere but my own kitchen.

One piece of cake won't hurt...and of COURSE I'll have ice cream with that!

I think my favourite part about this whole ordeal is that I WASN'T EVEN DONE YET.  Looking down at my body, yes, I had lost a bunch of weight and yes I was more fit than when I started but I was far from throwing in the towel.  I still had the muffin top, the gut, the thunder thighs, the Oprah arms, the cottage cheese ass.  Yes yes they were smaller, and no I'm not trying to diminish the work I put in, but I got way too elated with my success and complacent with continuing to be successful.  Not to mention if I ever wanted to make it through a whole period let alone and entire game in the net I'd have to be a lot more fit than I was.

Unfortunately, instead of getting back to it I found myself smack dab in the middle of the end of a semester.  Dun dun dunnnnnn.  Let the excuses begin!  I was on campus all day, I didn't want to lose my parking spot, I only had an hour to go home and come back so I might as well stay here.  I ate all the shitty food imaginable while I was at school.  Greasy ass pizza, macaroni and cheese, cinnamon rolls covered in glaze, cookies, donuts, muffins (and you don't even want to know how many calories are packed into just one muffin).  I even started regularly drinking those fancy latte's and specialty drinks that are just packed with sugar and things you don't need.  Then the stress began, and before I knew it junk food found its way back into my house.  I fell off the wagon, found myself a shovel, and began digging myself a hole.

Hello, coping mechanism.

Every time I went to the grocery store, I would put something terrible in my cart.  All-dressed Crispers and Ritz Cheese Sandwich Crackers were popular guest stars.  Half a dozen bakery chocolate chip cookies, pints of Ben and Jerry's and kettle cooked potato chips also made special walk on appearances.  I somehow managed to justify this by only buying one bad thing every trip to the grocery story and telling myself I would only have a little bit and make it last.  In reality I went home and was so exhausted from my shit show scholastic life that I would sit down and eat an entire box of crackers in one sitting and call it dinner.  I would do this after eating like crap on campus all day.

I had flashbacks to the days before I hit my bottom where I would run out to the store to buy food as soon as I was left home alone.  I would sometimes get anxious waiting for boy to go to hockey so I could go out and get my fix.  No one could see my shame that way, no one could judge me.  I would buy something like, a bag of chips and a tub of Philly cream cheese dip, and I would inhale what I got within a half an hour.  Then I would bury the evidence in the trash and pretend like it never even happened.  On the outside I was all smiles, on the inside I could taste nothing but shame and regret.  No wonder I ended up being almost 200lbs.

This downward spiral relapse went on for a good 4 weeks from the end of November to the beginning on December.  Then the travelling and airport/airplane food came, and then food enabling with the boy, and only after all this self destructive behaviour came the most dreaded time of year for anyone's will power:  Christmas.

All I want for Christmas is to fit through a door when this is all over.

So, let's fast forward to the end of the winter semester.  You can fill in the blanks of January, February, and the first half of March with more of the same battle I've been describing.  My pants were tight, my belt buckle was uncomfortably digging in to my gut, some of my snugger t-shirts were riding up and unable to contain my spare tire.  I even found myself opting to not wear some pairs of pants because of how they made me feel when I wore them.  I had to admit to myself after all that work I did I started gaining weight again.  Luckily I was still able to cram into my clothes but I was to the point of what the fuck how could I do this to myself AGAIN.

I was angry and sad and disappointed and all sorts of sucky depressing feelings.  I hated myself for giving in to these behaviours I knew were wrong, for making excuses to myself when I knew I was full of shit.  So, I took a stand.  Digging deep for that resolve I once had I started ejecting all the crappy food out of my house.  I ended up bringing it to class or to people's houses and sharing with friends so I didn't feel like I was wasting food and I didn't have to eat it myself.  I started bringing snacks to school and making a real effort to buy good things like fruit and salads when I was famished and stuck on campus with no end in sight.

I'm not sure how much I actually gained, but I managed to shed enough to make my pants a little comfortable just by eating better for a month.  Unfortunately the damage had already been done, or rather undone as I unraveled some of that hard work and determination I found not even a year before.  The food was only half the battle, and exercise is the other half.  I need to keep going, I'm not done yet.

So there's the story of how I fell, and hopefully the rest will be the story of how I pick myself back up again.