At work today I kept getting dizzy spells. The first one was really bad, probably a good 30 seconds long. It felt like when you're underwater and sort of floating, where under your eyes feels kind of weird, you know? Or maybe you don't. Maybe I'm nuts.

Anyway, they kept up for a couple of hours--during the lunch rush, of course--which made things interesting. I don't know what it was about; I'm pretty sure I was decently hydrated. I'd had a bit of an omelette (how the hell do you spell that?), and my protein shake. It was just random.

Eventually I started feeling better. I did feel sleepy after work--I usually do in the afternoons--but I didn't fall asleep even though I watched an episode of "House" and stretched out on my bed for about fifteen minutes. A couple of weeks ago, I'd've passed out until about eight o'clock, woken up still tired, and accomplished nothing. Instead, I stayed awake. I've done a sinkful of dishes and studied for my exams tomorrow, fairly successfully I think. Time will tell, I suppose.

Although not if I don't go to bed soon, Big Trouble will ensue if I sleep through my exams tomorrow. I may actually sleep on my couch with the television on so it's harder for me to fall back asleep when my alarm goes off. I hate having to play tricks like that with myself, but I've slept through my alarm/turned it off in my sleep/blatantly been a dumbass about it too many times in the past not to worry. If I just hop into bed and try to trust I'll wake up, I won't sleep at all. There's a part of me that's tempted to just stay up for the next five hours killing time and then go to my exams ... but if I do that I'll be so ridiculously brain dead I needn't have bothered studying at all.

To get back to anything food or fat related ... I did briefly entertain the idea of having something carb-o-riffic for lunch, namely citrus teriyaki boneless "wings" and fries, or maybe a sandwich .... but it wasn't all that tempting, really. I did snag one French fry from someone, and it was good, but I didn't feel the need for more. It's very interesting, this experience of not constantly craving one thing or another. I don't want to poke at it, for fear of breaking it ... I already feel like I'm going to wake up one day and it'll just be gone. I'm hoping not. I'm hoping a combination of taking almost whole year off from any thought of restriction, and truly accepting myself as a Fatty McFatterson and being happy that way, and not trying to adhere to some strict "Diet" regulation .... I'm hoping all of that will allow me to continue, for the most part, not wanting the insulin-raising junk I used to crave all the time.

Yes, in the rigorous scientific setting of my home, I have determined that proper eating makes you feel better. Shocking, right? I'm basing this on the fact that, although I did sleep a large portion of my day away, after that I did Useful Things.

Granted, I'm still not able to nail my ass to a chair and study for hours at a time without moving. Rather I'll force myself through one chapter (with a couple of 30 second breaks for more water, squishing a kitten, etc.), then I'll let myself read a couple of blog entries or whatever before moving on to the next chapter. I'm just one of those fidgety people. A couple of weeks ago while filling up on junk, I wouldn't have had the mental focus for even that amount of studius interruptus. Yes, I'm a nerd, shut up.

I've always looked at other people and wondered how they get so much done in a day. My dad does more before I get up than I usually do all day. Other people sprint about on errands, etc., before work. I don't think I'll ever truly be one of those people--I just have a certain procrastinating slackitude to my personality. But at least when eating properly I feel like I can fake it when I need to. :) What really mystifies me though ... people who go 100 miles an hour while eating a) next to nothing or b) utter crap. How do they do it? Are they just possessed of some self-flagellating gene I don't have?

I read about foot binding when forced to read the book "The Good Earth" in ninth grade, but I never really understood how drastic the results can be. These photographs are pretty disturbing.

Guess it goes to show that our society is certainly not the only one to embrace damaging ideals. If the Chinese could "grow out of it", so to speak, maybe our culture can eventually grow out of anorexic, fake-boobed ideals.

But this isn't a tragedy, or even a comedy of errors. I said in my earlier post that if I'm going to eat sugary, carby stuff, shouldn't it be something better than Country Buffet? Well, damn right! It was even ickier than I remembered.

Oh, it wasn't all bad. Their salad bar has improved--there was actually a mixed greens salad, rather than just plain iceberg lettuce. There were two kind of melon; there was grilled chicken, ham, and steak.

