Is that strategy really working for me? No it’s not and stop judging me, Judgy McJudgerson!

Sorry. You didn’t deserve that. I am a just cranky.

Now that the holiday drinking/eating season is upon us, I am faced with a couple of choices.

I can either take a page from Lee Corso and say, ah, fuck it until January and then join millions of my fellow resolution-makers and resume the healthy-eating-exercise thingy come Jan. 2.

(Not New Year’s Day because that’s still a holiday.)

Or– and this is a big, capital letter OR– I could try to find a wee bit of balance by strategically planning my days of I-don’t-give-a-fuck-give-me-that-pecan-pie with days of a-cheeseburger-will-NOT-make-the-demons-stop-screaming-eat-a-salad-beeotch.

I am leaning toward the second choice. I can bring my lunch everyday — Healthy Choice has a new line of Top-Chef-inspired meals so that gives me new fodder for the Desktop Lunch Reviews — and I can plan simple meals on all the days that are not celebratory.

Then I can indulge in fabulous food and cocktails like I’m getting paid to do it on the days that really matter, like holidays and whenever my in-laws are in town– because I am not facing that shit sober.

If I play my cards right, I won’t lose any weight in the next six weeks, but I won’t gain any either. I would consider that success.

As far as exercise is concerned, I got a shot of cortisone in my knee last week and walking is now easier. So I could make sure I take a stroll at least once during each workday, which may help relieve the blah-blah-blah-STRESS! Who knows. It may keep me from crying in the fetal position under the desk in my office.

Hardly a revolutionary plan, but it’s all I got right now.

Weeks of working on my coping skills to get to the point that I could find peace in something other than chocolate went up in smoke in the last few days. Most of the gnawing  anxiety is work-related, so I won’t go into detail because:

• I’m a a professional
• The details are boring to anyone but me
• I like being employed

So let’s just go with work-blah-blah-blah has been rough and so Friday night I bought cookies. And a wee bit of ice cream. And caramel apples with nuts because that is my seasonal Kryptonite.

And then Halloween happened and there are all these fun size candy bars that the little beggars didn’t claim that I may or may not have consumed for breakfast this morning.

And today, after I wasted 30 minutes stuck in a drive-thru bank lane behind some asshole in a beat-up pick-up who must have been refinancing his house, I *tried* to order a low-WW-Points sandwich from a drive thru.  But the surly chick at the window got really rude with me because I pointed out she was charging me for the wrong order and so I did what I always do when I’m mad: I left without buying any food.

Hello, Burger King double cheeseburger. You were convenient, fast and the young lady at the window was sweet, smiling and has been the brightest spot of my shitty lunch hour.

In other words, I haven’t done much toward the weight loss goal in the last seven days.

But shit happens. I didn’t pile on all this weight in a matter of days the first time, I can’t lose it all in the same amount of time. You cannot buy coping skills on Amazon or eBay, because I’ve looked, and old habits are hard to break. And caramel apples with nuts are just wonderful and they really do make it all better. At least for a few minutes.

I may need to seek professional therapy and a personal trainer before pecan pie season, which starts today, is more than I can resist.

Hard day at work, husband out of town, dogs bouncing off the ceiling, cat being a dick.

You know, the typical stuff.

While I have been almost boastful of my resistance to eating my emotions lately, I folded like a seven-two-offsuit hand of Texas Hold ‘Em last night.

I totally grabbed a spoon and went face first into a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Boston Cream Pie ice cream.

One bazillion calories later, I was still stressed. But damn. That was some very good ice cream.

It rained all day here yesterday, which I gather is a rare thing in October in Southern California. Um, so yeah, all you Californians who laughed that our 5.6 earthquake in Virginia last month was barely enough shaking for a martini? We don’t call it a “weather event” when it rains. We just call it rain. We don’t like it. We avoid going for walks. But we keep calm and carry an umbrella.

Anyway, my vacation goal to plan each day around the equation of eating less plus moving more, which is supposed to equal less fat on my ass, was set back a wee bit because it was too wet to walk toward the ocean (more irony, I guess.) So I ended up walking on the fitness center treadmill. I really hate treadmills because it makes walking a chore.

I ended up trying to calculate how many miles I had to walk to earn a pineapple martini. I decided it was two miles. I am not going to show my work.

