Struggling aka I feel like I'm failing

I'm blogging the post that I've been trying to avoid. You know the one... where someone who has been wildly successful in her efforts to date whines about the lack of weight loss. Yes I've lost more than 100lbs but no, it doesn't make it any easier when the weight loss slows. I still have so far to go that any stall, increase, plateau (insert favourite weight loss horror word here) plays havoc with your confidence. With my confidence.

Ok... let's start at the beginning.

Todays weight is 242.8lbs. I had gone down as low as 239 something and up as high as 245. As of today, 20 days into the month, I have lost 3lbs. Not bad if you are doing it with a full sized stomach and intestinal system. But I don't have those things. I should be losing more. I am just over half way through my journey. I don't have a magic figure in mind but I know that 3lbs doesn't work for me. Why? It makes me fear that I am on the edge of failing (failing is so much more that just the loss on the scale but I'll get to that in a minute). So many times in the past I have lost, stalled and then failed. Failure defined is "put on the lost weight plus more". This was not a one time event. It was a regular one. It didn't matter if I lost 10lbs or 100lbs. They would all come back with interest. If I fail I do it spectacularly. No half measures for this girl.

So now that I am living my most prolonged experience with weight bouncing that goes beyond the normal pattern that I have recognized over the past seven months I'm a little (lot) freaked out. What is freaking me out is not as much the lack of weight loss (although it is clearly a real issue for me) as it is my reaction to it.

I am, for the most part, an intelligent and rational woman. I can look at other peoples problems and come up with plausible suggestions. Nuggets of wisdom. Fragments of hope. All of that doesn't mean a thing when I'm dealing with myself. Logically I know that I am hard wired to succeed. It's the reason I chose the more complicated surgery because it has the highest rate of success among all weight loss surgery options. I am programmed to lose a higher percentage of my excess weight, I am programmed to be able to eat a relatively normal diet in doing so, and I am programmed this way for the long term so that massive weight gain is less likely than with some of the other surgeries. But logic doesn't even come into play when you're dealing with emotions and experiences gleaned from a lifetime of dieting. It's amazing how incredibly powerful these things are. At seven months into my journey I have not yet learned how to counter all that.

The result is that I tend to go into avoidance mode. If I don't write about it or talk about it, it really doesn't exist. What also happens is that I have this amazingly strong "WTF" reaction. The scale has gone up (again). WTF, that bowl of bits and bytes will taste really good. I'm at the same weight, WTF that carbohydrate packed food appeals so much more than the protein food that I KNOW my body needs for long term health. WTF could be rearranged to read Falling of The Wagon syndrome... whichever way you look at it, it is self destructive, has consistently contributed to my failure in the past and it's for ever present. I guess this is like the little voice that makes an alcoholic want to drink. It's there and I have to consciously fight it.

Something is going on with my body and it's playing with my head.

On the physical side my menstrual cycle is all screwed up. To the point that I purchased a pregnancy test to rule that out. Actually two because I screwed the first one up. You'd think that after all this time I would know how to stick a stick in a stream of pee... insert eye roll and move on. The result was, eventually, negative. But it doesn't explain why I haven't had a period for nearly seven weeks. I was running on a three week cycle for the three months prior to that. Could this be contributing to the weight issues. Maybe. Could it be contributing to the head issues. Maybe. I'm probably more hormonal than I've been in a long time. This is not something I've ever had to deal with. From the day I started menstruating I had a relatively easy run of it. No massive mood swings, no real pain, no headaches...nothing. I've been very lucky. So if it is my hormones that are messing with me I don't know how to deal with it. I have no experience. New territory and all that stuff. It's a learning experience that I'll have to take a few months to understand. I need to see the pattern before I can make a call. Forever the analyst.

So the bottom line is I'm frustrated. I am struggling staying the course in terms of my food choices. I am struggling with the mental side of things. I know I need to get back to basics but... insert all the excuses.