But, there were breaded and friend clam strips and shrimp; stuffed baked potatoes; a big gooey vat of macaroni and cheese; "buttery" rolls; mashed potatoes and gravy; etc. etc. I had one popcorn shrimp--it was very chewy. I had two bites of half a stuffed potato--it was really dry. I had about a 1/4 cup of macaroni and cheese, which wasn't bad. But generally ... ick!

I did have about a 1/3 c of peach cobbler, because my grandma's friend had had it and said it was good. It wasn't terrible, but it did make my tongue feel fuzzy and in retrospect it was just sort of sweet and vaguely peachy. I had no desire to eat any more of it. I feel no craving for anything else along those lines. I did have an inclination toward stopping at Qdoba on my way home hours later, but that's less to do with carbs and more to do with being addicted to their three cheese queso. :) Is this how "normal" people feel, not drawn toward different foods inexplicably, merely having the thoughts pass through the brain and move on?

Watch--tomorrow I'm going to be gagging for chocolate, just because I had the temerity to say I wasn't craving things. :)

I'm having dinner with my grandma and a friend of hers tonight, and the first words out of my grandmother's mouth were "Do you like Country Buffet?" At least I managed to steer her away from a Chinese buffet. At least the old AllYouCanPack Buffet will have salad and hopefully some unbreaded meat. Of course, if I do eat something I "shouldn't", it's not the end of the world--but if I'm going to put something high sugary or high starchy in my body, and suffer the crappy feelings afterward, shouldn't it be something of better quality than Country Buffet?

I haven't been to one of those places in years. Well, I have been to this abso-fucking-lutely amazing all you can eat Italian place, but I consider that high quality. Anyway, my dad used to like to go to the all you can eat places, and he encouraged me to engage in competitive eating. When we went to regular restaurants, I rarely ordered off the children's menu--he would encourage me to order a full-sized steak and eat it all. We'd have milk drinking contests at home. No, really! He'd sit us each down with a half gallon of milk and see who could drink more during dinner. And then later, when I was a teenager, he tried to blame my weight on my mother, I suppose because she was fat and he wasn't.

At any rate, buffets just trigger my impulse to eat more than I should. I have to "get my money's worth", and all that stuff is just there for the grabbing, and that's what I did for years. Add into that the fact that my company today is going to make me want to spend as much time as possible away from the table (not my grandma! her friend.), and I'm not sure how this meal is going to wind up. You'd think that getting all that laid out in my head would be helpful, but you know how it is when you're confronted with a hot, delicious bowl of something terrible. :)

Interestingly, Country Buffet has nutritional information for everything on their website! Can someone please explain to me why a gross all you can eat place like that has the info up, but most regular restaurants don't? Honestly! Although I just discovered that Chili's does. But the place I work doesn't, which drives me MAD! I eat there five days a week, it would be nice to be able to eat something other than plain chicken and broccoli without wondering how many extra carbs are snuck into sauces, etc.

Apparently a law is being pushed to make restaurants print calorie counts on menus in Colorado, which was recently done in NYC. I'm not down with that, actually. Our society is waaaaaay too obsessed with looks and weight, and I think printing calorie counts on menus is only going to make people more obsessive. However, I do think the info should be available on request--but all of it, not just calories, because calories alone is pretty useless.

How'd I get off on this subject? :)

In other news, my cat only likes Jell-O brand sugar free pudding! The little brat always tries to climb on my head and lick my spoon. But I bought Hunt's brand and offered it to her, and she sniffed it and walked away. Snob. :)

I have a bad habit of sticking my head in the sand about certain things. Generally financial things, really. For a few months now, I've been getting calls anywhere from 2-15 times a day about the things I'm behind on--two credit cards, a store account that wasn't really my fault (long story), and one other thing. They never called when I had time to talk--I was asleep, or at work, or in class, or maybe sometimes I did have time but I didn't have money. So I put my phone on silent and ignored it.

