"I'm on this new diet..."

"Well, I don't eat anything, and when I feel like I'm about to faint I eat a cube of cheese. I'm just one stomach flu away from my goal weight."   ~Emily Blunt, The Devil Wears Prada

Welcome to my life right now. 

One of my most absolute FAVORITE things in the whole world is our summer vacation.  We go once every couple years and we rent a condo in Ft. Walton, do the whole beach, shopping, swimming, and relaxing thing.  I love everything about our Florida vacations.  Even something as simple and stupid as going to the local Publix grocery store and buying detergent, snacks, baby food, and stuff for breakfast (because that's the only meal I'll agree to eat at "home"...I love ANY excuse to eat out) because we don't have a Publix here, and it's more fun to shop for stuff when you know you're on vacation.  I thought there was never anything about our upcoming vacation that I could ever NOT love.   I am now being proven wrong.    These simple words:  Shorts, tank tops....*holds onto my gag reflex* Bathing Suit.

Now, we all know that over this past year, I've been falling more and more in love with a new person.  He's 2 feet tall, bald a cue ball, has 5 teeth, drools incessantly and has a love of pooping out of his clothes while we're in public.   In most scenarios, I'd be needing to check myself into some sort of fetish therapy, but in this case, it's my sweet little man-cub.  My Gibson. 

Just wook at dat pwecious man!!!!   Don't you just have the urge to chew on him???     Ok, did you catch that word?  Chewing??   See, herein lies the problem.  Apparently I've should've been chewing on Gibson a little more and chewing on those Pizza Rolls a little less. 

Now, I sit and stare at the calendar in utter disbelief.  8 weeks.  In 8 short freakin' weeks, I'm going to be expected to put on this horrid little item of clothing that I can NOT wear Spanx under!!   **Seriously, has there ever been a more amazing creation than Spanx??   I even sleep in them.**     That sweet, little precious, practically edible person caused me to have skin and lines and what I just choose to refer to as bllllluuuugggggggghhhhh all over my stomach and thighs.    And now I sit and wait for the inevitable, "Oh, but you just had a baby!  Those stretch marks are a badge of honor, your body is beautiful because it made that sweet little person."   Ok, please stop.  And while you're at it, bite me!   (No, really, maybe if you bite hard enough, you can bite off some of these love handles.)    I am a person who is EXTREMELY self-critical.  But the reason is that I KNOW it can come off post-baby.   I had postpartum depression crap after having little Patrick (my 2nd baby, for those of you who don't know) and I blew up like a damn water buffalo. I actually weighed more AFTER I had him than I did when I was pregnant!   But with the help of some "crazy pills"  (which seriously made me certifiable...I'm talking batshit crazy!  But they did make me super-motivated) and an extreme gym and diet regime, I dropped 65 pounds. 

Before: 

OHMYDEARHOLYGODWOW!!  Agghhhhhhhhh!!    I seriously didn't know it was possible for my hips to DO that!!

Cut to 6 months later: 

Now, that's more like it.  There should be 2 thighs, and 1 chin!  (And apparently, I lost a bit of hair in the process as well.  Word to the wise---when you have naturally auburn hair, don't EVER try to "bring out the red" with one of those box coloring things.   It will be a disaster and you'll have to chop off a foot of hair.  Haven't colored it since.)

So anyway,  see, it's possible for me to drop weight post-baby.  I don't like to hear women use that excuse.  "Oh, well, I had a baby 6 years ago.  You never look the same after you have a baby."   Well, then sure, by all means, completely give up and drown yourself in a sea of Baskin Robbins and Steak n' Shake!   Anyway...