Anyway, my husband decided to skip dinner with his colleagues at the Cheesecake Factory (I know, right? WTF? We’re in California and they want to go to the shitty Cheesecake Factory?) and we went to a place down the street, Killer Shrimp.

And I had a “killer” margarita (it was sublime) and a bowl of lobster mac and cheese. If my calculations were correct, to walk that bowl of creamy sin away I owed that treadmill 26 more miles. Uphill. At marathon pace.

So I only ate about a third of it. It was maybe one of the finest tasting dishes I have ever had, but it was so rich, that a third was plenty.

I am not going to mention that Phil and I figured out if you combined lobster mac and cheese with french fries, you get the most wonderful thing on the planet. Patent pending.

Much better view than CNN on a treadmill television.

All has returned to normal here in L.A. this sunny morning, so I walked about two miles around Marina del Rey. Much more pleasant than a shitty treadmill.  When Phil is done with his meeting, we plan to hit the Getty Center and Old Town Pasadena before dinner with his family. Since I am uber self-conscious about eating in front of his relatives, I am hoping for a calorie deficit for the day.

Moving more. Eating less. Is this really me?

I haven’t checked my weight at all this week on my bathroom scale, which is calibrated correctly so it matches the one at WW. I have eaten healthy for the most part, but there was a drive-thru incident on Sunday. After I swam laps. On an empty stomach. Before I did some heavy lifting.

It was one cheeseburger. A small one. And fries. Medium.

I felt guilty. I didn’t really enjoy it.

Yesterday I was mega-stressed at work. Not once, not twice, but THREE times I wandered my fat ass to the vending machine and contemplated a Three Musketeers bar. I twirled the dollar in my pocket. I thought the chocolate would make me feel better. But I did not buy one.

If I am going to indulge in chocolate, I want something better than a stale Three Musketeers bar.

That’s progress, I guess.

Still, I don’t want to weigh in tomorrow. I can’t handle another episode with Judgy McJudgerson, the condescending bitch behind the counter, if I didn’t lose weight this week. Never mind that I know that losing weight is a marathon, not  a sprint. Never mind that I know setbacks happen and never mind that I ate one lousy fucking cheeseburger but did not eat a candy bar this week.

I just don’t want to go. And that usually means the beginning of the end.

I happen to love cantaloupe, and the sweet melon has been a big part of my healthier diet for the last few months. Now it turns out the coral-colored melons could kill me or make me so sick I wish I was dead.

Well, shit.

Death by frozen food was not the way I wanted to go.

Today I pulled this Healthy Choice Cafe Steamers Roasted Beef Merlot out of the spare freezer we have in our furnace room because we are running low on these boxes of frozen calorie fighters in the main freezer in our kitchen.

It sounded good: beef, potatoes, veggies and merlot sauce, aka gravy.

And you know what? It was tasty. The beef was tender, the string beans were crisp, the potatoes weren’t mushy and the sauce was the kind you wanted to scoop up with a spoon.  At only 230 calories, 5 grams of fiber and 17 mega-strengthening grams of protein, hot damn! This dish is a winner!

As I flipped the box over looking for more nutritional info, I noticed “Best if used by Jan 2011.”

Well, shit.

OK, these frozen foods are loaded with enough preservatives to keep them fresh and undeadly for a millennium, right? What do I read in white letters on a dark green background on the front of the box? No preservatives.

Well, shit.

Clearly I should empty out that freezer before I die. And I might as well see if I can get a deal on some cantaloupe on my way home.

If I live, I think I am going back to booze, chocolate and fast food. At least that shit killed me slowly.

I wonder sometimes about my inner dialogues and just how many fucked-up voices there are inside my head.

For example, when work was done yesterday I should have headed straight to the pool for a water aerobics class. But my the voice in my head that helps me make shitty decisions came up with some really compelling arguments to skip the gym and go home to the couch.

• It was overcast and gloomy. Who wants to swim when it’s damp outside?
• The instructor is a creepy retired gym teacher, resulting in flashbacks to the 1970s, where all my troubles with physical fitness began –gym class PTSD.
• The hillbilly family would likely be there, and hillbillies are very hard to drown.
• I swam laps on Sunday and my body still ached from it. Hello, I never said I was Diana Nyad.