Why? Why do I do that? I know, from having gone down this road before, that the companies are willing to make payment arrangements I can handle, and that I feel MUCH better when I just take care of things already. I reminded myself of this a week ago, and today I finally made the last call I needed to to straighten all this baloney out! I also came to the dreadful realization that cutting back my large credit card payment by $86 a month would extend the miserable life of that payment plan by something like six months. Bwah! Must not. Four years of massive monthly payments is enough!

So what does this have to do with healthy eating and fat? Not a damn thing. Okay, maybe one damn thing: when I physically feel better, I'm more likely to take care of the things I need to. Rocket science? Hardly. Something I seem to forget over and over? Yep. I forget that what I call "normal" would be torturous hell for most people. I've taken steps toward fixing that--sinus surgery, allergy shots, next on my list is checking into orthotic inserts for my shoes--but if I don't get the basics right, none of that is going to matter. If I don't get the basics right, I'll continue feeling shitty and letting everything fall by the wayside. And it has nothing to do with my body size, but what I fuel my body with. Which I've known for a long time. Let's see if I can keep that going instead of forgetting in two months.

So I should be asleep, but instead I'm still up, reading blogs and watching tv and enjoying having my windows open and my new "bella luna" scented candle lit.

On another blog I'm reading, the writer mentions a trip to her doctor. The doctor said she must work out, because, essentially, "no one that fat could have blood pressure that good" unless they exercise. This blogger's BMI is 36 (not that I place that much stock in BMIs, but anyway).

My BMI is 44. And my blood pressure is always perfect. Well, ONE time, when I was late and had literally run the half mile to the appointment, it was high.

Oh wait. I'm fat, I must be lying. I can't possibly have normal blood pressure, normal cholesterol, normal blood sugar, normal everything.

Stupid judgemental doctors.

Every five minutes, it seems, I see a commercial about HFCS. There are two different ones, two different scenarios where someone is horrified about HFCS but stammers stupidly and can't think of a reason why. The person they're talking to then informs them that it's made from corn, has the same calories as sugar, and is "fine in moderation". They also say it "has no artificial ingredients". No shit--IT IS an artificial ingredient. Just because it starts out as starch doesn't mean it's natural. The amount of processing that goes into that crap is astounding!

As far as the rest of it ... blech. That shit will basically caramelize your arteries by damaging a certain type of cholesterol in your blood. It raises insulin, although it can enter your cells on its own (doesn't have to go through the insulin transport mechanism like sucrose). I think plain fructose does that, like the kind in fruit, but the problem with HFCS is the amount of fructose it dumps into your system. There are some other problems with it, but I haven't read about it in a couple of years and can't put my hands on the book the info is in right now.

Does that mean I scrupulously avoid HFCS? No. When I'm not paying attention to what I eat, I'm sure I eat plenty of it. Especially since I do a little too much fast food at those times. And I work in a commercial restaurant. But even when I am paying attention, I don't scruitinize labels that closely.

So why do these HFCS commercials piss me off, if I'm not militant about it? Because in NO WAY is it natural or healthy. "Fine in moderation"? Yeah, okay, whatever. But calling it a "sweet surprise" and implying it's all sunshine and roses pisses me off. Portraying people with concerns as rude or idiotic pisses me off too.

I've been on my scale more in the last week than in a couple of months. Which is to say twice. :) This is the problem with any measure than affects my eating--I start over thinking. And I know that if I continue eating properly and see no change in weight, I might end up giving it up and chowing chocolate and crud daily again. Because unfortunately, it's easy to forget how shitty I feel when I eat those things. A few weeks or months of feeling better, and I forget it's so easy to disrupt that feeling. Feeling better starts to be the norm, and ceases to be incentive.

I wish I was one of those people who loves vegetables, who doesn't crave sugar and starch. Although I think those people are pretty rare. I'm realizing that a vast majority of the slender people I know struggle as much as I do--they just either are naturally thin, or deny themselves the things they want on a daily basis. I'm amazed how much I hear the "skinny girls" I work with complaining about how "fat" they are, and how they "shouldn't have eaten that!" There's one girl who looks like her bones are about to burst through the skin of her face, who has been trying to gain weight after an illness, and I heard HER saying it the other day! She's trying to gain weight, and yet she still "shouldn't" have eaten? Insane.

