Thinspo

 

Thinspiration. I guess Thinspir or Thinspi would be more accurate. Thinspo is a component to a pro-Ana lifestyle. It is when you look at photos of beautiful skinny people to garner inspiration and stick to your diet. Except an Ana diet is something rather silly, like the 2,4,6,8 diet.

 

What is Ana you say? Its anorexia. Pro-Ana is a movement for a pro-anorexia lifestyle. Who is Ana you ask? She is your friend (according to pro-anas, not me) who starves when you eat and eats when you starve. You need to find the happy medium.  Thinspo is part of that lifestyle.

 

Pictures like this and this are used:

 

 

I say we take back the night. I think Thinspo is a powerful weight loss tool, but rather than look at these bony skeleton’s for inspiration, why not look at real beautiful women whom we would want to look like. Even celebrities who have a beautiful but normal look to them.

 

I say we take it back. Why let it only be part of a pro-ana lifestyle.

 

If you or someone you know suffers from anorexia or bulimia, help is available.  

What I hate about dieting is the hunger lifestyle that takes over my mind, against my better judgment. I diet for about 2 weeks and all of a sudden I turn into a junkie. I am a food junkie. The first step is admitting you have a problem right?

 

It positively cannot be mentally healthy that I weigh my self daily, view my stomach from every angle and time out all my food intake to a tee. Breakfast? 7:00am, snack? 1 0, lunch? 12, snack? 3, possible second snack? 4, dinner? 6, desert? 8. I eat all day long and when I am not eating, I am thinking about eating, what I am going to eat next, what I would rather b eating. I would say I spend a good two-thirds of the day thinking about eating. What’s more, even though I eat at regular intervals (mostly veggies or fruit) I am still starving 90% of the day. I never eat until I am full. I just had my first snack of the day, 1 wedge of laughing cow Swiss cheese, light. No crackers, too much fat and the cheese is good alone. I am still hungry, but no longer starving so that with the help of a 20 oz bottle of Diet Coke I can make it to lunch.

 

The cult of the hungry. I think about food and hunger all day. I even enjoy my hunger. Its like my enemy and best friend all rolled into one. The longer it hurts, the more fat my body is consuming, the happier I am. The longer it hurts, the more I want to stuff my face, the unhappier I am. When I am hungry I feel thinner. I only weigh myself when I am hungry, never when I am normal or full. I think I look better hungry. I love going to bed hungry but then I dream about creamy cheese and ice cream. I love the feeling of eating a low fat ice-cream on a diet and knowing I can still lose weight, but I love hunger more. It’s a powerful energy, and terrible energy drainer. It is sick.

 

What will happen, as it always does, is that I will really begin to enjoy my hungry. Hunger is my best friend and worst enemy on a diet and I will give in to it less and less until I have cut out all snacks and am eating perfectly portioned meals – and then the fun comes. That will go on for a week; maybe two and then I will LOSE IT. I always do. I’ll consume my fridge left over pasta, left over fish (I hate fish, but who cares). Then it will start again.

 

The cult of hunger is a cycle and I can’t break free.

 

146.9

 

False high yesterday or false low today? I’ll Know Tomorrow. You know what? I am kind of hungry.

149.6

 

It was to be expected. I fell off the wagon*, hell, I fell under it. Father’s Day weekend is a family oriented weekend, and family oriented weekends need food. How else does one survive so much family without copious amounts of alcohol and food?

 

If I had to grade my performance over the weekend I think I get a c-. MY eating habits were terrible but a) I joined a gym, b) I went to the gym, c) I persevered through “the wall”, and d) I went grocery shopping for the week and only both low fat weight watcher foods.

 

My South Beach days are over, for now. Good riddens is how I feel in that respect. I know that many many people have lost a lot of weight on the South Beach Diet, and I guess if you are willing to put in a lifetime of non-simple carbs (which is better for you) it is a good diet. But 2 phases limit your fruit and carrot intake. Ok, as far as I am concerned a diet with no to little fruit (even for weight loss purposes only) is not a healthy one. The contrary, it is a specifically unhealthy diet. Yes, you are allowed to have all the veggies you want, and you are supposed to have 4-5 servings of fruit and/or veggies but you get different nutrients for vegetables and fruit. It seems counterintuitive to purge your diet of fruit and replace cravings of sweet with nonfat, sugar free cool-whip, or ricotta with splenda. Beyond that, yes white pasta and rice are simply empty calories. I agree, they are like drinking or eating cupcakes on a diet, also counterintuitive, but potatoes and corn? Those aren’t empty calories. I would be hard pressed to qualify a potato as a vegetable, and unlike carrots people have gotten fat because of them, but potatoes are full of nutrients and are filling. Corn and potatoes should not be purged from a diet like white rice.

 

Facts about potatoes:

However, the fact is, I like white rice. I like it and I hate brown rice. Yes I know I am simply eating inches onto my hips, but I don’t want to  live a lifestyle that forces me to eat stir-fry with brown rice. I need a lifestyle where when I want a snack, I can pick up an apple or some berries. I want watermelon, or salad, chicken and corn for dinner. As much as I love a good steaktip salad, I love berries, fruit, corn, potatoes, white rice, and low fat frozen yogurt more. I simply don’t under stand how a lifetime on the 3 phases of south beach can be healthy.