Diana Nyad > me

Despite the fact that I know I always feel better after I workout, and my inner optimist tries to rally me on, my inner cynic always coddles me into making bad choices.

It’s like there is a two-party debate continually raging in my brain.  My inner Progressive whispers to get fit and stay positive, but my inner Reactionary always shouts that and makes that sound like a sissy idea from a pansy ass.

Even though I know that’s a completely false, I fall for it almost every time.

It’s all very noisy, the rhetoric is endless and at the end of the day, nothing gets done. Just like Congress.

I gained a pound. After a waging a week-long battle to NOT to dive face first into gourmet cupcakes. Up a pound.

"I'll bet you haven't been tracking, you fat ass! BWHAHAHAHA!"

And the Weight Watchers counselor asked me what I could have done better.

How about nothing, bitch. NOTHING! I didn’t do anything wrong.

You would think after decades of counseling fat people trying to drop weight, this organization would have better stock responses when a client has a NATURAL setback.  Instead, they add to the discouragement by throwing it back in your face.

As I was trying to leave with my dignity intact, the counselor whispered to me that maybe I should eat more protein.

At that moment, I gave her a protein shake by repeatedly bashing her to the ground yelling “DIE SATAN’S WHORE, DIE!”

In my unstable mind of fantasy, of course. If I had done that in reality, I wouldn’t be typing now because being handcuffed makes that really difficult.

Don’t ask me how I know that, but it’s true.

Anyway, I am not going to let that wench get the better of me. I am going to channel my burning desire to punch someone (specifically her)  into a few good workouts this weekend, and think of her ugly face every time I bite into a veggie.

Bite me, bitch.

I just spent part of my lunch hour cruising my Tumblr dashboard, like I do almost every day. Then I clicked on this link.

This was written by a charming and talented young lady I met online via Twitter and in person at last summer BlogHer conference.  I cannot tell you how much I admire this woman’s intellect and her writing. She’s honest and beautiful.

And every word she said in that post is absolutely true.

I commented that I do indeed know why I am fat, and I have known it most of my life.

I do not blame it on genetics — although I do realize with my short torso and squat legs, I would likely always be a little plush at any weight. I do not blame it on my thyroid or some mysterious illness.

I don’t blame it on society or American culture or advertisers or any of that.

It is exactly as Miss Grace said and it’s really simple math:

Caloric intake > energy expended = excess blubber on my ass, thighs and upper arms.

I love food. Especially sweets. I love fruits and veggies and I actually prefer lean meats, but I love pasta and bread and coffee and above all, I looooove chocolate.  I love to cook food, I love to look at food, and mostly I love to eat food.

To be able to maintain a healthy weight and still consume all the food that I love, I would need to follow a rather rigorous schedule of exercise. And since I was a small child, I have hated everything remotely connected with a gym.

My parents were older and very overprotective.  They did want me to get hurt so they did not want me to play outside. I have never learned to ride a bike or roller skate. I was never allowed to play any sports, despite begging for a tennis racquet because I had a huge crush on Bjorn Borg.

I was always chubby and slow, so I was ridiculed mercilessly by classmates and teachers in phys ed classes. I was the fat kid, sitting with her back pressed up against the cinder block walls of the gym, sobbing because I was the last chosen and the first slammed out in dodgeball.

To me, all gym teachers had the charm and compassion that serves as the model for the Sue Sylvester character on “Glee.”  I broke out in hives so badly in anticipation of a required obstacle course in middle school that I ended up at the doctor. The physician and my mother suspected a food allergy. I knew it was anxiety.

By the time I was out of school and old enough to make my own choices, I was already stuck in an emotional cycle of eating to make myself happy and dreading anything that would make me sweat.

These are not excuses. Not at all. I am an intelligent, college-educated professional who knows what I need to do to lose weight and how much I need to do it to improve my health.

And I am fully aware of all the psychological baggage that is tying me down and that it’s total bullshit to keep carrying it around.  But finally it comes down to this: If I do not want to be fat, I have to quit doing what I love and start doing what I hate. And I have accomplished that at least half a dozen times in my life and lost weight, only to put it back on again because I fail at changing the root cause.

I am fat because I eat more calories than I burn.

I am fat because knowing that logically and changing that emotionally are two completely different things.