Unfair

Vodka is clear. Why the fuck does it have calories? That's wrong on so many levels.

You know the thing I hate most about this program? It seems intent on stripping you of your dignity. I can handle the personal trainer and the nutrionist - that's why I signed up, to have my health in the hands of professionals. What I can't handle is the requirement that you attend a group therapy session each week, and twice-monthly sessions with a counselor.

I don't binge, I don't purge. I don't starve myself and I know when I am eating too much. My problem is simple: three years ago, I went through a series of injuries that left me unable to work out. I shrugged and used the time for writing instead, but continued to eat as if I was training for a marathon.

So basically, my problem is that I like food. I would love to see the shrink who can talk me out of that.

Life without pie: unpleasant.

This has not been a good week.

Last week, the scale did not move. This week, it showed a loss of one pound. ONE. This after running 10-minute miles on the treadmill (and a full-on 45 minute run with stairs!), and following the diet pretty closely.

When I stood on the scale in the nutritionist's office, I just completely lost my shit. I was crying, I was angry, I was a gale-force wind of blame and acrimony and frustration.

To put this in context for you, this little episode came after a world record 10 days of PMS. Ten days in which I had done nothing but work and sweat and drink water and follow the fucking food plan. All that work, all that being good and not letting myself have the food I really wanted to eat. All that stress over managing my carbs and protein and fat, for what? One stinking pound.

I tried to calm down, I really did. And I let the nutritionist know that I wasn't blaming her; I was blaming God. I just about had it under control when she suggested cheese may be the culprit, and I lost it again. Cheese? For the love of God, not cheese! Don't take away my cheese! Cue sobbing.

The poor nutrionist looked like she was about to burst into tears with me, and - after I wailed that I missed food, missed baking cookies and cinnamon rolls and bread, missed making yummy dinners for my husband - she suggested I have one planned lapse a week, one meal where I eat whatever the hell I want.

I agreed to it, sniffling, and then she mentioned that my daily calories, at 1400, look a little high to her anyway. Here's how I heard that: I can have one planned lapse a week and then the rest of the week I am living on gruel. And the nutritionist wondered why I couldn't stop crying.

Walking away from the office, tired, defeated, listening to my thighs rub together under my skirt, I thought, "I wouldn't have to do the program any more if I walked in front of a bus."

But then I got my hair cut, and it's so cute, I can't deprive the world of it, so you're stuck with me for another 60 or so years. It's actually the same cut my mom has been rocking for a good 5 or 6 years now. How come it took me so much longer to figure that out? Yeesh.

All the credit goes to Ana of Modern Mia in Redmond, Washington. Or Saint Ana, as I call her.

Oh: and after all that, I had my lapse dinner, with three of my good friends. You bet your ASS I had my lapse. Although as lapses go, it wasn't that bad. There were a couple glasses of wine and a rather large steak, but there was no chocolate, and only limited quantities of mashed potatoes. I count it a win.

Program: I SUFFER.

O pizza, o Twinkies, o barbecue sauce: you will have to wait just a little while longer (THREE MONTHS THREE GODDAMN MONTHS) until we can reconvene.

I am on the program. There has not been blogging because, despite my abuse of the Caps Lock key above, the program has been fine. There has been much working out and eating of lean protein and vegetables and fruit. There was rejoicing in the land last week when I got cheese back. Lentils are next, I think.

But Diet Coke with Lime, wine, beer, and any kind of refined white anything - including my mother-in-law - these are all off the menu. That's been fine until now, Week 4, when PMS hit like a Mack truck toting a load of Cadbury bars.

I'm talking galloping PMS, people. The noticeable kind. The unpleasant kind. The kind where your nutritionist does not believe you when the scale doesn't move, even though you can show her the water-retention marks in your skin and explain that you can handily tuck two or three pounds of water away in your skin, that in fact if she were to pop a tap in your forearm, out would come fresh spring water.

So I am a little obsessed with the program these days, such that I am not doing anything but rocking back in a corner, trying not to eat sugar.

You'd think I would want to blog about that, or to blog about something, anyway. There are other things to blog about - this new bellydancing class I'm taking with my friend Homeskillet; the fact that I lost 6 pounds, apparently all in my face; the new stone patio C and I built out back over the weekend. I even went to Minnesota and met my parents' fantabulous neighbors, one of whom BLOGS and who is totally funny and dry and who I expect my mother to adopt any day now. She even has a tattoo, which will make my own that much easier to explain to Mom.

But all that will have to wait. For now, you people are going to suffer along with me. If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.

Although I have started writing fiction again.

That's a lie, actually. I am brainstorming fiction, which seems like the most useless of all endeacors when you are not actually doing anything with your storms of brain. But it's a step. I am marshalling my forces. And not eating sugar.