Giving Oprah a Run For Her Money

I'm up, I'm down. Currently, I am way up and only 15 lbs. away from what I was when I gave birth to my last child... nearly 8 years ago.

However, I am NOT a fence sitter. I either count every single calorie, weigh my food, work out twice a day very obsessively, and then when I get so burned out from that, then it is back to binge eating.

When I was doing amateur boxing hard core at my peak 3 years ago, I was quite thin and had body fat under 10%. The nature of competitive boxing is that you have to stay within a weight class. Dieting down to a weight is no fun. It downright sucks and causes you to be a bit irritable to those around you, but then you also get obsessive at the same time, trying to reach that weight goal. In the meantime, the ribs start to show through, you need a training bra, because your chest no longer resembles a female chest, you look gaunt, and you look like a prime candidate for an eating disorder clinic. The other perks of this obsession? You develop Female Athlete Triad. True story.

Maybe soon, I will get brave and post pictures of me at TOO thin, and then my current size which is a good 70 lbs. higher. Yep, I just confessed to that one. I'm not too happy about that. I would like to find a happy medium, somewhere in there.

So what do you do? After 3 years of living this lifestyle, you hit burn out, you are suffering more injuries from an intense sport than usual, you are ALWAYS cold and you can't enjoy food just to enjoy it. You decide you can't take the constant dieting anymore, and soon you fall off gradually,
just 5 lbs. at a time. Soon, your clothes no longer fit. Then after 6 months, those clothes no longer fit and by this time you have gone up 2 pant sizes. Then after that, soon you are up another size.

Corri hit it on the button, you go gusto trying to clean up the diet, and at my best, I last 4 days. Then I binge eat, or eat something that I shouldn't have. Instead of leaving it as a minor indiscretion, pretty soon, dis inhibition sets in, and I find myself saying, "Oh well, what the Hell! The day is ruined, I might as well eat the entire 2lb. bag of candy by myself!" When I finally wake up from my sugar induced coma, I am startled by the package of wrappers strewn all over the floor. That was the case tonight. I did 4 good days of eating, then lost it tonight with a bag of Bliss Raspberry Chocolates. I'm not too proud about that one. I call that stress eating, and yesterday's stress eating was probably brought on by a sobering parent/teacher conference concerning my special-needs 7 year old. Aahhh!

So, in keeping with the theme of this blog of eliminating one bad habit at a time, and to keep this post relatively short, my goal for the next 3 weeks, is to not reach for unhealthy food when I am
A. Tired
B. Stressed
C. Bored

I need to have a plan in action. So in lieu of "stress" eating, my goal is to drink two glasses of water first, then reach for a piece of fruit.

My goal is to have 3 solid weeks of working towards eliminating this habit. So theoretically, by May 9, if I have given it all I have got, I should have made good progress.

I'll let you know how it goes. In the meantime, hang on, it's going to be a bumpy ride. One that involves lots of cellulite and flabby belly fat.