Liking Vegetables and Hating Other Girls: That’s What’s Up

Long post that jumps all over the place! Yay! Enjoy.

Last Saturday night, a good friend invited me and several other girls over for “movie night.” We’ve done girls’ movie night before, and it’s always a blast – due in part to the large quantities of alcohol and delicious food that everyone brings. Considering my recent lifestyle change (i.e. Saladpalooza) I was feeling conflicted about the event.

On one hand I was looking forward to a “cheat day.” On the other, I know I tend to go overboard in situations like that and felt like I should maybe abstain from snacks altogether. It did cross my mind to bring “healthy” snacks, but only briefly, because knowing my friends, everyone else would bring delicious things like cheese and chocolate, and my healthy snacks would go completely untouched – even by me, because, well, come on.

So I opted to bring some crackers, soft cheese and a bottle of wine. Another friend and I rode to the hostess’s house together, and when I saw her snack selections, I was shocked. She brought raw carrot chips and hummus – healthy stuff! THEN when we arrived at the house, I was even more surprised – my friend had told me she was making lasagna, but what she didn’t tell me in advance was that it was vegan lasagna. Apparently another girl she invited has recently become vegan, and my friend wanted to make sure she’d have plenty to eat too. THEN when the vegan girl got there, she revealed that she’d brought mini red and yellow peppers and guacamole. Everybody brought healthy food but me!

What I’d like to say is that I put the cheese and crackers away and just munched on healthy stuff all night, but let’s not kid ourselves. I ate plenty of the bad with the good. HOWEVER, I’m considering this a positive thing because what happened was, I discovered I don’t hate vegetables quite as much as I thought I did. Or maybe my tastes have just changed. The following day, I went out and bought raw carrot chips, mini peppers and hummus – and every day this past week, I’ve been craving that stuff like crazy!

Last year, when I first started this blog, I wrote about ordering a hummus plate and having to choke down the red peppers because I hated them so much. (Incidentally, that post has gotten A TON of hits – far more than any other on this blog, and I cannot figure it out for my life. It’s about vegetables, the most boring topic known to man.) Anyway, I think I’ve trained myself to like peppers. My favorite way to eat them is to bite the end off, then stuff the middle full of hummus and eat the rest. This Archer Farms sun-dried tomato and basil hummus from Target, btw, is amazing. Another variation on that is to bite the end off and stick one of those little yellow Sunburst tomatoes inside, then dip the whole thing in hummus. Have you ever tried those Sunburst tomatoes? I don’t know what the appropriate serving size is, but I’m pretty sure it’s not the whole container in two sittings – which is kind of what I did. So good.

So I’m pretty proud of myself for my snack choices lately. Only problems I see so far are that these things do not keep me full for long – literally an hour after eating three peppers and handful of carrot chips with hummus, my stomach is growling again. And I’m also afraid I’m going to burn out on these things, because that’s always what happens when I discover something new that I like. So I need to try and find some more healthy things I like so I can switch it up a little.

Oh, and I know I’m going on and on about these positive choices but don’t be too proud of me. It’s still desperation dieting, remember? Oh yes, and it’s getting a little out of control. I’ve actually caught myself thinking things like, What’s the minimum I can eat and the maximum I can exercise to lose the maximum amount of weight before prom (July 18 – 20)? So terrible, I know. Does acknowledging that it’s terrible stop me though? Not really.

Last night, I went out to a bar for the first time in what feels like forever (really, only about two weeks, but that’s how much I’m used to going out). I wasn’t really that excited about going, but a band I like was having its CD release party and I wanted to see them play, so I went. I decided to half-ass it on the outfit, rationalizing that it would somehow look better if I didn’t look like I put too much effort into my look. I still thought I looked alright though.

When I got there, the room was full so I squeezed my way up to the front and immediately noticed a girl in a beautiful pin-up style dress with a petticoat, high heels, fancy hairdo – the works. I could only see her from the back but she looked great. (I’ve looked online and I think this is the dress.) It wasn’t until I moved a little closer that I realized who it was – a girl who had a thing with Rock Star around the same time I did. Actually I kind of feel like he ended our thing in order to spend time with her, and this was incredibly upsetting to me at the time (late 2009).

