Will they even dye my eyes to match my gown? Jolly good town!

I've decided that, once a month, I'm going to do something very nice for myself that has nothing to do with weight or weight loss or weight gain or ANYTHING AT ALL about inches, pounds, or bodies. I decided this after typing a letter to a friend and realizing I had spelled the word "way" as "weigh" and "wait" as "weight" at least once in the body. I may but just a teensy trifle obsessed with ass-reducing right now.

So today, since it was raining out and my original plans of calling up a friend to do something outside were thwarted I decided to indulge in a day (or hour) of beauty. Unfortunately, because I have chosen to reside in the stank, humid armpit of the Midwest, there aren't really many institutions of beauty from which to choose and especially not on the Sunday before a government holiday. Sometimes, though, the rural Missourian in me rears its spiral permed and frosted head and I start feeling a peculiar urge to do very Midwestern things like tan, or go drink Bud Light by a lake on a pontoon, or get fake nails and the instinct must not be denied.

So I wasn't really surprised when I ended up in a vibrating armchair at the nail salon located in the local Wal-Mart. (Yes, I said the nail salon in the Wal-Mart, which, like the Subway-in-the-Wal-Mart, and the Bank-of-Greater-Metropolitan-Wal-Mart, I try never, ever to visit. But it's a holiday and they're very, very inexpensive and the urge was strong so JUST BACK UP OFF)

I had never gotten a mani-pedi before; my only experience with phalange-related beauty happened several years ago when the manicurist accidentally sliced open my finger with a cuticle pusher and screamed and practically shoved me out the door when she saw the blood spurt up. I guess she had legitimate concerns about HIV, but I got stuck with like an eighth of a manicure, and a pretty gnarly scar on my middle finger. I was hoping that the salon would be filled with the usual number of pre-teen girls and their mothers out for a "Girls' Day", but when I tentatively stepped in the door, the only other person in the room besides the nail techs was a stunningly overtanned woman in cutoff jean shorts and a hot pink tank top. She smiled broadly at me as I sank into a massage chair next to her and the pedicure lady sunk my feet into a heavenly spa jet thingy.

Over the next hour I learned that I should never, ever cut my nails on my own (as evidenced by a quarter-inch long hangnail the pedi lady exorcised from my big toe and waved accusingly at me as if she had discovered a bag of heroin between my toes), and that I should never, ever get color put on my nails (advice from the Mahogany Truck Driver Woman who told me that the way to get great sex was to get a French pedi and find a good man with no kids and a foot fetish). I decided to get hot pink anyway, not only because it's springtime, but because I'm certain it complemented the color of my cheeks after Mahogany Truck Driver revealed very intimate details of her love life with her Pederast Truck Driver Boyfriend.

A flash of impulse compelled me to ask the salon owner if they had time to put acrylic French tips on my fingers, too, and suddenly I was being slathered with all sorts of adhesives and attended to with scary dentisty drill things and there was acrylic flying everywhere and when the dust cleared I looked down to see ten very grown-up looking nails. I'd had French tips painted on when I got married, but I bit them off in the bride's room before the ceremony and I think they've been in various states of dishevelment since then. The new nails sort of hurt a little bit, and I'm terrified to do anything other than sit and display them carefully, but in a way I really like them.

Without forcing too much symbolism on the occasion, I'm kind of glad I spent the money to do this, because not only do I feel sort of pretty and sexy, but I also feel older...more ready to be a woman. I've been kind of a twenty-something twelve year old for several years now with my baby face, and my unruly hair, and my penchant for wearing sweats and t-shirts and tennis shoes when I could be dressing like an actual woman. I've also always been afraid of improving parts of me while the most noticeable aspects weren't so great. Whenever I'd get dressed up or made up or I'd try to look feminine and pretty, I'd ultimately always think, "What's the point? No one ever sees anything but the fat, anyway". I got really good at becoming one of the guys, or the funny fat chick, or the quiet, unassuming one who made every attempt to hide but could be devastatingly cool once you made the effort to know her...but you know what? It's almost harder work being unapproachable anymore, especially when I actually have things I'm proud of about myself. So these silly, forty dollar acrylic appendages that are making it hard for me to type correctly are kind of a little step toward liking myself most of the time, even if I can't be completely satisfied with who I am yet.

I think next month I'm going to go for a proper haircut and highlights at the day spa where the Wisterians go. It's not exactly Bliss in New York City, but at least it's not flanked by a bait refrigerator and an ice machine in the middle of a Super Wal-Mart.

American Beauty

A combination of delayed first flights and early connecting flights forced me to cancel for the weekend (my scale thanks me, but my social life is shaking its head in frustration). I purloined this from a friend's blog...the magic of Photoshop, no? It sort of makes you wonder what models and actresses really look like before the airbrushing, but it's also a pretty sobering look at what it takes to be "beautiful", and how incredibly hard it would be for some to get there.