Back to the present.   When I had my issues post-Patrick, I had never heard of these amazing little tiny creations called "Phentermine"    Oh. My. Lord.    I'd had friends who had mentioned taking "Mommy Crack" after having their kids.   Well,  2 months after having Gibson, I had to be in my best friend's wedding.  So I skip on down to this clinic and I get the most amazing, beautiful, wonderful little iiitttttty-bitty speckled pill and the next month and a half were a whirlwind.  I had enough energy to leap tall buildings (or in my case, as my husband said, to just talk his freakin' ear off) and once a day I had to force myself to eat enough food so I literally didn't just fall over.  Never once got hungry ever. It...was...AWESOME!!  Dropped 27 pounds in one month and was like Woohoo, I'm gonna get the rest of this off in no time.  Then I go in there and the girl said (in my own words)  "I'm sorry, but you're not enough of a fatass anymore for us to give these to you.  Go gain back some of that nastiness and come back and we'll give you some more."   WTF?!    They only want to give these to "obese" people.  Well, looking around this entire area of the south, apparently the obese people haven't gotten the memo that this stuff is available, because they sure as hell aren't getting any smaller!   Walk into the Walmart in Booneville, MS and you'll see what I mean.  At 8 1/2 months pregnant, my mom whispered "Oh my god, you're still one of the skinniest people in here!"     Why would you not give these pills to someone who was dedicated to getting herself back in shape and who they were obviously working for??    Sure, save them for the people who will take it once, realize that they can't eat like a rhino all day, they'll put the rest away and never touch them again!  That's a great way to solve the weight problem here. 

So now, I'm on my own....which SUCKS!!  I don't care if you think I took the lazy way out by taking a pill.  There's a pill for every stupid little condition under the sun.  You can take a pill to sleep, to wake up, to take away anxiety, to make you more anxious so you're not annoying, to make your eyes not dry, to make your man better in bed, to make your man pass out so you don't have to actually do anything with him, they have a pill if you have RESTLESS LEGS!  But yet, if we take a pill to lose weight and get ourselves in shape and feel better about ourselves, then we're cheating, because we're not doing it the "healthy" way.  News flash, I don't care about being healthy, I care about not having to wear Spanx under my sweats!   I honestly want to go back to the days where people were wondering if I had cancer or was doing coke.   They were always trying to offer me food. Ahhh, those were the good ol' days. 

 Luckily I don't have a weakness for sweets/chocolate.  Our house is a 24/7/365 arsenal of candy.  Mom and Patrick are both chocoholics, and of course my kids are, too.  Me, I can be surrounded by it all the time and never once crave it.  (Well, take that back, there are 2 days that I will break an innocent man's legs just to steal his Frosty.  But for the other 29 days of the month, I'm cool.)  My weakness is salty, spicy JUNK.  Pizza, hot wings, deli sandwiches, dips, appetizers.  OMG, love it.  Luckily my favorite food in the world is sushi and from what I hear, it's supposedly healthy (don't you dare burst my bubble!) but Osaka isn't right next door to me, so I don't get it as much as I'd like.  I have an out-of-control Dr. Pepper addiction, and of course, I love my beer on the weekends.  And I don't care if it says "Light" beer, my lower abdomen didn't read that part of the label.   So having to be "good" and sit and eat fish and grilled chicken while watching the Pizza Hut guy drive by, makes me want to bludgeon small children and puppies.

And yes, I tried one of those weight loss DVD's. Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred.   Yes, after 30 minutes of that, I wanted to throw crazy bitch in a tree-shredder and then drown her in one of her own stupid protein shakes!  I seriously couldn't lift my finger afterwards to type about how much pain I was in!! 

  But now here I am, sans Mommy Crack (and seriously still willing to do an under-the-table drug buy in order to get it) and staring at this awful looking building with these dreaded words on it:   ATC Fitness.

I hate the gym.  Hate, hate, hate, hate HATE!!!!  If you ever see me running, then there is a 97% chance that I'm being shot at.   And I hate the people at the gym.  I always end up on the elliptical stuck next to the 87lb marathon-running cheerleader with her perky blonde ponytail bobbling back n forth to the beat of the Ke$ha song I can hear blaring on her iPod.  And then of course, there's the roid-heads in the weight area that are trying to lift about 700 pounds more than their body is actually capable of lifting.  The sounds that emanate from them resemble a gorilla trying to pass a kidney stone. (Have fun with those marble-sized nuts, there, Igor)     So every day I go dragging myself in there, cussing everyone and everything from the parking lot to the door.  I go to the tanning bed first (because everyone knows that fat looks better tan)  which is a feat all in itself.  Everyone is well-aware of my lack of pigmentation.  My husband likes to ask me if I'm wearing tube socks when I have on capri pants, and we like to say that I can burn in the moonlight.   But because we ARE at the beach, I really would prefer to not have to dress like those Muslim women who are covered in a black shroud with only their eyes showing.  In natural sunlight, even SPF 2000 wouldn't be enough for me.  So I do the tanning bed first.  But because of the said lack of pigment, it takes about a month for me to get any color at all.  I pretty much have to start at about 30 seconds and work my way up!   (I'm up to 10 minutes now and my skin actually resembles that of a person with a pulse!! Go me!)