• 45% of the daily value for vitamin C
• 620 mg potassium, comparable to bananas, spinach and broccoli
• trace amounts of thiamin, riboflavin, folate, magnesium, phosphorous, iron and zinc
• all for only 100 calories and no fat.

 

 

 

So welcome to my day 1 of weight watchers. I won’t be going to my fabulous new gym today, but you bet I’ll be there tomorrow. Today I have been munching on watermelon and strawberries with laughing cow cheese and to top it off? Pasta salad (Kraft Zest Italian free dressing, of  course). Everything I have eaten today may have been the anti-South beach but all of it has been healthy (even the pasta, white – eh- tomato and spinach pasta with low fat dressing).

 

Frankly at the two weeks I did South Beach, I may have been so so so excited to lose the weight but I felt terrible. Physically I felt gross and the excitement over weightloss was able to cover that up, until I took a good look at what I was doing. For now my weightloss will have to be the old fashioned way, healthy eating, being hungry, and exercising a lot. Boo, painful and slow, but at least I am not dreaming about watermelon and corn on the cob. At least I can have carrots for dinner again. CARROTS NEVER MADE ANYONE FAT, orange maybe, but not fat.

 

* “Fell of the wagon” comes from Ireland. In Dublin before a prisoner was executed he was paraded through the city on the back of a wagon. It was customary to stop at every tavern on the way to the gallows and give the many a free pint.  Occasionally after a bit to much to drink he would fall off the wagon.

 I bought a new scale… it says I’m 146. This scale is better so Ill take the plus 5 pounds and use it. Bummer though.

I got something else too. The Hungry Girl Diet Book and the New Weight Watcher’s cook book. I will be making some of the recipes over the next few weeks. I’ll take my 4 pounds and call it an night. Time for weight watchers. I’ve already told you I feel about the carrots.

Now I am looking for weight watcher widgets.

 

Today was the same, stagnant. I am not surprised. I had hotdogs yesterday. Do you see that s at the end of hotdogs? Yes, I mean multiple. That’s right, I am on a diet and I had multiple hotdogs.

 

Not two either. three, three hot dogs. (Count them HA HA HA.)

 

Which means tomorrow I will be holding my breath that my down nine doesn’t turn into down seven.

 

On the plus side I went for a walk. This is the first exercise since I started this godforsaken diet. OK, it was a 15 minute walk. But that’s 15 minutes extra walking than I ever did last week. That’s gotta count for something. I also turned down carrots at dinner. It is so hard to be on a diet with no carrots. Who ever got fat on carrots? WHO?! Show me this person. Carrots don’t make you fat, cookies make you fat, ice-cream makes you fat, cans of frosting makes you fat, but carrots? Carrots do not. But I said no anyway, despite my rage at having to do so.  I think this is a step forward for me.

 

So today, unlike yesterday I didn’t have a chicken hot dog for dinner, and tonight, unlike yesterday I won’t have 2 before my steak and veggies (or chicken and veggies, whatever). Today, like yesterday I will exercise, even if it is just 15 minutes. (Hey, don’t judge me, 15 minutes is better than nothing and I have a REALLY big splinter I can’t get out of my foot.)

 Today is day 7 of Phase 1 of the South Beach diet. For those of you who don’t know South Beach, phase one = hell. You can’t anything. Here is the major list of No’s:

 

·       Bread

·       Pasta

·       Rice

·       Sugar

·       ALCHOL (seriously.. no alcohol)

No carbs and no sugar on this diet. Apparently it melt’s belly fat. You can eat meat though and glorious cheese. Peanuts, peanut butter (thank goddess huh?), sugar free candies (I cheat with sugar free J.P. Lick’s soft serve but I think that its not allowed) all the veggies you want (minus carrots and corn) and did I already mention the cheese? Well, cheese.

 

So for one full week I have been avoiding bread, pizza, pasta and sugar. I even turned down oatmeal scotchies.

 

Well its paid off, I am at 141. That’s right 1 week, 9 pounds. This I can do. I am walking around like I own the damn world because my size 10’s aren’t tight, I have almost lost 10 pounds (which I was unable to do on 4 months of weight watchers) and I am not hungry.

 

 

NINE POUNDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Why am I writing this?

 

This is mostly for me, but if you have found it, I hope it gives you inspiration.

 

In 2006, a mere 2 years a go, I was 5’1 (actually 5 feet, I lie about the inch), a smoker, 110 pounds on a good day, 115 if I had consumed an entire pizza and box of krispy crèmes and a size 2. Two years prior to that, as a sophomore in college I was 100 and a seize 0.

 

Two years later, one week ago today, I was still 5’1, had been a non-smoker for 2 years, weighed 150 pounds exactly, and was quite snug in my size 10 pants. I had had it. I graduated fro college, quit smoking and got into law school, all while gaining 20 pounds a year, A YEAR!!!!!!!!

 

Time to change. Enter South beach.

 

This will chronicle my journey through weight-loss with stories, tips, goals and yes… pictures.

 

As a rule I think any diet that makes you restrict fruit is B-A-D, bad for you, but I certainly cant a afford new clothes again, HELLO poor law student. Drastic times my friends, drastic times. After 2 or 3 or 4 weeks of NO carbs I intend to forego phase 2, (“BUT WAIT!!!!” you scream. I know I’ll gain it all back. No no no, I have a plan) and I will go to weight watcher’s core because weight watchers seems like the smarter way to lose weight, but again drastic times.