So I've been beating myself up about going over my calorie allotment for several days in a row. Usually I'm about 200 or 300 calories over. And I beat myself up over it. All this time I've been aiming for 1400 calories a day but usually end up around 1700 or so. Give or take fifty calories.
Today I had a cheat day of sorts. A friend and I went to Starbucks for morning break and I got a tall caramel ribbon crunch frappe and a cheese danish. Not the best idea I've had all week but peer pressure and all that. Started beating myself up about how far that was going to blow me out of my calories and I can't eat anything the rest of the day. Blah, blah, blah.
I was still full-ish at lunch so I skipped the Special K bar and instead I ate a 90 calorie cheese stick and 90 calories worth of almonds. Still 180 calories but not quite as protein/fiber heavy as the Special K bar. And it filled me up and satisfied the salty craving. But when I started thinking about my calorie consumption so far, all I could think was that I should have left off one of the 90 calorie items.
But then I thought, you know what, I haven't checked in with SparkPeople lately. I set my goal and got my calorie goal from them sometime back in late June but hadn't been back to check-in since. Turns out, peeps, to attain my goal of thirty pound weight loss by February (recommended length of time), I am actually allowed between 1500 and 1900 calories a day. Coming in around 1700 is smack in the middle of that goal. So...SUCK IT guilt! I am doing better than I thought I was. I could still make smarter choices, yes. I could have just chosen one of the two cheat items instead of both. Or I could have skipped both entirely. I could have just taken my pre-measured 165 calorie iced mocha with me and just visited with my friend instead of participating in the first of the month paycheck treat.
At some point I've got to really decide how important this loss is because if, by some miracle, I actually do lose the 30lbs of my goal, my calorie allotment will decrease, as well. It will have to in order to keep losing or to at least maintain. I'd rather keep losing, though.
One thing that is becoming clear to me is this: Sooner or later I'm going to have to see a doctor about my left knee. There's just no other way around it. It's getting worse and I fear I'm doing further damage to it. But the last thing I want to deal with is a doctor who will stare at my excess weight and tell me, "Lose weight and your knees will feel better." And while I suspect that my weight might have something to do with it, I don't think it has everything to do with it. And I've been around enough doctors to know that when they see a fat person, they very rarely look beyond the fat to find anything else that might be causing the problem.
Case in point: About ten years ago when I was substantially smaller than I am now (though still large) I was having some painful heartburn/indigestion issues to the point that I was miserable all the time. Pains in my chest and abdomen. This was back when I was first starting out in the work field and wasn't making a whole lot of money. I never ate out unless someone else (my parents or brother-in law, usually) paid which wasn't very often. Granted, unhealthy food was cheaper so I did eat a little more of that than I should have but not excessively.
One day it had gotten so bad that I finally broke down and went to a doctor. I hadn't been to an actual doctor in years, by that point because I'd always been a healthy and active person and wasn't one to run to the doctor for every sniffle. This doctor wrote down all my symptoms and, granted, she did order an Upper GI for me but her final diagnosis? Less drive-thru. Because obviously, fat people live at the drive-thru, right? No further testing, no real direction on what to eat to lessen the heartburn. She did give me a prescription for an antacid but I never filled it because if being fat was the only thing wrong with me, I wasn't going to pump myself full of chemicals.
Her "diagnosis" was exactly what I needed to send me into a downward spiral and over the three or four years following I bulked up an extra fifty pounds or so.
So yeah. I need to have my knee fixed but for my own mental and physical health, I need to go when I'm more secure in my weight. I don't need another downward spiral. I don't need anymore lectures on what my fat is doing to my health. I already know.
If losing weight were as easy as knowing you needed to, I'd be thin as a rail by now. And possibly dating George Clooney. Because hey, while we're dreaming we may as well dream big, right?
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