Ok, back to the gym.  After having a 15 minute mental debate with myself, because I hate it EVER so much, I begrudgingly step on the elliptical of death.  I'm so horridly out of shape that this thing is like a torture device for me.  I crank up some Whitesnake on my iPod (because slimming down for the Tora Tora/Whitesnake show is also part of my game plan--Rock Star wives are supposed to be skinny and hot, right?  Well, at least they are, according to E!) and I start running.  After what I know has GOT to be about 20 minutes I look at the time to see how long I've been going.  1:47.  OMG, nooooo!!  The timer on this thing has got to be wrong.  I'm panting in pain like I'm trying to give birth by c-section with no anesthesia...in a desert!!    Plus, I'm so unbelievably uncoordinated that my legs keep going off in different directions and I almost fall off on numerous occasions.   I gave up on the treadmill for that very reason.  Yup, I so fell off.

Yes, that's what it looked like.   How I don't lose limbs and/or teeth on a daily basis is still an ongoing question. 

So finally, after what feels like 5 hours, I finally get my mile and a half in.  I then proceed to lay down on the floor and die.    I don't understand how people can say that they have all this energy and they feel SO good when they workout.  I feel like death when I walk in, and I feel like nasty sweaty DEAD death when I leave.     But I force myself to do it.  Everyday.  Stupid horrible elliptical and then the machines (which I don't mind as much...I feel like I'm actually doing something productive when I'm on the crunch machine and my abs feel like they're being set on fire.  If only they LOOKED the way that I feel they should look when I'm done)   And I force myself to even drink water when I'm doing it.  That's another challenge!  I can go for months without touching water, except to brush my teeth.  And if I could find a way to rinse my mouth out with Dr. Pepper after brushing, I'd be doing that, too. 

Ok, I've done my stupid workout for the day, I've been passing up food left and right (with NO help from my favorite friendly pill) and then I get on the scale.  NOTHING!!   Then I go to try on shirts that fit me before Gibson.   Um, yeaaaaah, I don't really want to join that style of 4 inches of belly hanging out from under my shirt.  How is it that it was so easy to drop 65 pounds, or even 27 pounds, but for me to lose this last 10 stupid pounds, it's been the most gut-wrenching experience ever??   All I want is to be able to wear the clothes I have now, but not have to wear 4 layers of Spanx under them.  Because when I've got those awesome pieces of Lycra sucking me in in every direction, I look fine. (Breathing is soooo overrated)  But my god, I go to get undressed and it's like opening one of those cans of refrigerated biscuits.  You start peeling slowly at the bottom and you're waiting for that inevitable loud POP! and then all the dough starts popping out from the seams and going gooey everywhere.  So disgusting.  (...aaaaand there goes that craving for sausage/biscuits you woke up with this morning. You're welcome.)   All I want is to look the way I did when I went to Rocklahoma 3 years ago, only not quite as pale.   Is that so much to ask??

Well, yes, apparently it is.   So now, I'm off to take Emily's advice and stick that cube of cheese in my pocket and I'm off to the gates of Hell.   The machine of death is calling my name.   Here's hoping that I don't break both my legs in the process (although, I heard those casts make your legs super-skinny afterwards) or at least we can all hope that if it does happen that someone has a camera.

Wish me luck---I've got 10 pounds and 3 inches to lose and only 8 weeks, 1 day til I'm expected to put on a bathing suit.   God help us all.    

Oh, and if anyone wants to donate to my plastic surgery fund, I'm setting up a Paypal option as we speak...










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Seriously, a huge thanks to all of ya'll for reading all my mindless, rambling rants!  I so appreciate all your awesome comments and feedback.  You're freakin' awesome.  Keep rockin'!

***And if you've never watched The Devil Wears Prada, you seriously have to.  Meryl is absolute perfection in everything she does, so that's without question. (I have a tribute wall in my entertainment room to prove that)   But Emily Blunt just steals it! So perfect for that role.***