My fun for tonight and this weekend.

Lots of schoolwork and work-work to do this weekend, but housework is done--yay! Still, I'm going to read Twix's and Katy's blogs. I'll go right after I post this. Thanks, guys, for taking the time to comment. It means a lot to me. I guess I should be more open, then. It's scary, you know. I'm not that brave. I have some online "enemies." They'd do anything to mock me, but you know what? I guess I'd rather be honest and open, with honest and open people like my friends, the food/weight bloggers, and take the risk of mockery. If they find out who I am, so what? Really, so fucking what? (Some Allan language there, lol.) If you and I can make a connection in this struggle of ours, it's worth it.

This will sound crazy, but another thing I envy is that some of you have taken the Challenge on and are willing to work that hard at losing weight. I envy the strength of will and determination. Especially, I envy the camaraderie of your doing it together. My particular problem is that I want to lose another eight pounds or so. Then, once I lose them, I'll want to lose another five. Why? Because I think I'm too big at this size. At any size. Do I want to die? No, not at all. At least, not consciously. When my electrolytes were imbalanced, I took my potassium to protect my heart, so I don't want to have a heart attack. Hell, I don't know what I want, just that I want to weigh less. Less than I did. Less than I do. And probably less than I'll ever weigh.

You know, an overweight person doesn't set out to become obese, nor does an obese person want to have heart problems, either. They can be told it can kill them, but most of the time, they don't decide to make the serious changes they must to lose weight. So it's the same thing. We all desperately want something for different reasons, and they all have to do with food.

I had two close friends in AA. When they moved away, it broke my heart. Both were smokers (as was I at the time) and one was fat. The overweight one said that giving up booze and drugs was so much easier than giving up overeating, because while she didn't have to drink, she still had to eat more than once a day. She was biologically forced to take in her "drug" to stay alive. I've thought about that, and hear what she's saying. Hunger is a powerful drive, stronger than anything except breathing and drinking fluids. Much stronger than sex. A person on a weight loss diet knows going into it that s/he'll have to tolerate a certain amount of hunger to be successful. That's why I think that the demons must be confronted along the way, particularly to maintain the loss.

What do you think about all this? Do you think we gain weight because we have big appetites, or because we have other problems that we attempt to solve with food? Do you think it differs from person to person? Do you think it's different for those who are merely overweight as opposed to those who are obese? I mean it's one thing to weigh 155 when you should weigh 130, but quite another to weigh 365 when you're supposed to weigh 170.

I ate two pieces of dark chocolate today. If you knew me, you'd know how nutty that is, since I don't even care for chocolate. It's here for my husband. I'll take the rest of this box into work on Monday, but don't understand why I did it. My therapist would say it's because my body desperately wants calories, and will eat anything to get them. I think that's too simplistic, but I kept it to myself.

I finished Frank Bruni's book, "Born Round." It ended the only way it could. He has a binge after several years of working out and watching his food intake, without weight gain. He realizes that he'll never be cured of this disease--he can only hold it at bay. He loses the ten pounds he gained over the two-week binge, and goes on to get on even keel again. Or as his grandmother used to say, if you're born round, you'll never die a square. He'll just keep working at it.

It was a very good, brave book.