I’ve seen this girl occasionally since then, and although I really shouldn’t have anything against her, I am not her biggest fan. Maybe we’re too much alike. She comes to shows by herself, is always dressed to the nines, is from the same suburb as me and until recently, was plus-sized. I don’t think she was ever as big as me, but it’s been known that Rock Star prefers curvier girls, and she definitely fit the bill. However, when I saw her a few months ago I noticed that she’d dropped a significant amount of weight. I didn’t really think about it or her at all until I saw her in that awesome dress last night – a dress I could never in a million years look as good in.

After that I did something I rarely do. I finished my first beer, got a glass of water and finished that, then got the hell out of there. I didn’t even stay 45 minutes. Seeing this girl, who actually came over to stand right next to me for a portion of the show (thanks, bitch), made me feel so awful. I know I should have been using all the mind tricks I learned in therapy to turn my feelings around and have fun, but honestly I just wanted to get out of there.

I thought about prom and how she is definitely going to be there, and how awesome she is going to look. I started thinking about what I would have to do to look better and if it’s even possible. (For the record, I don’t think her face is cute, and she does not know how to apply makeup – but whatever.) I don’t want my first run-in with Rock Star in six months to be overshadowed by her first run-in with him since she’s gotten all svelte. Yes, he likes curvier girls but she’s still got big boobs and a general hourglass shape, and besides, his current girlfriend is a stick so what does any of it matter, anyway?

Comparing myself to other girls? I know, not good. Comparing myself to other girls because I want a guy with a girlfriend who didn’t want me three years ago to notice me now? Definitely not good. But that’s the track I’m on right now, and at least I’m not stuffing my face with candy and getting drunk. I’m not sure which is the lesser evil, though.

Tags: boys, dating, diet, envy, fat, food, jealousy, love, overweight, plus, relationships, vegetables, weight

Is It Even Worth It?

I read a blog entry this week that really moved me. Originally I had planned to link to it, but upon further consideration, I’m afraid the author might not feel comfortable with that. It was deeply personal and could not have been easy for her to write. So I won’t say who wrote it or use her exact words, but I do want to talk about how it made me feel.

It was the story of a relationship. I’ve read this girl’s blog for a while, and my impression was that it was a relationship somewhere between “very close friends” and boyfriend/girlfriend – she talked about him frequently, but never specified. It was clear that they spent a lot of time together and he was a very important person in her life.

A few months ago, he disappeared from her posts. I don’t know the author, but I’ve read her writing for so long that I felt invested; I really hoped that nothing bad had happened, even though it was clear something had. I considered commenting or emailing to ask, but that didn’t seem appropriate. She had a blog; she was obviously sharing what she felt comfortable sharing.

Finally, months later, in the post I read this week, something compelled her to tell the story. As I suspected, he had broken her heart. She described the pain of knowing he was seeing other people, but ignoring it in hopes he’d soon realize what he had with her, then the devastation of actually seeing his activities firsthand. My synopsis can’t do justice to her telling of the events; reading it made me feel like I’d been punched in the gut. Because I knew exactly how she felt.

Like the author of that post, I’ve often felt that I’m deficient in some way that prevents anyone from being able to fall in love with me. That no matter how strong a connection I may feel with someone, I’d have to be kidding myself to think the feeling would ever be mutual. And that if I was foolish enough to start believing someone loved me, well, it’d just be my own stupid fault when it all fell apart.

It’s not about my weight. Well, it’s not only about my weight. Surely if I was thinner and more attractive, I’d have better odds – but that doesn’t mean that whatever man I got involved with would feel compelled to commit. Because what do I have to offer anyone that they couldn’t find elsewhere, probably in a prettier package? To be honest, nothing.

It actually kind of terrifies me about relationships. I haven’t had one in so long that I’ve become kind of frantic about finding one, but really, there’s a very large chance that even if/when I find a relationship, it will just destroy me and I’ll be in an even worse place than when I started. As much as the passive rejection I routinely experience with boys I like is hurtful, an experience like that of the blogger I’ve talked about would probably drive me into a terrible depression. Is it even worth it to pursue something that can (and likely will) induce so much pain? I’m starting to think it’s not.