Potentially NSFW, if women wearing negligees fall under that category for you. Also, loud, loud techno music blares when you click, so have your Ecstacy and glo-stick already in hand, please.

EDIT: The song is actually "Bootylicious" by Destiny's Child, as roz was very nice to point out. I guess I have the same reaction to the introduction that song as I do to "Sound the Alarm", which means I body slam my speakers until it's muffled, even though I like the actual song part of both of those a lot.

The ass and I are out of the office...

After a 6 am workout at the Fat Lady Gym (honest revelations on whether or not I think Curves is lame and why to follow next week), I go to work and then leave scool to drive straight to the airport for a mini-vacation to Birmingham, AL. The friend I'm visiting is a bit of a foodie, and was more excited about making reservations at restaurants than about making reservations for the flight. In about thirty-five minutes' time, he had decided we would visit The Highlands Restaurant (named the #5 restaurant in the country), Dreamland's BBQ (known for its ginormous rib platters), and Bogue's (to die for biscuits and gravy, and infamous for recommending that patrons seeking healthier fare go to the "Commie frou frou restaurant down the street). I think, even as recently as a couple weeks ago, I would've been all for this food-crawl adventure, but my rather sobering experience with the Flex Points and Mother's Day, coupled with the fact that I just don't have a taste for shitty food anymore is making this whole situation more awkward than I expected. Since he's essentially treating me this entire weekend, I feel like I can't request different restaurants, so this is all going to be a big challenge.

Since it's a big vacation weekend, the WW topic this week was "Turnaround will Travel", and I think it was helpful on a fairly basic level. Some of the lifers suggested switching from Flex to Core for the week, so you could have as much food as you wanted and then splurge on one item with the extra points. Other people said to pack your own food and bring a cooler. Both ideas are great, but I was disappointed we didn't get down to the root of a fairly emotional issue: What do you do when you're spending your time with someone who expects to eat, and expects the act of eating to be a bonding experience?

I ran headfirst into this issue as a kid, and while dating my husband. In my household, food was always an issue of money, and non-eaten food meant wasted grocery cash that my parents didn't have. If we went to a buffet, the unspoken rule was we ate three plates worth plus dessert, or the $7.99 a head wasn't worth it. It was a weird existence, trying desperately to eat enough to keep my parents' blood pressure down while we were out to eat and then being told at home not to eat anything, because I was getting fat and I was eating them out of house and home. I finally sorted out that issue in college, when I got serious about eating healthfully and I turned to salads and Lean Cuisines and Subway as an easy, quick fix to sort out my eating.

When I met my husband, though, I realized quickly that he viewed food as a way of expressing love and companionship. He was appalled by my habit of quickly throwing together a veggie wrap and sitting on the couch to study or read while I ate it, and soon my rabbit food was replaced in the refrigerator with steaks and rice and sauces and desserts and I bought recipe book after recipe book and scrambled around trying to create the perfect three-course meal every time. As a working student, it became too much and soon my husband and I ended up eating out every meal as a way to satisfy his expectations. But again, if I didn't finish a meal or I didn't ask for seconds, he was offended, because his father taught him to always compliment the cook by asking for more. It was so hard feeling that out of control in those situations...to watch my waistline expand and my thighs squeezed by the fabric of the jeans and all my hard work unraveling because I wanted to make sure he was happy, even if I wasn't.

So, I'm kind of haunted by those insecurities going into this weekend, especially after a conversation with my friend where he said it was going to be impossible for me not to gain weight, so to just give into it. When I told him I've had plenty of biscuits and gravy in my lifetime (probably more than I rightfully ought to have had) I didn't need them at Bogue's, and that while I'm sure the BBQ at Dreamland is luscious, I could probably make do with a salad, he got really hurt and I know it's because he wants to share those experiences with me. But, my goodness...if sharing food opinions is the best thing we have going on between us, maybe we ought to find other things to talk about? I don't know. I don't want to hurt his feelings, but I also know I don't want to slide off the wagon just because someone will raise an eyebrow if I ask for dressing on the side.

Anyway, I'll be out for a few days, so have a safe and wonderful Memorial Day. I'll be looking forward to catching up on Tuesday.

12.5 lbs.

A very nice reader (I feel like when I write that I've turned into my aunt and I'm wearing a sweater set and pearls and writing this on some lovely cream stationery) emailed and asked if I would restart the graphic representations of my weight loss again, just for perspective and inspiration. I stopped doing that during the February-March debacle of readjusting my scales and starting weight and not actually dieting and then being vegan for two weeks and then just trying to eat intuitively and discovering that my intuition has been smothered by my more primal urges for pizza and ice cream, but I think now that my manic MUST LOSE 3LB EVERY WEEK OR I'LL JUST DIE phase has passed and I'm on a slightly healthier path, I can start doing it again.

