Slave to the Scale

Dieting sucks.

And for those of you who have never had to suffer through the whole torturous dieting experience? I'm sorry, but you suck, too.

Every day is a battle. There's a constant dialogue running through my head - don't eat that cookie, don't drink that beer, don't even look at that Ben & Jerrys or it will spontaneously glob onto your thighs. It's enough to drive a person crazy.

I realize I'm not obese, but when you're five foot one, a few extra pounds really show. And it doesn't take long before those few extra pounds become more than a few, and you start to look like a squirrel with a mouthful of acorns.

As I've said before, I tried the whole low-carb thing (at this point, who hasn't?). After weeks of counting every carb that went into my mouth and losing NOTHING while everyone else around was dropping pound after pound, I finally admitted that I was part of the very small percentage that a low-carb diet won't work for. It figures. So a few weeks ago I decided to go back to the old standard of counting calories and started on the Slimfast Plan. Five pounds came off slowly but surely, and I was pretty darn proud of myself - until this past weekend when I sort of fell off the wagon.

Jun's death brought out a whole host of emotions I never knew I had in me, and with it came a serious need for comfort food. Lots of it. After a rather large slice of apple pie, some chocolate chip cookies, a piece of greasy Kentucky fried chicken, a "strawberry pizza" with whip cream and tons of sugar, some jalepeno poppers, a Big Mac that I secretly snuck in when my husband was out running errands, and a few beers to drink away my troubles, I shouldn't have been shocked at the reading on the scale Monday morning.

But I was. And now I'm miserable.

I know I shouldn't beat myself up over it. After all, a good friend of mine died for God's sake! But it's still pretty disappointing. And if you had to go to Florida in less than two weeks and face your Grandmother, Slave to the Scale, who will "tsk, tsk" when she sees you and comment endlessly on every pound that you need to lose, you'd be bumming, too.