consuming

No, Weight Watchers, I’m not struggling with weight gain.
Real talk: I’m struggling with just plain hating myself right about now.

I spent six days of the last week trying not to kill myself, much less eat my weight in pizza (5 points) and fried chicken (11 points). The only exercise I got was running back and forth from the staff office to those hotel meeting rooms. And lifting my walkie-talkie from my waist to my face, begging A/V to come back and help yet again with my laptop connection.
File under: not enough.

My scale is giving me a complex these days. There’s a reason I put it away for such a long time: Even if I had liked the way I was looking, the number would have been far higher than I was comfortable with.
But Weight Watchers demands I use it.
When I weighed in on Monday, the scale read 196.3. Christ on a [whole-wheat] cracker. (2 points.)

This is not me fishing for compliments.
I get that it’s not as bad as it sounds. Yes, I’m tall. Yes, I have a lot of muscle built up from running. Yes, I carry my weight well. I always have.
But less than five pounds from 200?
Nothing about that is okay.
And it’s a gain of 7 pounds from last week.
How is that even possible? HOW. You’d think my body would burn something just making the effort to expand like that.

If you live in a cave, you may not have heard that the storm of the century did, in fact, arrive. With waist-high drifts all over Chicago and temperatures dropping into the single digits over the next 24 hours, that means no running any time soon for broke girl with no gym membership.
So, the snow sucks. Well, it’s gorgeous. But for killing the fat kid, it sucks.
And watching the Food Network 24/7 now that I’m home — Paula Deen is suddenly my best friend, and her best friend is a stick of butter (24 points) — likely isn’t helping either. Lunchtime on TV is the homemade version of Chinese takeout. And those egg rolls (6 points) look delicious, Paula, but who the hell has a deep fryer built into their counter? Really. REALLY.
And don’t even get me started on those Jillian Michaels K-Swiss shoe ads and Atkins Diet spots that run during the commercial breaks when Paula runs out to grab another pint of heavy cream (45 points).

My butt is flattening into a shelf as I type this.
I can only hope that if I quit with the self-flagellation, step away from the biscuits (3 points) in my refrigerator and find some way to derive a little joy from all the vegetables (0 points…ZERO!) I bought in preparation for the blizzard, the scale will be kinder to me next week.
And maybe at some point, I’ll be nicer to myself, too.

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The alarm went off at 5:55 a.m. I groaned as four chords assaulted my ears over and over again for two minutes before I finally fumbled for my iPhone on the night table to turn it off.
There’s something just gross about a happy little song heralding the end of such a blissful thing as sleep.
I dragged myself out of bed to Morning Edition‘s all-too-familiar theme song, motivated almost entirely by the paralyzing fear that I’d be late to my first day back in the corporate world.

My first and only day back, so far.

I interviewed yesterday morning with a placement agency for the marketing and creative industries. Somehow, by day’s end — EOB, as the corporate world calls it — I had a call from a recruiter offering me an eight-hour proofreading gig the next morning in Rosemont.
At a huge corporate client.
Doing Very Important Things.
But, ugh. “The next morning” quickly became “five hours from now” once I’d finished my writing for the night. My eyes were bleary and red when that stupid alarm went off, but I still managed to dress myself in matching clothes and both my shoes, a little victory before light even began to creep into the apartment.
I leaned against the kitchen counter in the dark, sipped a thimble of orange juice and contemplated breakfast.
An omelet.
Six Weight Watchers points: two eggs, two cups of sautéed spinach and a strip of crumbled bacon left over from the weekend. Plus that four ounces of juice — 2 points, an indulgence I happily allow myself.

I obsess.
And I’m not sorry.

Calories no longer exist; it’s all about the points.
Except the day before yesterday, Sunday, when the Bears unleashed serious hurt on the Seahawks, and Rockit tempted me with macaroni and cheese. And burgers with Brie and Medjool date aioli, nestled inside a pretzel bun.

A tall soy chai from Starbucks: four points.
One tiny serving of Kraft macaroni and cheese: 10 points.
As much damn steamed broccoli as I want: zero points.
A package of Twizzlers — not the family pack I destroyed while I was in St. Louis, mind you: seven points.
Ouch.

It’s all about the points, and it’s still just a big game. This “watching my weight” thing doesn’t even feel like work.
Except earlier tonight, when all I wanted was to make and eat an entire batch of chocolate-chip cookie dough after a four-point dinner. I made these instead. And because they weren’t that delicious, I ate only a few. So. There’s that.

But I realized today that it’s easier to ignore the constant temptation of delicious food when you’re not sitting at a desk under harsh fluorescent lighting all day.
Cubicles are the perfect incubator for budding obesity.
The lunch I packed was tiny. Laughable. I’m so happy those people don’t know me and didn’t have much need to talk to me.
By the end of the day, hanger —my favorite portmanteau, the combination of hunger and anger — had settled in with a vengeance.
Herbal tea and the promise of broiled chicken with mustard and thyme were the fraying threads keeping me from going all Speed on the eastbound bus driver tonight.
I could blame that on post–traumatic commute syndrome. Easily.

The gig itself: That I found myself thinking about food most of the day must say something.
I proofread marketing copy about wood stains and used a barcode scanner to cross check hundreds of UPC codes against a master digital database and a beautiful fan of paint chips. In one shining moment 20 minutes before I put my boots on and headed out, I discovered a typo in a just-designed magazine ad. My work here is done, I thought.
My tummy rumbled in agreement.

Now that I think about it, being a grown-up in general still feels like a big game for the most part.
Every “little victory” — each gig offered, every dollar earned — is points gained toward some unknown grand prize. Or maybe they’re awarded in tiers. The prize for making it through January is a big housewarming party and a new cat.

I half wish there were a helpful website to track my life’s little victories, though I suppose this one’s as good as any.
Whatever winnings come my way, here’s hoping I’ll be able to accept them in those foxy Goal Jeans.

Game on.

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