Was that all a dream? and The Incredible Shrinking Woman

Here it is, another week later and I'm wondering if I just dreamed it all. But for my documenting it here on my blog, it could all have very well been a dream. I'm wondering how much of it was just me being on super high body alert for any possible changes that could signal a relapse.

Then again, I was dropping stuff more often than my usual acceptable level of clumsiness permits.

It's just that nobody from the clinical trial ever called me back and now I can't even trick myself into recreating the symptoms that led me to call them in the first place.

I feel absolutely normal. Well, as normal as I've ever felt which is not to say I actually know what "normal" is. Just normal for me.

I guess maybe by having the trial people ignore me, my brain just said "well if THEY don't think it's worth worrying about, why should I?"

Or maybe it's the diet?...

I started the South Beach Diet on the 5th and I've lost 6lbs so far and feel so much better. I don't have that up and down relationship with carbs and sugar that I was having before. It would zap all my strength after lunch and force me to the recliner for an unavoidable afternoon nap.

I also am not suffering as much from Dunlaps Disease (where my gut "dun lapped" over my pants top, also known as the "Muffin Top Phenomenon").

I only started out at 130, and I know a bunch of you reading this HATE me for thinking that is a Weight Problem, but to me it's all a matter of practicality.

I have no Fat Clothes. And the pants I do own are not the least bit stretchy. When we wrestle, they pin me every time. I can't win. I don't have the strength to struggle with them anyhow.

When you have to pull your pants up to mid-thigh, then jump up and down while inching them higher and then do squats in order to stretch them a little to get over Mt. Buttocks, it's time to cry "Uncle" and call in the big guns.

The big guns are either a) new pair of 5 bedroom/3 bath pants with room for a blossoming butt to grow, or b) join Biggest Loser.

Since I hadn't quite elevated to Biggest Loser status and I don't have two pennies to rub together to spring for a new wardrobe, I decided it was time to "Step away from the table! Come out with your hands up and put the fork down! Your pants DON'T have you surrounded!!"

In our family, for Christmas gift giving, we draw names on Thanksgiving. Then we don't buy for everyone, we only have to get one gift. Except my eldest brother and my Mom both ignore that rule and get everyone something. My brother, when confronted this Christmas with his blatant disregard for The Rule, pronounced candidly that he does it Because He Can! (and that it buys him love). I do love him, but don't tell him or the gift wagon might pack up and move on.

Anyhow, the reason I went so far off topic is what I'm finally getting around to...

We have to make wish lists for Christmas so our Secret Santa knows what we want (for under $25). On my list I had:

• A one touch can opener so I could throw my hand crank one (which has been known to cause me to creatively make up never before heard swear word combinations).
• A bathroom scale. (so I can throw away the one that had the clear plastic window with the pointer painted on it broken years ago so my weight is a rough guestimate due to John using a Sharpie and drawing a little arrow where he thought the pointer should be onto the metal that surrounds the hole where the window once was.)
• A diet book.
• Probably something else I can't remember.

At Christmas I got the can opener. Now I've turned into Mother Theresa in the kitchen, no longer cursing like a drunken sailor who stubbed his toe after getting pick pocketed at the strip joint from which he was thrown out. Instead, I stand there nightly, witnessing the miracle of some battery powered gadgetry efficiently scrambling around the top, wiggling like some big bug as it chews the lids off of my stubborn cans. Nary a swear word is uttered.

But, once again, I digress. My brother passed out his gifts to everyone and I tore into mine.

It was the South Beach Diet book. Well, I knew I'd put on 20 lbs. since I quit smoking, but I thought the baggy shirts (which covered the undoneness of my pants) were cleverly concealing that fact. I was sort of hurt.

"How did you know I wanted a diet book?" I asked, thinking maybe Mom had ratted me out or something. He couldn't possibly have NOTICED I NEEDED to diet.

"It was on your list, stupid."

Okay, he didn't actually say "stupid" but I felt it, so therefore he must have implied it. I had completely forgotten that it was on my list. That was soooo last month and my memory works about this well: 1. I get up and go to get or do something in the other room. 2. I get to the other room and look around, wondering why I am there, and how I got there, with a nagging thought trapped in some vacuum packed area of my mind screaming words I can't understand about something I urgently need to do or get. 3. I shrug and wander back to the computer. 4. I realize what it was I needed to do or get and go do or get it before the thought becomes vacuum packed for freshness again.

For this very reason I have been accused of using the smoke alarm as a timer for my cooking.

Adding "diet book" to my Christmas list was something I'd forgotten as soon as my fingers had left the keyboard.

I read it from cover to cover over the next 2 days and got myself all psyched up and ready to shed those pounds.

Then I realized there was too many Christmas dinner leftovers and a still frozen Marie Callender's Dutch Apple pie in the freezer that cost me seven bucks and I sure wasn't going to waste (waist?) that. Not even if it meant wearing the big luxurious bathrobe (my brother also gave me for Christmas) 24/7.

The diet began officially on 1/5. The Monday after all the holidays were officially over.

I have never eaten this much salad or broccoli or cauliflower in my entire life.

Then I learned that the one juicy peach I was having instead of the 3 scoops of ice cream with the chocolate sauce, Cool Whip and Trail Mix was actually forbidden in Phase I. I must have skimmed right over the NO FRUIT rule.

Well, sorry Dr. Agatston, you write a mean diet book, but you'll take that peach from me when you pry the pit from my big fat hand. (might not be too hard given my increased weakness lately, but neve rmind about that). I cheat with a peach and it's a whole lot better for me than Death By Chocolate.

That's probably why it's only 6 lbs. I've lost and not 10, but I'm in no hurry. This is my first diet ever. Until I had my first child at 21 I never broke 100 lbs. Then, during my whole smoking career, I never broke 120, and mostly hung out around 110.

I gave up cigarettes a year and a half ago going cold turkey and what do I get rewarded with? 20 new lbs, and none of it in the right spots to make me "curvaceous". Mainly it was more of a frumpy look I was apparently going for. New Age Dough Boy.

So. That's where I am. 6lbs less of me than when I was writing stuff before Christmas. Does my writing seem lighter to you? How about from this angle? Does this sentence make my butt look big? Or is it just my big butt that makes my butt look big?

Hopefully, next time I write it will be from a pair of my pants that no longer has me in a bear hug, and a stomach that stays put behind them.

Man, what I wouldn't give for a Dunkin Donut's double chocolate donut right about now.

Time to go scramble some eggs. (blech)

Until next time... try and stay relapse-free and vacuum packed for freshness, would ya?