So...thus far in my Reduxing, I've lost the equivalent of:



A very cool garden owl that I might actually buy and stick on my patio so I can stub my toe on it every time I go out and water my flowers to remind myself to never, ever again allow that much weight to accumulate on my body. I mean, a garden gnome is quite a lot. I think if I ever hit goal, I'm going to force myself to walk around with 10 garden gnomes in a sack every time I have a craving for a Quarter Pounder.

Weigh-In Edition: Week 19

I keep stepping on and off the scale, trying to mentally calibrate how I'll determine a loss for this week. I didn't make it to Weight Watchers because during my trip from one side of KC to the other, where my meeting and home is located, I ended up in a bottleneck and an hourlong standstill on the hottest, most boring, most foul smelling highway in Western Missouri. The man in the Subaru next to me took care of his boredom by lighting up a joint and taking a nap in his reclined seat, but since I'm a 50 year-old woman in training I had no such entertainment so I sat primly at the wheel of my LeSabre and very calmly planned my dogged pursuit of our transportation department and how I would ruin them in small claims court for my cost of Weight Watchers plus 1/8 tank of gas. I'm ruthless where insignificant amounts of money are concerned.

So, I didn't get to weigh myself on the WW Official Scales of Doom and Judgement, but I have my trusty Health-O-Meter at home and it says I now weigh 219 without my clothes on. So I guess with lunch and breakfast in my stomach plus my usual WW ensemble of yoga pants and a t-shirt, I'm probably sitting at 222 for this week. I'm very happy with that...it's a loss of abut 2.5 pounds for the week and 4.5 overall since I started the program.

I'm really chomping at the bit to hit 219 legitimately because I haven't really given myself a reward yet for any of this, and I'd really like to update my progress pics. I don't think there's much of a visible body change, but once the reward kicks in (a Curves membership) I think the various lumps and rolls will reconstitute themselves into something slightly more feminine. At least I hope.

Happy Sunday, everyone.

I spent the weekend in my hometown, chilling with the parentals and my 92-year old great aunt, so you can imagine that wild times went down with the four of us. That old lady can really pound back the tequila-Metamucil cocktails

Anyway, since my family isn't exactly known for our gastronomic restraint, I had more than a few dinners at restaurants. I decided to dip into my reserve of WW Flex Points for the weekend, but I didn't keep track of them as I ate. I was really super proud of what I thought was a great job, eating-wise, because usually my trips home are an orgy of cookies and nachos and ice cream and buttered popcorn and fatted calves and those cute pigs with the apples in their mouths...

So I thought I was doing really, really well until I decided to do sort of a Flex Points retrospective on the weekend, and I think I managed to total up about 60 Flex Points altogether...Holy Moses, I had no idea.

So basically that means while I thought I was maintaining an almost Buddhist level of self-denial on my weekend, I was actually overeating, which means the last 25 and 3/4 years of my life have been spent, like, doubly and triply overeating. Like maybe to the tune of 3,000 calories or so per day, and that's really nasty.

So, Lesson #1: Weight Watchers is seriously helping me handle food better than I ever have in my non-dieting past, so I get to spend at least a tiny fraction of the time saying "Yay me!"

And Lesson #2: COUNT THE POINTS. Every point. Every Flex Point. Every bite that goes in my mouth even if it's just a random spoonful of angel food cake mix that didn't make it to the bowl (not that I would do that). Because I'm pretty sure my weigh-in tomorrow will show a loss, but if I hadn't overdrafted my Flex Points, I'm sure it would be bigger.

I think I'm getting a hang of the WW Flex points now, in that the 1750 extra calories you're allotted each week are not supposed to be used furtively while under the cover of darkness. I have this tendency to view anything marked "flexible" as a crutch for weaklings, and so I either try valiantly to not use the Flex Points or, having dipped into them, I spiral into a pit of despair (mental image of that one guy from Princess Bride) and end up binging on all 34 remaining points and then, say, nineteen or twenty more. Because apparently I must be the valedictorian of Weight Watchers, or else the weight loss doesn't really count. What a jackass I am.

I think for me the points thing still confuses me, because I'm so comfortable counting actual calories. Somehow points seem bigger and more ominous, and while I may not have batted an eye at eating 50 calories over my 1500 limit, adding in an extra point fires off a Klaxon warning to my brain and suddenly everything turns orange and men in Hazmat uniforms run at me and spray an extra layer of lard to my hips even before the last bite of Sunchips I just popped are sliding down my throat.

But seriously, 1 point is 50 calories, right? And 35 points are 1750 calories and that's only a half pound difference in the course of a week, and you don't have to use them all if you don't want to AND you could easily burn off at least half that by walking a few times a week.

So I'm not so sure what I was freaking out about...no need for Flex Point-related self-loathing at all, especially when the fact that the longest "adult" conversation I've had today was with my cat is TOTALLY more pathetic.