It should be known, this was not what the other blogger was getting at – I don’t think it was, anyway. While she did talk about these feelings that I know all too well, I sense that she is more optimistic about finding love. Or maybe she’s just putting on a brave face for people like me, who read her blog and  think, “Yes, yes, I know exactly what that’s like.” I want to believe in love. I want to believe there’s a chance that someone won’t break my heart. But at this point… I just don’t know. It seems so unlikely.

Anyway, it’s just something I’ve been thinking about as I’ve been sitting in my house and eating vegetables. There’s a lot more I need to write about but honestly this post has been sitting in my drafts for the past two days because I kept falling asleep, so now I’m going to hit publish and fall asleep again. But I’ll be back tomorrow (probably) to tell you about my exciting adventures in vegetable-eating.

Still On the Wagon

Heeeyyyy. I’m home sick from work today, so what better time to update this sadly neglected blog? It was between that and watching another episode of Maury, so…

Believe it or not, I’m still desperation dieting. I know, I didn’t think it would last this long either, but here we are. I haven’t gone anorexic or anything – oh, I could never. But every time I get ready to order a meal (because I still don’t cook at home), I think about how my choice is going to affect me in the long run. And I just haven’t been able to choose something knowing that it will negatively impact my ability to attract a partner.

Surprisingly it hasn’t been that hard. I guess because I haven’t really been depriving myself. I have allowed myself to have less healthy foods on a few occasions, but I haven’t gone overboard, and I haven’t felt bad about it. It’s actually getting somewhat easier, as the longer I stay on track the more I pressure I feel not to fall off.

This morning, driving home from the doctor’s, I was starving and pulled into McDonald’s. Not a great choice, of course, but there really weren’t a lot of options in the part of town I was in. They were still serving breakfast so I let myself have a Southern style chicken biscuit. I definitely felt the little devil and angel on my shoulders duking it out over that choice. As a result, I know I will have something healthy for dinner because I do feel a little bad about my breakfast choice – especially since I’m sick and can’t exercise today.

I’ve kept up with my walking almost daily, usually doing three or four miles most days. I’ve worked in some running on a couple of occasions but am hesitant to commit to running again – because I know that once I start, I will feel pressure to keep it up, and am not really sure I want to do that. I enjoy my walking and appreciate the time it gives me to think. I don’t get the same enjoyment out of running at all, even though I know the fitness benefits are greater.

By this point, I was really hoping I’d see some results – but I’ve done all the reading and I know that even with a serious diet and exercise regime, it takes something like six weeks to see any difference. Sometimes when I look in the mirror, I like to think I’m seeing results but I don’t know how much of that is real and how much is just my imagination. My clothes don’t fit any differently so unfortunately I think it’s just my imagination.

I realized that I go through this at the same time every year, whether consciously or not. Rockabilly prom is in July, and a few months beforehand I start fantasizing about dresses and how I want to look, so I get serious about my eating and exercising for a little while. However, I always fall off the wagon before the event gets here, and I end up going to the event without having made any progress.

And I’ll be honest – part of what drives this is wondering how things will be when I see the Rock Star *sigh*. Don’t get me wrong. Rock Star has a long-term girlfriend with whom he seems very happy, and I have no delusions of anything ever happening between us again. However, because we don’t see each other very often (last time was in December), it would be nice to think that when he sees me, he’ll feel like he’s missing out a little. He’s one of those guys who knows how to make a girl feel very much appreciated when he looks at her – just that look is something that I crave.

I know, I know – I don’t need to be seeking validation from men, especially men who’ve hurt me before and whom I stand no chance of dating. I think I will always have a thing for Rock Star. I’m just glad it’s now only a tiny thing in the back of my mind instead of the big, all-consuming thing it once was.

Also, in my defense, I will say that I’ve done a very good job of not being worried about boys lately. I haven’t been going out unless I’ve actually had something to do and someone to hang out with. I worked my first volunteer event last weekend as a beer girl, and overall that was a pretty good experience. Another female volunteer came over to me and asked if I’d gotten a lot of tips (we weren’t supposed to accept tips, though quite a few people left them for me). “We were over there betting you were just raking ‘em in!” she said, I guess as a compliment to either my looks or my friendliness. Only bad part of the day was seeing Country Boy and his girlfriend.

Anyway, I’m starving and that’s all I’ve got right now. (I know, that’s all.) Guess I’ll go find some vegetables or something…

Tags: boys, diet, eating, exercise, fat, fitness, health, overweight