I don't want to end up obsessing, counting every gram of food I eat, obsessing over the things I want to eat and "can't". There has to be a middle ground between obsession and complete non-restriction, which is what I've been doing for the last year to try to heal my guilt and twisted feelings about food. I don't want to go back there. What to do?

I've given up on The Fantasy of Being Thin. I've written about it before, but I'm thinking about it again tonight because yesterday, I discovered that apparently my father hasn't given up on the it, for me.

Both of my parents are very social people. My father knows an enormous network of people who can help him get just about anything accomplished--you have to leave the state to avoid running in to someone he knows. And sometimes that doesn't even work. But I have just never been that way. I could point to a dozen different reasons for this in my upbringing, the point is, I am just not a social butterfly. I feel out of place at parties, out of my depth when expected to converse with strangers for any length of time. I enjoy time alone, reading and such. I always have.

A long time ago, it seems, I attributed this to my fat. When I got thin, I'd have millions of friends and a full social calendar. Except .... if all my extra fat disappeared tomorrow, I'd still not know what to say to strangers at parties, I'd still lack confidence in conversation. But the thing is, and I know this now ... it's just how I am. I'm not anti-social, I'm just not super-social. I'm quiet and a little shy. I suffer from depression and a horrible tendency toward procrastination. I'm not good at saving money. I'm a little scatter-brained. All of these personality "flaws" are just how I am, and losing weight would fix none of them.

My dad doesn't believe that. He thinks if I lose all my spare weight, I'll have more confidence and I'll interact with people more. He didn't come right out and say it, but basically he's afraid I'm going to end up a fat old crazy cat lady with no friends or husband. And he attributes this not to my shyness, or my fear of betrayal in relationships (although I haven't discussed that with him, it's too rooted in his behavior during my childhood and I don't have the stomach for it), or anything else .... but to my weight. To him, if I were thin, I'd stop worrying about money, I'd have lots of friends, and a husband (and no doubt kids), I wouldn't want my cats anymore (he hates cats), I wouldn't be 20 minutes late all the time and I wouldn't need my happy pills. He sees it as a cure-all, and I don't think I can possibly dissuade him.

I tried asking him, yesterday, what losing weight would solve. He said I'd interact with people more. Why, I said, I'd still be shy and generally think most people are idiots. He brushed it off. I know he just wants me to be happy, he just wants me to be healthy, he's feeling his own mortality and is afraid I won't be okay after he dies (he's all of 48 this year), and he is trying to help me with what he sees as the straightest path to my happiness. A perverse part of my wants to lose weight just so I can show him--"See! I'm skinny and I'm still bad with money and depressed and can count my friends on one hand! Pfffft!" :)

The worst part is that I've been struggling over a related issue for a couple of months now. I really want to start exercising, I want to feel strong again. I want to start eating properly (cut out junk food, etc.). But I know that those things will result in weight loss, at least to a degree, and I am afraid of what that will trigger. I can see myself ending up chase weight loss, obsessing over every bite of food, and allowing the scale to rule my moods. And I'm afraid of flirting with that, because there were times I could feel myself edging toward an eating disorder, and because even short of an eating disorder it's not a healthy way to live.

How does that fit into the conversation with my dad? Well, partially I'm afraid of falling back into the "when I'm thin ..." mindset. But mostly, I know that any weight loss will be widely, ridiculously commented on by every well-meaning member of my family. They've been watching/waiting/expecting me to lose weight my entire life, and any time they see a sign of slimming, they all pile on the wagon to compliment me, tell me how good I look, what am I doing, tell me I finally have a waist, blahblahblahblah. And that will send me headfirst down one slope or another: unhealthy binging to undo it because I don't want to deal with it, or further obsession about it. I've tried in the past asking not to discuss it, but then people just get butt hurt and tell me I'm being rude and I "hurt Grandma's feelings!" and to just take a compliment.

So what to do? I don't know. I continue to mull it over, rolling the concepts around in my head, trying to decide if I can deal with the consequences of eating well.